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UNIT 3:POE AND
THE GOTHIC TRADITION Few would
Hazard a challenge to long-standing opinions that Poe was a master of the
Gothic horror tale, although many might not as readily be aware that he did not
Invent Gothic fiction. When he began to attract widespread attention by
Publishing several macabre tales in the Southern Literary Messenger in early
1835, critics sounded negative notes concerning his “Germanism,” a synonym for
Gothicism, just as they deplored his wasting talents on what they deemed had
Become an outmoded type of fiction. Such caveats, as well as many offered over
The course of the century succeeding his death, notwithstanding Poe’s Gothic
Tales, are what have typically attracted greatest numbers of readers, and that
Allurement is wholly understandable. A descent from such British milestones in
Literary Gothicism as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), William
Beckford’s Vathek (1786), W. H. Ireland’s The Abbess (1798), or Sir Walter
Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) is evident in Poe’s writings. In his own
Day the brief tale of terror, familiarly known to the Anglo-American readership
As the signature for fiction in the popular Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine,
Served as Poe’s, and other Americans’, model, time and again, although his
Accomplishments in the short story far surpassed what now often reads like so
Much dross in the pages of the celebrated Scottish and other contemporaneous
Literary magazines from the first half of the nineteenth century. Well into his
Literary career, in his second review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told
Tales, Poe alluded to the fine “tales of effect [to be found] in the earlier
Numbers of Blackwood [which were] relished by every man of genius” (E&R,
573). In his mind such effect, or unity of impression, was inevitably coupled
With “terror, or passion, or horror.” THE
DETECTIVE STORY Edgar
Allan Poe is commonly regarded as the father of detective fiction. In the three
Stories that feature his amateur investigator C. Auguste Dupin – “The Murders
In the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Roget”ˆ (1842–43), and “The
Purloined Letter” (1844) – Poe invented the detective story,1 a narrative whose
“primary interest,” as A. E. Murch writes, “lies in the methodical discovery,
By rational means, of the exact circumstances of a mysterious event or series
Of events.”2 Chronicling a search for explanation and solution, such fiction
Typically unfolds as a kind of puzzle or game, a place of play and pleasure for
Both detective and reader. The popularity of the stories of Poe and his
Successors partly derives from this intense engagement with the text where, in the
Scrutinizing of evidence and the interpreting of clues, the reader becomes a
Detective and the detective a reader. Moreover, a detective like Dupin also
Becomes an author, who figuratively writes the hidden story of the crime. As a
Story that dramatizes the construction of a story,3 replacing the
Unintelligibility of mystery with explanation, detective fiction emphasizes the
Potential comforts of narrative: the apparent provision of order, of meaning,
Of a metaphoric map in time (with beginning, middle, and end) that seems to
Tell us where we are.GOTHIC The gothic romance emerged in England when the novel form itself was
Only a few decades old. Thus, when Horace Walpole published The Castle of
Otranto in 1764, it was in part a reaction against limitations which the early
Novelists seemed to have accepted with equanimity. The novel of manners and the novel of didactic
Sensibility are exposed to the whole sub-world of the unconscious. Sensibility
Is shown under pressure. Sexuality, elemental passions and fear now moved to
The centre of the novelist’s stage. The word ‘gothic’ initially conjured up
Visions of a medieval world, of dark passions enacted against the massive and
Sinister architecture of the gothic castle. By the end of the century it
Implied the whole paraphernalia of evil forces and ghostly apparitions. The
Gothic is characterized by a setting which consists of castles, monasteries,
Ruined houses or suitably picturesque surroundings, by characters who are, or
Seem to be,