ENG 580 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Pathetic Fallacy, Catalepsy, Fee Tail
17 Jul 2016
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The fall of the house of usher (poe) Abandoned by father, mother dies, is taken in by the allan family, their house is important to the story: the house has a telescope, like in the hoffman story. Poe nicknamed hoffman-barnum, mix of central european gothic with early 19th cen. Hoffman"s 1817 story das majorat (the entail): gothic family estate, remote and desolate coast tower falls and creates a chasm. Poe becomes estranged from john allan, who later dies and doesn"t include poe in the will. A distinction is made between poe (foster son, seen as a potential usurper of the family fortune) and the rest of the allans (legitimate or authentic family) **important theme in the story. Setting described as dark, dull, soundless, dead trees, gothic archway. An unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime goes beyond the sublime, too horrific to be sublime or picturesque.
