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Edgar Allan PoeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Because the term “Gothic” is used in different cultural and historical contexts, before discussing the literary application of the term, some distinctions should be made. Gothic architecture, outside of any literary context, was so named by Renaissance critics who deemed the style poorly constructed, showy and vulgar, an allusion to the “barbaric” Goths who destroyed the Roman Empire. At the time, castles, cathedrals, and other buildings that were supposed to symbolize power and inspire awe were built in the Gothic style. These critics believed that the ornate style abhorred reason and linearity; most Gothic structural elements, unlike those of Romanesque or Italianate styles, are curved rather than straight. Elements of Gothic architecture often meet at oblique rather than right angles. The elaborate stained-glass windows, the dizzying heights of the interiors, the complex stylization, and effusive statuary were seen as corrupting and flamboyant, inducements to excess. To its detractors, the Gothic castle (or any other building) evoked structural, aesthetic, and moral degeneracy.
The first literary use of the term “Gothic” was in the subtitle of Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (1764). Walpole’s inspiration was Edmund Burke’s 1757 treatise, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of the Sublime and Beautiful.
By Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream Within a Dream
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Annabel Lee
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Berenice
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Hop-Frog
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Ligeia
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Tamerlane
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The Black Cat
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The Cask of Amontillado
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The Conqueror Worm
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The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
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The Gold Bug
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The Haunted Palace
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The Imp of the Perverse
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The Lake
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The Man of the Crowd
Edgar Allan Poe
The Masque of the Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Edgar Allan Poe
The Oval Portrait
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The Philosophy of Composition
Edgar Allan Poe