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"The Fall of the House of Usher"

STEPHEN DOUGHERTY (ESSAY DATE WINTER 2001)

SOURCE: Dougherty, Stephen. "Foucault in the House of Usher: Some Historical Permutations in Poe's Gothic." Papers on Language and Literature 37, no. 1 (winter 2001): 3-24.

In the following essay, Dougherty examines the gothicism of "The Fall of the House of Usher" within the context of the racism and fear of miscegenation in nineteenth-century society.

"[I]n the nineteenth century," writes Reginald Horsman, "the Americans were to share in the discovery that the secret of Saxon success lay not in the institutions but in the blood" (24). This "discovery" was of monumental and devastating importance, and by the middle of the century the sign of blood seemed to be everywhere. Americans and Europeans were entering a new era of blood—of blood spilled as never before in genocides around the globe, of blood seeping inexorably...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Edgar Allan Poe (Story Date 1836)
   2. Edgar Allan Poe (Story Date 1842)
4. General Commentary
   1. Maurice LéVy (Essay Date 1968)
   2. Clark Griffith (Essay Date 1972)
5. Title Commentary
   1. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
   2. "The Fall of the House of Usher"
6. Further Reading

1. Edgar Allan Poe