The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg | ‘‘Poe's 'The Cask of Amontillado': A Source for Twain's 'The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,'''
In the following essay, Scherting asserts that Poe's ‘‘The Cask of Amontillado’’ served as inspiration for Twain.
‘‘I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world; we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial.’’ These well-known lines from Milton's Areopagitica (1643) may have provided Mark Twain with the thematic element for his story...
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