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The Fall of the House of Usher
5
Transcript
Gloomy, Decaying Setting
Supernatural beings or monsters
Curses or prophecies
Intense emotions
Doppelgänger
"The Fall of the House of Usher"
Publication information
- Published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman Magazine and was revised in 1940 in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
- One of the most significant works of Gothic fiction in American literature
The Gothic
- Started in 1764 with Walpole's Castle of Otranto
What is Gothic Literature?
- Uses "a pleasing sort of terror"
- Named for Gothic architecture
Biographical Information
- Poe was born in 1809 in Boston and died in 1849 in Baltimore
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
- Also credited for creating Detective Fiction
- "the stem of the Usher race ... had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch" (66)
Elements of Gothic Literature
- "...a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy" (71)
- Most famous for works like The Raven, Tell-Tale Heart, Fall of the House of Usher, and Cask of Amontillado
- "that silent yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family" (78)
Genre
- "A type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features or conventions"
- "melancholy House of Usher" (64)
- "mansion of gloom" (65)
- Broad literary genres are poetry, plays, & fiction
- German for "double goer" or "double walker"
- "an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven ... had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn" (67)
- "An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all" (69).
- "a look-alike or double of a living person, sometimes portrayed as a paranormal phenomenon, and in some traditions as a harbinger of bad luck"
- "The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me" (70).
Doppelgänger
- "the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion" (82)
- "A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention... [they] had been twins (80).
- "There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame" (88).
- "[she] fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother ... [and] bore him to the floor a corpse" (89)
- "an excessive nervous habitation" (70)
- "I felt it creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic and impressive superstitions" (82)
- "Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror" (82)
Any questions?
Madeline Usher, illustrated by Harry Clarke
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