Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher". Horror, Fear and the Manipulation of the Reader

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2011 im Fachbereich Anglistik - Literatur, Note: 1,6, Universität Konstanz, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous American authors; however, he is ¿the most controversial¿ . Not only his works fueled the debate on him, but also his almost scandalous biography, which includes alcohol, drugs, financial problems, a marriage with his only 13-year-old cousin and a strange personality, that gave him a reputation of a grumpy, even violent person. Nevertheless he had a great influence on American literature and the modern short story.

The attention of this essay will be focused on Poe's means and methods of manipulating the reader with the effect of horror and fear. This shall be demonstrated on the example of ¿The Fall of the House of Usher¿. The story was written in spring or summer of 1839 in Philadelphia. It was published in September of that year in Burton¿s Gentleman¿s Magazine, of which Poe was assistant editor. A collection of 25 stories named ¿Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque¿, including Usher, came out in December. Thomas Woodson describes Usher as ¿Succession of futile efforts to establish himself, to define a solid identity for posterity, for his contemporaries, and for himself. It is of course typical for him that he should try to construct his own literary personality by dramatizing the fall of a house and of a family.¿