Beatriz González Moreno, Margarita Rigal Aragón - A Descent Into Edgar Allan Poe and His Works - The Bicentennial-Peter Lang (2010)

González Moreno & Rigal Aragón (eds) A Descent into Edgar Allan Poe and His Works: The
Bicentennial
A Descent into
Today Edgar Allan Poe is a well-known and highly regarded author. When,
a hundred years ago (1909), a group of Poe acquaintances, fans and scholars
got together at the University of Virginia to commemorate Poe’s birth
centenary, they had to do so in order to modify the persistent misstatements
of his earlier biographers, and to correct the unsettled judgment of his liter-
ary rank.
Edgar Allan Poe and
Now, in 2009, many Poe fans and scholars are gathering together once more
to honour Poe on the second centenary of his birth. Different types of events
(theatrical and musical performances, book auctions, etc.) and academic
His Works:
conferences have been celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic, acclaiming
Poe’s literary rank again. This volume brings together a wide range of The Bicentennial
scholars with varied critical approaches and succeeds in shedding new light
on E. A. Poe on the occasion of his Bicentenary. The book is organized into Beatriz González Moreno & Margarita Rigal Aragón (eds)
three principal sections; the first part focuses on the reception of Poe in Great
Britain, France, and Spain; the second revisits some of Poe’s main legacies,
such as his stories of detection, the Gothic, and Science Fiction; and the third
deals with the aesthetic quality of his narratives and also offers an analysis
of his work integrating Text Linguistics within the broader study of social
discourses.
Beatriz González Moreno is Associate Professor at the University of

Castilla-La Mancha in Spain. Her main field of research is the analysis of the
aesthetic categories in the Romantic period, focusing on the relevance of the
sublime in relation to traditional beauty. On that subject, she has published
a book, Lo sublime, lo gótico y lo romántico: la experiencia estética en el
romanticismo inglés, and articles on the issue of gender and the sublime,
focusing on female characters which defy traditional aesthetics and catego-
rization.
Margarita Rigal Aragón is Associate Professor at the University of Castilla-

La Mancha in Spain. Her main field of research is the American Renaissance,
focusing on Edgar Allan Poe’s works. On that subject, she has published a
book, entitled Aspectos estructurales y temáticos recurrentes en la narrativa
breve de Edgar Allan Poe as well as articles and chapters focusing on Poe’s
works, life and reception, the Victorian Age, and the detective genre.
Peter Lang
ISBN 978-3-0343-0089-6
Peter Lang
www.peterlang.com
González Moreno & Rigal Aragón (eds) A Descent into Edgar Allan Poe and His Works: The Bicentennial
A Descent into
Today Edgar Allan Poe is a well-known and highly regarded author. When,
a hundred years ago (1909), a group of Poe acquaintances, fans and scholars
got together at the University of Virginia to commemorate Poe’s birth
centenary, they had to do so in order to modify the persistent misstatements
of his earlier biographers, and to correct the unsettled judgment of his liter-
ary rank.
Edgar Allan Poe and
Now, in 2009, many Poe fans and scholars are gathering together once more
to honour Poe on the second centenary of his birth. Different types of events
(theatrical and musical performances, book auctions, etc.) and academic
His Works:
conferences have been celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic, acclaiming
Poe’s literary rank again. This volume brings together a wide range of The Bicentennial
scholars with varied critical approaches and succeeds in shedding new light
on E. A. Poe on the occasion of his Bicentenary. The book is organized into Beatriz González Moreno & Margarita Rigal Aragón (eds)
three principal sections; the first part focuses on the reception of Poe in Great
Britain, France, and Spain; the second revisits some of Poe’s main legacies,
such as his stories of detection, the Gothic, and Science Fiction; and the third
deals with the aesthetic quality of his narratives and also offers an analysis
of his work integrating Text Linguistics within the broader study of social
discourses.
Beatriz González Moreno is Associate Professor at the University of

Castilla-La Mancha in Spain. Her main field of research is the analysis of the
aesthetic categories in the Romantic period, focusing on the relevance of the
sublime in relation to traditional beauty. On that subject, she has published
a book, Lo sublime, lo gótico y lo romántico: la experiencia estética en el
romanticismo inglés, and articles on the issue of gender and the sublime,
focusing on female characters which defy traditional aesthetics and catego-
rization.
Margarita Rigal Aragón is Associate Professor at the University of Castilla-

La Mancha in Spain. Her main field of research is the American Renaissance,
focusing on Edgar Allan Poe’s works. On that subject, she has published a
book, entitled Aspectos estructurales y temáticos recurrentes en la narrativa
breve de Edgar Allan Poe as well as articles and chapters focusing on Poe’s
works, life and reception, the Victorian Age, and the detective genre.
Peter Lang
Peter Lang
A Descent into Edgar Allan Poe
and His Works: The Bicentennial
Beatriz González Moreno &
Margarita Rigal Aragón (eds)
A Descent into Edgar Allan Poe

and His Works: The Bicentennial
PETER LANG
Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for

this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A descent into Edgar Allan Poe and his works : the bicentennial /
Beatriz González Moreno & Margarita Rigal Aragón (eds).
p. cm.
1. Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849–Anniversaries, etc. 2. Poe, Edgar Allan,

1809-1849–Appreciation. 3. Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849–Influence.
4. Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849–Criticism and interpretation.
I. González Moreno, Beatriz. II. Rigal Aragón, Margarita.
PS2635.D47 2010
818‘.309–dc22
2009037346
Cover Illustration: © Ethan Finkelstein, from istockphoto.com

Cover design: Thomas Jaberg, Peter Lang AG
ISBN 978-3-0351-0072-3
© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2010

Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
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All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the
permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
Printed in Switzerland
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
List of Illustrations ix
Preface xv
PART ONE PARALLEL LIVES: READING POE
Fernando Galván
Poe versus Dickens: an Ambiguous Relationship 3
Sonya Isaak
Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire:
The Artist as the Elite Victim 25
Ricardo Marín-Ruiz
Two Romanticisms but the Same Feeling:
The Presence of Poe in Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer’s Leyendas 35
PART TWO POE’S LEGACIES:

DETECTIVES, THE GOTHIC, AND SCIENCE FICTION
Margarita Rigal-Aragón
The Thousand-and-Second Dupin of Edgar A. Poe 47
Beatriz González-Moreno
Approaching the Dupin-Holmes (or Poe-Doyle) Controversy 59
vi Table of Contents
Ángel Mateos-Aparicio Martín-Albo

“The Horrors Are Not To Be Denied”:
The Influence of Edgar A. Poe on Ray Bradbury 79
PART THREE POE, AESTHETICS AND THE

USE OF LANGUAGE
Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan

Poe’s Poetry: Melancholy and the Picturesque 97
Eduardo de Gregorio-Godeo
Functions and Values of Description, Metaphorical Image
and Comparison in “Ligeia”: a Discursive-Rhetorical Study 107
PART FOUR EPILOGUE
José Antonio Gurpegui

John Allan versus Edgar Allan, or Poe’s Early Years 125
PART FIVE CHRONOLOGY
Ángel Galdón-Rodríguez 139

Chronology
Notes on Contributors 151

Acknowledgements
We would like to highly acknowledge the generous contribution of the

Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (ref. FFI2009-05813-E),
the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha (ref. AEB_1561/09),
the University of Castilla-La Mancha and the Ayuntamiento de Albacete,
without whose financial aid this book would not have seen the light of day.
Our deepest gratitude goes to the scholars who have unfailingly encour-
aged us in developing this project and given us thoughtful ideas: to Fernando
Galván, Juan Bravo, and Antonio Ballesteros, who have influenced our thin-
king in more ways than we can adequately trace; to Scott Peeples, Barbara
Cantalupo and Richard Fusco, whose long dedication and tireless work on
E. A. Poe have been a source of inspiration. We also want to thank our co-
workers at Peter Lang for their enthusiasm, especially to Katrin Forrer and
Daniela Christen for making things easier for us.
Finally, our most lengthy debt is to our husbands, to whom we dedi-
cate this volume, as well as to my brother (Beatriz’s) and to my son
(Margarita’s), who have nurtured and supported us at the various stages of
the “descent” that has led to this publication.
List of Illustrations*
1. Dupin and Sherlock Holmes as Book Reviewers, p. 69.

The New York Times (January 23, 1921). Public Domain.
2. Elizabeth Poe, p. 142.

“Elizabeth Arnold Poe, performing on stage behind the footlights”.
Watercolor painted by Sir William Charles Ross (1794–1860).
Date unknown.
Edgar Allan Poe Digital Art Collection. Accession number: 77.22.5
(box 426). William H. Koester Collection. Harry Ransom Center.
The University of Texas at Austin. We are grateful to Mr Rick
Watson, Research Assistant, for helping us to obtain the copyright
permission to reproduce this image.
3. Frances Allan, p. 142.

Portrait of Frances Keeling Valentine Allan. Photograph of a
stolen painting produced with copper and oil paint. Attributed to
Thomas Sully (1783–1872). Circa 1810.
The Valentine Richmond History Center. Accession number:
V.30.36.129. We are grateful to Ms. Meghan Holder, Research
Assistant, for helping us to secure the copyright agreement to
reproduce this image.
4. John Allan, p. 143.

Portrait of John Allan. Small oil portrait on tin of Edgar A. Poe’s
foster father, attributed to a few different artists, including Thomas
Sully. Probably painted in 1804.
Courtesy of the Poe Museum, Richmond. We are very much
indebted to Mr. Christopher Semtner, Curator, for providing free
x List of Illustrations
5. Village Design of University of Virginia, p. 144.

“Village Design of University of Virginia”. Lithograph of Henry
Schenck Tanner (1786–1858), after a drawing by Benjamin Tanner
(1775–1848). 1826.
Tracy W. McGregor Library of American History, Special
Collections Department, University of Virginia Library.
Image taken from: <http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/images/
vc76.jpg&imgrefurl>.
6. Maria Clemm, p. 145.

Photograph of Maria Clemm, one of the only two known of her.
Courtesy of the Poe Museum, Richmond. We are deeply obliged
to Mr. Christopher Semtner, Curator of the Poe Museum, for
providing free permission to reproduce the image.
7. West Point, p. 145.

“West Point from Philipstown”. Aquatint (hand colored), painted
in 1831 by William James Bennett (1787–1844).
I. N. Phelps Stokes Collection, Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Division
of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library,
Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
8. Thomas White, p. 146.

Thomas Willis White, in a black and white photograph of a
portrait painted in oil. Unidentified author. Undated.
Edgar Allan Poe Digital Art Collection. Accession number:
77.22.5 (box 426). William H. Koester Collection. Harry Ransom
Center. The University of Texas at Austin. We are thankful to
Mr Rick Watson for helping us to acquire the copyright agreement
to reproduce this image.
9. Basement in one of Poe’s houses in Philadelphia, p. 147.

Edgar Allan Poe National Historical Site, Philadelphia. Picture
taken by Margarita Rigal in December 2004.
List of Illustrations xi
10. William Burton, p. 148.

Oil portrait of William Evans Burton, painted in the 1850’s by
Henry Peters Gray (1819–1877).
Courtesy of the New York Historical Society. We are deeply
obliged to Ms Jill Slaight, from the Rights and Reproductions
Department, for her willingness in providing free permission to
11. George Graham, p. 148.

Portrait of George Rex Graham. Author and data unknown.
Free Library of Philadelphia Picture Department. Public Domain.
12. Charles Dickens, p. 149.

Portrait of Charles Dickens, painted in 1838 by Samuel Laurence
(1812–1884).
National Portrait Gallery, London. We are grateful to Emma
Butterfield for helping us to get the copyright agreement to
13. Raven, p. 150.

Wooden raven from Margarita Rigal’s Library. Present given to her
by Kathy Radosta.
14. Virginia Poe, p. 151.

Drawing of Virginia Clemm Poe. Reproduction of Arthur
Garfield Learned (1872–1959)’s drawing after a watercolor by an
unidentified artist. Undated.
Edgar Allan Poe Digital Art Collection. Accession number:
77.22.64.1 (box 427). William H. Koester Collection. Harry
Ransom Center. The University of Texas at Austin. We are
grateful to Mr Rick Watson for helping us to obtain the copyright
xii List of Illustrations
15. Edgar A. Poe in 1848, p. 151.

Daguerreotype used as model for Timothy Coles wood engraving
of Poe that appeared in the May 1880 Scribner’s Magazine. In
Reverse Collection, with envelope written in Poe’s hand to Mrs.
Sarah Helen Whitman. Gift of Mrs. Charles T. Tatman, 1947.
Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society. We are much
obliged to Jaclyn Penny for her efficiency in providing free
permission to reproduce the image.
16. Stone at the original placement for Poe’s grave, p. 151.

Stone at the original placement for Poe’s grave.
Image taken from <www.nd.edu/.../Image25.html>.
* The list of illustrations has been prepared by the editors, who have made every effort to
trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of the images repro-
duced in this book.
To the few who love [us] and whom [we] love –
to those who feel rather than to those who think –
and to the dreamers and those who put faith in
dreams as in the only realities –
[we] offer this Book of Truths, not in its character
of Truth Teller[s], but for the Beauty that abounds
in its Truth; constituting it true
[Adapted from Poe’s Eureka, 1848].
Preface
Probably, no other writer has been more talked and discussed about as
Edgar Allan Poe (Boston, 1809–Baltimore, 1849). Regretfully, it has been
the man and not the artist whom many have paid attention to. And, what
is even more unfortunate is the fact that it has been the legend behind the
man, and not the man himself what has been mostly analysed. If we are to
find a culprit, he is none other than Poe’s literary executor, Rufus Wilmot
Griswold, who only two days after Poe’s death wrote:
Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announce-
ment will startle many but few will be grieved by it. The poet was well known person-
ally or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England, and in several
states of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends and the regrets for his death
will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary art lost one of its
most brilliant, but erratic stars [New York Daily Tribune, 9 October, 1849].
In the 19th century and very early 20th, other obituaries, letters, commem-
orations, monuments, events, and books followed; their purpose was to
establish Poe’s reputation. The most outstanding of these actions took place
from 16 to 19 January 1909, when a group of Poe acquaintances, fans and
scholars got together at the University of Virginia to commemorate Poe’s
birth centenary with the aim of modifying the “persistent misstatements of
his earlier biographers”, and correcting the “unsettled judgment of his liter-
ary rank”. The exercises there pronounced were put together in The BOOK
of the POE CENTENARY. Throughout the 20th century Poe’s works and
life were explored and sometimes even scrutinized from different points
of view, like the Freudian, psychoanalytic and formalist interpretations
(1920–1960), philosophical and deconstructive readings (1960–1980),
as well as race and genre approaches (1980–). And even though countless
books and essays were written, Poe was only recognized as a non-erratic
star thanks to the industrious and tireless work of a handful of American
scholars, who in the decades of the 1940s–1960s started to focus their
research on him; we refer to Arthur Hobson Quinn, Thomas Ollive Mab-
bott, Burton R. Pollin, Perry Miller, Sidney P. Moss and Michael Allen.
From there on, the Poe “fire” has been kept alive thanks to them and their
xvi Preface
followers, providing the Poe Studies Association” (PSA), founded in 1972,

the ground for an exchange of information on Poe, his life, and works.
The Edgar Allan Poe Review – edited by Barbara Cantalupo –, together
with Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism – edited by Scott Peeples and Jana L.
Argersinger, – afford a forum for the transmission of scholarly essays and
newsworthy items related to Poe, his work, and influence.
Still in 2009, one hundred years after the Virginia conference, two
hundred after Poe’s birth, many other Poe fans and scholars feel impelled
to gather to honour Poe. Different types of events (theatrical and musi-
cal performances, book auctions, etc.) and academic conferences have
been celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic: Philadelphia, Saint Peters-
burg, Lisbon, Paris, Albacete, Alcalá de Henares, Valencia and Cáceres
(these three last ones in Spain). And Poe’s literary rank has – again – been
acclaimed. For instance, in Albacete, and also for four days (February
3–6, 2009), at the Faculty of Humanidades of the University of Casti-
lla-La Mancha, we managed to join a wide range of insightful scholars
from different North American and European universities in order to
“discuss” Poe.
Today we offer the general and the scholarly public this, our, “descent
into Edgar Allan Poe”, which aims at picking up where The BOOK of the
POE CENTENARY left off, bringing together a group of scholars who are
Poe-conscious, who are aware of the many Poe-related mysteries which are
still to be unveiled. The book is organized into three principal sections. The
first part, PARALLEL LIVES: READING POE, includes three essays which analyse
the similarities and differences between the lives and works of three major
European writers who were, in a variety of ways, deeply linked to Poe:
the British Dickens, the French Baudelaire and the Spanish Bécquer. In
“Poe versus Dickens: Admiration and Conflict”, Fernando Galván presents
both writers in their historical and literary contexts within their respective
national traditions, exploring their mutual influences and parallelisms, in
spite of the differences in their conceptions and styles of writing; through
the pages of “Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire: the Artist as the
Elite Victim”, Sonya Isaak deals with Baudelaire’s discovery of Edgar Allan
Poe, examining the affinity between the two of them, while centring on
analogies in their biographies and works; and, Ricardo Marín highlights
the ties binding the works of Poe and Bécquer, shedding light upon the
Preface xvii
similarities observed concerning narrative patterns and the construction of

characters and atmospheres in the works of both Romantic writers, in his
article “Two Romanticisms but the Same Feeling: The Presence of Poe in
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer’s Leyendas”.
In the second part, POE’S LEGACIES: DETECTIVES, THE GOTHIC, AND
SCIENCE FICTION, some of Poe’s main legacies are revisited: detection, the
Gothic, and Science Fiction. Here, Margarita Rigal, in “The Thousand-
and-Second Dupin of Edgar A. Poe”, demonstrates that although, tradi-
tionally, only a few of Poe’s tales are regarded as belonging to the detection
genre, if his complete production is studied closely, it can be discovered that
Poe’s rationalization is at work in many of his stories, and that Dupin is just
but one of the several “detectives” invented by him; with “Approaching the
Dupin-Holmes (or Poe-Doyle) Controversy”, Beatriz González explores
Poe’s influence on Conan Doyle, analysing recurrent themes created by Poe
and then used by Doyle, while focusing on how Doyle was accused of being
a plagiarist and how he dealt with the situation; and, Ángel Mateos’s “‘The
horrors are not to be denied’: The influence of Edgar A. Poe on Ray Brad-
bury” presents a close reading of two short stories by Bradbury where the
references to Poe are intentional with a comparative analysis of Bradbury’s
treatment of elements coming from Poe, providing a new insight into Brad-
bury’s literary dialogue with one of his major influences.
The third part, POE, AESTHETICS AND THE USE OF LANGUAGE, deals
with the aesthetic quality of his narratives and also offers an analysis of
his work integrating Text Linguistics within the broader study of social
discourses. “Poe’s Poetry: Melancholy and the Picturesque”, by Santiago
Rodríguez, analyses the relation between the aesthetic concept of the
picturesque and melancholy in Poe’s poetry, he investigates the shift in
the idea of melancholy that took place in the late eighteenth century and
demonstrates that it is a “common illness” in high-class society in Britain
and pays attention to the rise of the picturesque, as opposed to the sub-
lime, in Poe’s poetry; Eduardo de Gregorio, with “Functions and values of
description, metaphorical image and comparison in ‘Ligeia’: a discursive-
rhetorical study”, explores the value of discursive-rhetorical strategies and
how those resources help Poe to create the fantastic aura of mystery and
ambiguity which surrounds this short story. Finally, by way of epilogue,
in “John Allan versus Edgar Allan, or Poe’s Early Years”, José Antonio
xviii Preface
Poe’s life by his tomb. In addition, an illustrated chronology, prepared by

Ángel Galdón, has been included at the end of the book.
These contributions aim to “redeem” Poe on the occasion of the se-
cond centenary of his birth, validating, through scientific investigation,
that he was no erratic star but a BRILLIANT one.
Beatriz González and Margarita Rigal

Ciudad Real-Albacete, 7 July 2009
PART ONE
PARALLEL LIVES: READING POE
Poe versus Dickens: an Ambiguous Relationship1
FERNANDO GALVÁN
UNIVERSITY OF ALCALÁ
Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens are undoubtedly, if not the two great-
est, at least, two of the greatest writers in English in the first half of the
nineteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic. Although one is famous
for his short tales of horror and detection and his poetry, and the other
for his long realist novels, there are however some suggestive parallels,
encounters and misunderstandings in their lives and writing careers which
I intend to explore in this essay, examining how admiration and personal
conflict characterized their relationship.
Poe was born on 19 January 1809 and Dickens on 7 February 1812,
and the early stages of their writing careers coincided almost exactly in time.
But Poe’s untimely death at the age of 40, on 7 October 1849, marks a
clear difference with Dickens, who died twenty-one years later, on 9 June
1870, at the age of 58. Most of Dickens’s major works were thus pub-
lished after Poe’s death: Bleak House (1852–53), Hard Times (1854), Little
Dorrit (1855–57), Great Expectations (1860–61) and Our Mutual Friend
(1864–65). Even David Copperfield, which commenced publication in
April 1849, could not have been known in full to Poe because it was not
completed until October 1850, one year after Poe’s death. But Dickens
had certainly published other well-known and widely appreciated works
in the two decades prior to Poe’s death, such as the early Sketches by Boz
(1836) and Pickwick Papers (1836–37), or his novels from the second half
of the 30s and the early 40s: Oliver Twist (1837–39), Nicholas Nickleby
(1838–39), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41), and Barnaby Rudge (1841),
as well as some of his Christmas stories. All of them were read by Poe, and
many were also reviewed by him with enthusiasm and admiration, to the
extent that critics have detected Dickens’s influence in some of the tales and
4 Fernando Galván
poems written by Poe during this period.2 In contrast, Dickens’s knowledge

of Poe was far from being equivalent, as I shall try to show later, although
both writers knew each other and even met once in person, in March 1842,
on the occasion of Dickens’s tour through the United States.
As mentioned above, it is curious that both writers had very similar
careers in their beginnings, as journalists and reviewers. Their first writings
were strictly contemporaneous since they were published simultaneously
in newspapers and magazines in Britain and America. The first tales pub-
lished by Poe appeared anonymously in The Philadelphia Saturday Courier
in 1832.3 They were five tales he had entered for a competition organized
by that periodical; although none of the stories won the prize, they did
finally get published. He was more successful the following year, because
“Ms Found in a Bottle” was awarded a prize and published in Baltimore’s
Saturday Visiter. These publications made him known within the literary
circles and landed him his first important job as the editor of The Southern
Literary Messenger in Richmond, Virginia, where he started as a reviewer
and contributor of other small pieces in 1835. This opportunity made Poe
a literary critic, possibly the greatest of his country in the period. Later
on Poe would take full responsibility for the editing of other periodicals,
such as the Gentleman’s Magazine (or Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine) in
Philadelphia, during 1839–1841, and Graham’s Magazine, 1841–1842.4
Meanwhile, Dickens – although three years younger – had beaten a
similar path in Britain. His first publications also date from the year 1832,
when he started publishing parliamentary journalism as a reporter for The
Mirror of Parliament. Shortly after those first reports on the debates in
the House of Commons, Dickens published (1834) his first fiction (or
fictionalised pieces) for the Morning Chronicle, the Monthly Magazine
and the Evening Chronicle, under the pseudonym ‘Boz’; these would later
(1836) be reprinted in the collection Sketches by Boz, which received very
warm praised from Poe. As is well known, most of Dickens’s novels were
published in monthly or weekly instalments in a variety of magazines
and periodicals, of some of which he was the founder and editor for long
years: Bentley’s Miscellany, Master Humphrey’s Clock, Household Words and
All the Year Round, among others. As many British periodicals and books
were pirated in America almost at the same time as they were published
in Britain, Dickens’s works from the 1830s and 1840s were usually read
by Poe in immediate reprints in American magazines, and, as we shall see,

extensively and favourably reviewed by him. Dickens, however, did not
know much about Poe before he met him personally during his trip to
the States in 1842. With the exception of Emerson, whom Dickens had
read because he trusted Carlyle’s admiration for the American, the English
novelist was almost completely ignorant of what American writers were
publishing at that time on the other side of the Atlantic.
Poe had somehow managed, in the midst of his financial prob-
lems, to publish three books of poems before meeting Dickens in 1842:
Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827); El Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems
(1829); and Poems. Second Edition (1831), as well as several of his most
famous tales, among them “The Fall of the House of Usher”. This short
story had initially been published in September 1839 in Philadelphia, in
the Gentleman’s Magazine, but more significantly perhaps, it had been
reprinted in England in a pirate and anonymous edition in July 1840 by
Dickens’s friend William Harrison Ainsworth, who was then editor of
Bentley’s Miscellany, the magazine in which Oliver Twist had appeared over
the previous three years.5 An edition in two volumes of his tales had even
been issued in Philadelphia in 1840, under the title Tales of the Grotesque
and Arabesque, a collection of the main short stories published until that
time in different newspapers and magazines. Despite all this, and particu-
larly the publication in Bentley’s Miscellany of “The Fall of the House of
Usher” – a publication which Dickens must have received at home – there
is no indication whatsoever in his correspondence that Dickens had ever
read anything by Poe before meeting him in Philadelphia in 1842.
Unlike Dickens, Poe was a real connoisseur of English literature, not
only because he had lived in England as a child, when his adoptive family
moved from Richmond to settle in London between 1815 and 1820, but
mainly because Poe was a voracious reader who frequented the English
romantics, especially Coleridge, and was also familiar with most con-
temporary British writers and publications, like the popular Edinburgh
Blackwood’s magazine. It might not be inappropriate at this point to recall
the need American writers felt at the time for recognition on the other
side of the Atlantic, which led them to read and imitate the English writ-
ers, since according to Tocqueville in Democracy in America, before they
“can make up their minds upon the merit of their authors, [Americans]
6 Fernando Galván
generally wait till [their] fame has been ratified in England […]” (cited by
Moss, “Poe’s ‘Two Long Interviews’ ” 10, note 2). Later I will briefly show
the extent of Poe’s reading of Dickens and his British contemporaries. But
let us turn to some biographical details first.
In response to an invitation from his numerous admirers in America
Dickens boarded the S.S. Britannia in Liverpool, in the company of his
wife Catherine, on 4 January 1842. Some weeks later they started a very
long and exhausting tour through the United States, which was to take
them over several months to many cities and states on the eastern coast, in
the Great Lakes area, as well as in Canada. Thus they visited Boston,
Worcester, Springfield, Hartford, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, York, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati,
St Louis, Columbus, Cleveland, Buffalo and the Niagara Falls; then they
crossed the border and visited Toronto, Kingston and Montreal, returning
to New York in early June to take their ship back to Liverpool. Dickens
had been looking forward to the trip for some time, as the United States
was for him a sort of Utopia. There he had the opportunity to meet many
leading figures in the arts and politics; he addressed numerous audiences
everywhere he went; he was invited and lavishly treated at hundreds of
public events, dinners and talks; but the ultimate impression left in his
mind was one of frustration and disappointment. Upon his return he col-
lected his notes, adapted the letters he had been writing everyday to his
friends back home, and a few months later, in October 1842, published a
book entitled American Notes.
Although he tried to tone down his more ironic and critical judgments
of American customs and institutions (about which he had of course spo-
ken openly in his letters to his British friends), the final product was not
a book that American readers enjoyed. In fact, no other book by Dickens,
before or after American Notes, ever came in for so much criticism or sparked
so many direct attacks against the writer. Dickens enjoyed the first weeks
in New England, particularly his visit to Boston and Harvard, where he
was welcomed by Longfellow. But soon after that he started to give public
speeches in which he complained about the little respect American periodi-
cals had for the copyright laws; while his books had been widely distributed
in the United States and become very popular, Dickens had not received a
single cent from their publishers. Newspapers and magazines had increased
their sales and profit, but they had not shared them at all with the author.
Dickens’s complaints were rebuked by the press, which presented him as
a greedy Englishman who had come to America to claim his money. The
traditional image of bonhomie and sentimentality that had surrounded
Dickens, the author of Pickwick and The Old Curiosity Shop with whom
Americans had laughed and wept together, was shattered when the press
counterattacked, and transformed the sentimentalist into an ambitious
money-grabber constantly demanding his share of the profits.
Dickens’s tour outside New England took him to the real America he
had been ignorant of and immediately disliked. American obsequiousness
irritated him because he had to attend numerous public events, where
he had to greet and shake hands with hundreds of admirers, eat copious
meals with ill-mannered people who devoured their food noisily and spat
in public everywhere; the suffocating heating of hotels was also insuffer-
able for Dickens and his wife. But what probably gave him more cause for
disappointment was his discovery that political parties were a fraud, that
prisons (he visited one in New York and another in Philadelphia) were
appalling, and that slavery in the South (he went to Richmond) was an
ongoing outrage. The Far West of myth (he went as far as St Louis, travel-
ling on steamboats down the rivers Ohio and Mississippi) was also disap-
pointing, as he found all sorts of discomfort on his way there and the most
uncivilized behaviour and conditions of life imaginable. Only the Niagara
Falls and Canada impressed him favourably. It is not then surprising that
his critical reflections on what he saw and experienced in the United States,
even if toned down, were not well received by his American readers.
This is the context of the interview between Poe and Dickens. The
American had been reading, reviewing and praising Dickens for many
years, and looked up to him in admiration and reverence, as a master and
a model, even if the English writer was his junior by birth. Poe needed
Dickens’s friendship and support if he was to publish his fiction and poetry
in Britain. As he learned that Dickens would be visiting Philadelphia for
three days in March, he wrote a letter to him (which has not been pre-
served, because Dickens destroyed most of his private correspondence in
a bonfire in the garden of Gad’s Hill Place a few years later), asking for an
appointment and sending copies of the reviews of Dickens’s novels he had
published together with the two volumes of his Tales of the Grotesque and
8 Fernando Galván
Arabesque. Dickens’s answer to Poe, dated 6 March 1842 at the “United

States” Hotel of Philadelphia, was very short:
My Dear Sir,
I shall be very glad to see you, whenever you will do me the favor to call. I think I am
more likely to be in the way between half past eleven and twelve, than at any other
time.
I have glanced over the books you have been so kind as to send me; and more
particularly at the papers to which you called my attention. I have the greater pleasure
in expressing my desire to see you, on their account.
Apropos of the “construction” of Caleb Williams. Do you know that Godwin
wrote it backwards – the last Volume first – and that when he had produced the hunt-
ing-down of Caleb, and the Catastrophe, he waited for months, casting about for a
means of accounting for what he had done?
Faithfully Yours always

CHARLES DICKENS (House et al 106–108)
If we read this brief note alongside the many other polite letters and notes
of acknowledgement that Dickens wrote every day in reply to invitations,
books and all sorts of gifts he received during his American tour, we will
find nothing that makes it stand out from the rest. We might notice that
although he acknowledges the books and “more particularly […] the papers”
(probably Poe’s reviews of The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge),
his interest does not seem particularly great: he just gives Poe a very brief
appointment (“I am more likely to be in the way between half past eleven
and twelve, than at any other time”), and clearly declares that he has hardly
looked at Poe’s books (“I have glanced over the books[…]”). The reference
in this short note to William Godwin’s Caleb Williams is due to the compar-
ison that Poe had drawn in his second, and recent, review of Barnaby Rudge
(published in the February issue of Graham’s Magazine) between Godwin’s
novel and Dickens’s book, in which Dickens was very highly praised. What
seems evident, then, is that Dickens just cast a (probably superficial) glance
at Poe’s tales, but read with interest what Poe had written about him, above
all the flattering comparison between himself and Godwin.
Of course we cannot know what happened or how long that meeting
was, but it is very likely that it was short, since Dickens had many other
appointments in Philadelphia during the three days he stayed in town.

From other letters written later, we learn that Poe asked for Dickens’s help
in publishing his tales in Britain; we also know that the English writer did
indeed try but never succeeded in his attempts. What seems true never-
theless is that Dickens was not at all impressed by Poe’s personality or his
works, or even the reviews he had written on his novels, because in a letter
addressed to his friend John Forster on 15 April, from Cincinnati, he made
a burlesque allusion to Poe (here identified as P.E.) in the following terms:
[…] on the other hand I am really indebted for a good broad grin to P.E., literary critic
of Philadelphia, and sole proprietor of the English language in its grammatical and
idiomatical purity; to P.E., with the shiny straight hair and turned-down shirt collar,
who taketh all of us English men of letters to task in print, roundly and uncompro-
misingly, but told me, at the same time, that I had “awakened a new era” in his mind
(House et al 194).
Poe had in fact mentioned, in his second review of Barnaby Rudge, some
grammatical mistakes (also found in Bulwer-Lytton), but had added that
Dickens’s novels opened “a new era”. Dickens’s patronizing and contemp-
tuous tone towards Poe’s comments is eloquent enough, particularly more
so if we consider that he does not make any reference to Poe’s Tales of
the Grotesque and Arabesque, the gift he had received from the American,
which he probably had not even bothered to browse.
Nevertheless, Dickens did indeed try to get those tales published in
England, and after his return home he approached some publishers, but
to no avail. On 17 November 1842 he wrote a very brief note to Edward
Moxon asking for an answer he could send to Poe: “Pray write me such a
reply as I can send to the author of the volumes; and to get absolution for
my conscience in this matter” (House et al 375). Ten days later he sent a
letter to Poe apologising for his failure:
Dear Sir,
By some strange accident (I presume it must have been through some mistake on the part
of Mr. Putnam in the great quantity of business he had to arrange for me), I have never
been able to find among my papers, since I came to England, the letter you wrote to
me at New York. But I read it there, and think I am correct in believing that it charged
me with no other mission than that which you had already entrusted to me by word of
10 Fernando Galván
mouth. Believe me that it never, for a moment, escaped my recollection; and that I have
done all in my power to bring it to a successful issue – I regret to say, in vain.
I should have forwarded you the accompanying letter from Mr. Moxon before
now, but that I have delayed doing so in the hope that some other channel for the
publication of [y]our book on this side of the water would present itself to me. I am,
however, unable to report any success. I have mentioned it to publishers with whom
I have influence, but they have, one and all, declined the venture. And the only con-
solation I can give you is that I do not believe any collection of detached pieces by an
unknown writer, even though he were an Englishman, would be at all likely to find a
publisher in this metropolis just now.
Do not for a moment suppose that I have ever thought of you but with a pleas-
ant recollection; and that I am not at all times prepared to forward your views in this
country if I can.
Faithfully yours,
CHARLES DICKENS (House et al 384–385)
From this letter we may infer that after their Philadelphia interview Poe
had written to Dickens at least one more letter, addressed to New York,
before Dickens’s departure from the United States in June 1842. He must
have repeated his request regarding the publication of his tales in England
because Dickens, as the latter says in his note to Moxon, needed to allevi-
ate his conscience in that respect. That Dickens was genuine in his attempt
to help Poe seems accredited because many years later, on 28 February
1862, at a time he had no need to apologise or be polite towards Poe (he
had been dead for thirteen years), he wrote another letter to the Irish poet,
journalist and dramatist James McCarroll. In his answer to this writer, who
had asked for Dickens’s support with the London press, he says:
My influence with publishers, such as it is, is wholly personal and does not extend
beyond my own productions. I never in my life succeeded in inducing any publisher to
accept a book on my recommendation. To the best of my remembrance, the last trial
I made in this wise, was in behalf of Mr. Edgar Poe, then only known in the United
States. It failed, and I have for many years relinquished the ungracious office, in which
I always fared so ill. (At least ten years passed, in the instance I have mentioned, before
Mr. Poe’s tales were republished in England, by another bookseller.).6
In fact, Poe’s tales had been published in England in 1845, in an edition

by Putnam issued on both sides of the Atlantic, but it seems evident that
Dickens had not felt much interest in the tales themselves as he was appar-
ently unaware of this reprint. So, even if Dickens did make at least one
attempt to help Poe, what cannot be gathered from this correspondence
or any other existing document is that he had read or liked what Poe had
written.
This unfortunate circumstance was probably at the origin of Poe’s
change of attitude towards Dickens. In a letter written to James Russell
Lowell on 2 July 1844, more than two years after their first meeting in
Philadelphia, Poe mentions a second meeting, but he does not provide
any details about the location or the time this second interview might
have taken place. In this letter he alludes to a review of an anthology of
American poetry that had been published in England and contained unfa-
vourable comments about him and other American poets. Poe attributes
this negative review to Dickens, for reasons I will deal with later; but he
also says:
I still adhere to Dickens as either author, or dictator, of the review. My reasons would
convince you, could I give them to you – but I have left myself no space. I had two
long interviews with Mr D. when here. Nearly every thing in the critique, I heard
from <D> him or suggested to him, personally. The poem of Emerson I read to him
(Ostrom 258).
Curiously enough, critics have taken for granted the existence of this se-
cond (and long) interview between Poe and Dickens, without questioning
it.7 Only in 1998 did Burton R. Pollin manifest scepticism on this point
and, arguing that there was no evidence that this second meeting had ever
taken place, and that probably Poe invented it to give the impression that
he was on close terms with Dickens, something that now seems clearly
untrue:
The sole evidence for two meetings is Poe’s assertion in his letter to James R. Lowell
of July 2, 1844, when he is trying to prove his “personal” acquaintance with Dickens’s
style and ways of thinking via “two long interviews” in 1842. No one has questioned
this tall tale by Poe, who had sent the English lion his two volumes of stories and a
letter probably begging for a meeting. See Dickens’s reply of March 6, 1842 […] men-
tioning Dickens’s availability for only an hour on one busy day, presumably the very
next one. Dickens was busy both in New York City and during his mere three days in
12 Fernando Galván
Philadelphia, a stay scheduled for the projected book about his tour (American Notes,
1842). He desperately sought to avoid impositions on his time, yet had to waste a
whole morning shaking over 600 hands, and he also visited the penitentiary and other
public places, before moving on to Washington Clearly Poe had only a single inter-
view, as a scrutiny of Dickens’s time frame shows (Pollin note 3).
Poe was probably deeply disappointed after his meeting with Dickens in
Philadelphia in March 1842; more disappointed still, and quite possibly
hurt, at learning later in the year of Dickens’s failure to get his tales published
in England. His well-known pride and his indisputable capacity for fantasiz-
ing led him first to hide his feelings and then invent a lively and friendly rela-
tionship with Dickens that was far from being real.8 The English writer was
probably very amiable when meeting Poe and must have paid polite atten-
tion to the American’s explanations of his ideas about the single effect and
the short story, which Poe was developing at that time. He must have also
been genuine in his commitment to try and publish Poe’s tales in Britain, as
we learn from his later correspondence. However, Dickens did not seem the
least impressed by what he saw and what he heard, and was possibly not fully
aware of how anxiously Poe yearned for his recognition. Even if his letter of
27 November 1842, quoted above, was very polite, Dickens could not help
using the term “unknown writer” in reference to Poe, which evinces his real
opinion about him and his merits. This description, however, must have
offended the American writer, who was already well known in his country,
where many of his tales had already been published in prestigious magazines,
as well as in the two volumes of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, and had
received a warm welcome from his countrymen.
It is not that Dickens adopted a derogatory or patronizing attitude
towards all things American. In fact, he discovered, read and praised a few
American writers, because in addition to Emerson he paid particular atten-
tion to Longfellow, whom he introduced to his English friends and wel-
comed as a guest in his home during the poet’s visit to England a few years
later. But Poe was not definitely on his list, and there is no other significant
mention of him, except one in 1846 to which I will come back later.
As I said earlier, Dickens’s American Notes was not a book that con-
tributed to improving relations between him and his American readers,
and Poe was not an exception. Dickens’s critical stance towards American
institutions (political parties, penitentiaries, the press), slavery, and some
American habits infuriated many reviewers. The New York Herald, for
instance, said that the book was the product of a mind “most coarse, vul-
gar, impudent, and superficial […] that ever had the courage to write about
[…] this original and remarkable country”; the New Englander (1 January
1843, pp. 64–84) stated its contempt “for such a compound of egotism,
coxcombry, and cockneyism”, referring to Dickens’s low morality and his life
of “gourmand and a great lover of wines and brandies”. Although critics long
thought that Poe had not written on this book,9 now it seems that he did in
fact review it for the January 1843 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger,
at a time when he must have known that Dickens had been unsuccessful in
his attempts to get his tales published in England. This review was published
anonymously, but there are some indications that point to his authorship (cf.
Nisbet 301–302, and Mason, “Poe and Dickens” 208). American Notes was,
he wrote, “one of the most suicidal productions, ever deliberately published
by an author, who had the least reputation to lose”.
But not all American reactions were so unfavourable, because the Boston
Daily Evening Transcript published on 8, 10 and 12 November 1842 a series
of remarks on the book, commenting that, although the book lacked depth
in its analysis, it was written with humour and was fun to read. Moreover, it
rebutted the negative reviews with the argument that no liberal reader could
feel offended by an author whom they had revered for such a long time, for
the simple reason that now
he has spoken his free opinion of the worst part of the newspaper press, and laughed
honestly at some of our little foibles! […] For the life of us, we cannot discover any
‘shocking injustice’, any ‘deep wrong’, any ‘terrible insult’, or any ‘unthankful spirit’
in the late work, which has called up so much newspaper invective against the ‘Notes’
and their author.10
But some of the more critical pieces were harsh indeed and must have
wounded, and possibly angered Dickens, particularly two anonymous reviews
which some critics wrongly attributed to Poe for many years. One is a satiri-
cal parody of Dickens’s style, entitled “English Notes”, which appeared in the
Boston Daily Mail on 6 December 1842 under the pseudonym of “Quarles
Quickens”.11 The other was a review also published in the December 1842
issue of the Edinburgh magazine Blackwood’s under the pseudonym of
“Q.Q.Q.”.12 Both attributions to Poe were highly speculative and based
14 Fernando Galván
on very scanty evidence, namely, that Poe signed his poem “The Raven”,
in 1845, with the pseudonym “Quarles”. Further documentary evidence
has proved that Poe did not write either of them. The author of “English
Notes” is probably Samuel Kettell, a Bostonian journalist famous for his wit
and satiric vein. The Blackwood’s review, on the other hand, was very likely
written by Samuel Warren, a usual contributor to that magazine who as a
general rule published his pieces under the pseudonym “Q.Q.Q.”. In fact,
in a letter to Cornelius Conway Felton, dated 31 December 1842, Dickens
himself categorically identified the author as Warren.13
While it seems that Dickens was never under the impression that
Poe had attacked him, the American writer was deeply suspicious about
Dickens. It looks as if Poe, after receiving the November 1842 letter from
Dickens explaining his failure to get Poe’s tales published in England, did
not trust the English writer any more. A comparison between what Poe
had written about Dickens before 1842 and what he said about him after-
wards reveals a distinct change of attitude.
From as early as 1836 Poe had been reading Dickens, because Sketches
by Boz was pirated by Carey, Lea and Blanchard, in Philadelphia, under
the title Watkins Tottle and Other Sketches. Poe wrote about the book for
the June issue of the Southern Literary Messenger,14 warmly praising some
of the sketches, particularly “The Black Veil”, “The Dancing Academy”,
“Watkins Tottle” and “Pawnbroker’s Shop”. As Gerald G. Grubb has
written, “Poe was, perhaps, the first American editor to evaluate rightly
the importance of Dickens” (“Part One” 1). At that time, Dickens was
completely unknown, and Poe was of course conscious of this, as he
wrote in his review: “In regard to their author we know nothing more
than that he is a far more pungent, more witty, and better disciplined
writer of sly sketches, than nine-tenths of the Magazine writers of Great
Britain” (cited by Grubb, “Part One” 1). But that Dickens was unknown
did not seem to worry Poe, as he was deeply interested in the type of
story Dickens wrote for his Sketches, particularly “The Black Veil”, which
probably struck a chord with him. Not surprisingly “The Black Veil”
impressed Poe, “evincing lofty powers in the writer” as he himself put
it (cited by Grubb, “Part One” 2); Peter Ackroyd – biographer of both
writers – has said that it is “really his first proper story; it is no longer a
sketch or a scene or a farcical interlude but a finished narrative. Thus we
see, in miniature, the formation of the artist, reacting to the events of the
life around him, using them and being used in turn” (Dickens 170). In fact,
both Dickens and Poe were writing at this time under the influence of the
tales of terror, characterized by their scientific bent, which were published
by Blackwood’s magazine; and this is certainly what drew the two authors
together and what Poe found so attractive in some of Dickens’s sketches.15
A few months later Poe started reading Dickens’s second book and
first of his novels, Pickwick Papers, which he reviewed for the November
issue of the Southern Literary Messenger.16 Again, this was a pirate reprint
from Carey, Lea and Blanchard which Poe read and particularly enjoyed on
account of Dickens’s use of humour and irony, and also, as he remarked,
his supreme capacity for tragedy. In a comparison with Bulwer-Lytton and
Samuel Warren, Poe concluded that Dickens “has greatly surpassed the best
of the tragic pieces of Bulwer, or Warren”. Both were greatly appreciated at
the time, as writers associated with the Blackwood’s style, and Poe’s praise
of a young and unknown writer, comparing him with two distinguished
authors, was certainly surprising. What the American liked most in Pickwick
were some of the inserted tales,17 characterized by mysterious elements and
some hints of terror, such as “The Stroller’s Tale” (chapter 3), “The Convict’s
Return” (chapter 6), “A Madman’s Manuscript” (chapter 11) and “The Old
Man’s Tale about a Queer Client” (chapter 21).18
Although overlooked for some time, Poe also read the following two
novels by Dickens, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby,19 and some crit-
ics have even commented on particular traces these two novels have left
in some of Poe’s works. His reception was as enthusiastic and positive as
before, and he made sure to remind his readers of “The Black Veil” again,
so powerful was the impression that tale had caused in him:
What shall we say of Boz, now that he has completed Nicholas Nickleby? Assuredly
we could say nothing in the way of commendation, which has not been said already
by every person who reads. This last effort is perhaps the best of its author; and this we
regard as superlative praise. […] There could scarcely be a more forcible token of the
extraordinary powers of the writer. His flight is still upwards. The pathos of “Nicholas
Nickleby” is, in some respects, chargeable with exaggeration, but in general may be
considered as unequalled. Its humor is surpassingly fine. The incidents of the story are
well conceived and admirably managed; the interest never flags; and the total effect
is highly graphic and artistical. Charles Dickens is no ordinary man, and his writings
16 Fernando Galván
must unquestionably live. We think it somewhat surprising that his serious pieces have
elicited so little attention; but, possibly, they have been lost in the blaze of his comic
reputation. One of the most forcible things ever written is a brief story of his called
“The Black Veil”, a strangely pathetic and richly imaginative production, replete with
the loftiest tragic ability (quoted by Bracher 109).
It is indeed remarkable that at such an early date Poe not only praised
Dickens’s humour but also his tragic powers, thus anticipating a strain of
critical appreciation that would come later in Dickens’s career. Bracher has
written in this respect:
Poe’s concern in 1838 that Dickens’s comic reputation might obscure his more serious
work was not an idle comment. […] Thus Poe, in appreciating Dickens’s abilities as
a serious writer, was clearly in advance of contemporary critical opinion. […] This
interest in artistic values is noteworthy because, again, it anticipates a significant shift
in Dickens criticism (110–111).
The Old Curiosity Shop, published in England as part of the periodical

Master Humphrey’s Clock during 1840–1841, was also reviewed by Poe
in a four-page article for the May 1841 issue of Graham’s Magazine.20
Although the pirate reprint that Poe read was somewhat misleading in cer-
tain points of the structure (and thus Poe could not differentiate between
the narrative voice of Master Humphrey’s Clock and that of the novel), he
nonetheless managed to produce a coherent and enlightening account of
the novel, which praised, for instance, the argument and rejected the use
of the word “caricatures” to describe the characters, because – he argued –
they were original and if there were some occasional exaggerations (as
might be the case of Nell, Quilp or Nell’s grandfather) that was due to the
demands of realism. He concluded by stating that “were these creations of
Mr. Dickens’ really caricatures, they would not live in public estimation
beyond the hour of their first survey” (cited by Grubb, “Part One” 7).
The other novel by Dickens which Poe reviewed before meeting its
author was the first of his two historical novels, Barnaby Rudge, a work
which Dickens had been working on (though not actually writing) for the
last five years, and which was finally published, also in Master Humphrey’s
Clock, between February and November 1841. Poe was so interested in this
novel that he wrote not one but two reviews, the first called “Prospective
Notice”, which appeared when only a few instalments of the novel had
been reprinted in the United States, on 1 May 1841, in the Philadelphia

Saturday Evening Post.21 The second was a more complete review, pub-
lished in the February 1842 issue of Graham’s Magazine.22 Much has
been written about these two reviews23 because they show how influential
the reading of this novel would become for Poe’s future writing (see my
“Plagiarism”). Certainly, Poe proved to be a very perceptive critic and
these two reviews – despite some dubious critical considerations concern-
ing aspects of the plot, where Poe was misled and possibly confused – are
evidence of his admiration for Dickens’s power as a narrator.
But after the March 1842 interview in Philadelphia things changed.
Poe did not read Dickens any more as he had been reading him until
that time (or so it seems from the evidence currently available). No more
reviews of Dickens’s books were written, with the exception of the one on
American Notes, published anonymously; and suspicion and personal dis-
appointment with the English writer gradually took root in Poe. In fact,
he came to suspect Dickens of writing, or at least being behind, an unfa-
vourable review of a book of poems to which he had contributed. That
book was an anthology of poems entitled The Poets and Poetry of America,
edited by Rufus W. Griswold in 1842. Among many others it contained
three poems by Poe, “The Coliseum”, “The Haunted Palace” and “The
Sleeper”. The anthology was reviewed anonymously in the London Foreign
Quarterly Review in January 1844. The piece mentioned Poe, taking some
references from the book and commenting on the presumed debt Poe owed
to Tennyson, accusing him in particular of metrical imitations: “Poe is a
capital artist after the manner of Tennyson; and approaches the spirit of his
original more closely than any of them”. After dealing, somewhat ironically,
with some points of Poe’s biography, the reviewer quoted some fragments
from those three poems and compared them with Tennyson’s. The conclu-
sion was demolishing for Poe: “These passages have a spirituality in them,
usually denied to imitators; who rarely possess the property recently discov-
ered in the mockingbirds – a solitary note of their own”. When he learned
about this review in the spring of 1844, Poe was grievously offended and
wrote in a letter to James Russell Lowell dated 30 March 1844:
Have you seen the article on “American Poetry” in the “London Foreign Quarterly”? It
has been denied that Dickens wrote it – but, to me, the article affords so strong internal
evidence of his hand that I would as soon think of doubting my existence. He tells
18 Fernando Galván
much truth – although he evinces much ignorance and more spleen. Among the other
points he accuses myself of “metrical imitation” of Tennyson, citing, by way of instance,
passages from poems which were written and published by me long before Tennyson
was heard of: – but I have at no time made any poetical pretention.24
Despite Lowell’s attempts to persuade Poe that the author could not be
Dickens, but perhaps his friend and biographer John Foster, literary editor
at the time of Foreign Quarterly Review, Poe did not budge in his convic-
tions about Dickens’s authorship.25 He sustained that the author of the
review had taken from Poe himself some of the comments contained in
the review, comments which Poe had made to Dickens during their inter-
view in Philadelphia in March 1842. On that occasion, Poe had probably
presented the recently published anthology to Dickens as a gift and read a
poem from it written by Emerson. Poe asked Lowell, who was preparing
a brief biographical sketch of Poe for Graham’s Magazine, to include in
that note a disclaimer about his presumed debt to Tennyson.26 Gerald G.
Grubb, however, rejects Poe’s suspicions, arguing that the opinion Poe may
have expressed to Dickens in March 1842 must have been very similar to
(if not the same as) the favourable review Poe wrote about this anthology,
which he published in the June 1842 issue of Graham’s Magazine. There is
nothing in common between that piece by Poe in June 1842 and the review
published in 1844 in the London Foreign Quarterly Review. Poe certainly
changed his mind about the anthology later, in two reviews published in
November 1842 and 1843, as he added a series of highly critical comments
which might be the origin of some of the attacks contained in the English
review. But it is not credible that he communicated those views to Dickens
in March and then wrote something completely different in June.
Nevertheless, Poe was so convinced that his suspicion was justified and
so offended by the remark about his debt to Tennyson that he not only
reiterated the idea in his private correspondence, but also wrote about it for
the magazine Broadway Journal on 13 December 1845. There he mentioned
“an article written by Mr. Charles Dickens in the London Foreign Quarterly
Review. Mr. Dickens in paying us some valued, though injudicious compli-
ments, concluded by observing, that ‘we had all Tennyson’s spirituality, and
might be considered as the best of his imitators’ – words to that effect” (cited
by Moss 12).
Despite all this, and his evident bitterness towards Dickens, Poe did
not fail to praise the artistic merits of his subsequent works. It is true
that he did not review them, as he had done before 1842, but he was
not grudging of favourable comments when the occasion arose, for he
still considered Dickens to be the greatest literary genius of that age.27
On the other hand, and as was customary in Poe, he was not averse to
writing to Dickens again, in 1846, to ask the English writer the favour
of appointing him as foreign correspondent in the United States of the
London newspaper Daily News, which Dickens had started editing at the
beginning of the year. The English novelist was no longer the editor of
that newspaper then, and he could have passed this letter to an assistant
if, for whatever personal motives, he had not wanted to answer Poe per-
sonally; but he didn’t. On 19 March 1846 Dickens sent Poe the following
letter, which seems to provide clear evidence that no personal feud existed
between both:
In reference to your proposal as regards the Daily News, I beg to assure you that I am
not in any way connected with the Editorship or current Management of that Paper.
I have an interest in it, and write such papers for it as I attach my name to. This is the
whole amount of my connexion with the Journal.
Any such proposition as yours, therefore, must be addressed to the Editor. I do
not know, for certainty, how that gentleman might regard it; but I should say that he
probably has as many correspondents in America and elsewhere, as the Paper can afford
space to (Tillotson 523).
Another small biographical detail could be added in this respect. When

Dickens toured the United States for a second time, in 1868, giving pub-
lic readings of his work, Poe had been dead for nineteen years. However,
Dickens still remembered him, apparently with affection, because he
took the opportunity, when visiting Baltimore, to pay a call on Mrs
Clemm, Poe’s mother-in-law, whom he begged to accept a gift of fifty
dollars in testimony of his sympathy (according to Grubb, “Part Three”
221, note 19).28
In short, all these pieces of evidence prove that the relationship between
Poe and Dickens, although not completely free from conflicts, misunder-
standing and personal obsessions, was also a relation of affection, respect and
admiration, particularly on the part of the American writer. With hindsight,
20 Fernando Galván
it now seems a pity that Dickens, who was so busy writing his long novels,
pouring out his copious journalism, and conducting such an exciting public
life, full of travels and events, did not have time to spare for one of his first,
most perceptive and greatest admirers in America.
References
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.

——. Poe. A Life Cut Short. London: Vintage Books, 2009.
Anonymous. “Poe and Dickens”. The Dickensian 15.2 (1919): 101–102.
Bracher, Peter. “Poe as a Critic of Dickens”. Dickens Studies Newsletter 9
(1978): 109–111.
Collins, Philip, ed. Dickens: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1971.
Galván, Fernando. “Plagiarism in Poe: Revisiting the Poe-Dickens Rela-
tionship”. The Edgar Allan Poe Review 2009 (forthcoming).
——. “Poe frente a Dickens, o los entresijos de un conflicto personal”.
Barcarola 2009 (forthcoming).
Garrett, Peter K. “The Force of a Frame: Poe and the Control of Reading”.
The Yearbook of English Studies 26 (1996): 54–64.
Grubb, Gerald G. “The Personal and Literary Relationships of Dickens and
Poe. Part One: From ‘Sketches by Boz’ Through ‘Barnaby Rudge’”.
Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 5.1 (June 1950): 1–22.
——. “The Personal and Literary Relationship of Dickens and Poe. Part
Two: ‘English Notes’ and ‘The Poets of America’”. Nineteenth-Century
Fiction 5.2 (September 1950): 101–120.
——. “The Personal and Literary Relationships of Dickens and Poe. Part
Three: Poe’s Literary Debt to Dickens”. Nineteenth-Century Fiction
5.3 (December 1950): 209–221.
House, Madeline, Graham Storey, and Kathleen Tillotson, eds. The Pilgrim
Edition. The Letters of Charles Dickens, vol. 3: 1842–1843. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1974.
Mason, Leo. “A Tale of Three Authors”. The Dickensian 36, 254 (1940):
109–119.
——. “Poe and Dickens”. The Dickensian 47 (1951): 207–210.

Moss, Sidney P. “Poe’s ‘Two Long Interviews’ with Dickens”. Poe Studies
11.1 (June 1978): 10–12.
Nisbet, Ada B. “New Light on the Dickens-Poe Relationship”. Nineteenth-
Century Fiction 5.4 (March 1951): 295–302.
Ostrom, John, ed. The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard UP, 1948.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Essays and Reviews. New York: Library of America,
1984.
Pollin, Burton R. “Dickens’s Chimes and Its Pathway into Poe’s ‘Bells’”.
Mississippi Quarterly 51.2 (Spring 1998): 217–231.
Rice, Thomas J. “Dickens, Poe and the Time Scheme of Barnaby Rudge”.
Dickens Studies Newsletter 7 (1976): 34–38.
Sucksmith, Harvey Peter. The Narrative Art of Charles Dickens. The Rheto-
ric of Sympathy and Irony in his Novels. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1970.
——. “The Secret of Immediacy: Dickens’ Debt to the Tale of Terror in
Blackwood’s”. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 26.2 (September 1971):
145–157.
Tillotson, Kathleen, ed. The Pilgrim Edition. The Letters of Charles Dickens,
vol. 4: 1844–1846. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
Tintner, Adeline R. “A Possible Source in Dickens for Poe’s ‘Imp of the
Perverse’”. Poe Studies 18.2 (1985): 25.
Webb, Howard W. Jr. “A Further Note on the Dickens-Poe Relationship”.
Nineteenth-Century Fiction 15.1 (June 1960): 80–82.
Westburg, Barry. “How Poe Solved the Mystery of Barnaby Rudge”.
Dickens Studies Newsletter 5 (1974): 38–40.
Notes
1 Part of this article is forthcoming in Spanish in the literary magazine Barcarola (2009),
with the title “Poe frente a Dickens, o los entresijos de un conflicto personal”. I am
grateful to Jonathan P.A. Sell for his suggestions and comments on a first draft of
this paper.
22 Fernando Galván
2 See Tintner, Grubb (“Part One” 17–18), and Bracher. I have also written about these
influences in “Plagiarism” (forthcoming).
3 The first tale published was “Metzengerstein”, in the Saturday Courier 14 January
1832. Later in the year others were published in the same periodical: on 9 June “The
Duc de l’Omelette” and “A Tale of Jerusalem”; on 10 November “Loss of Breath”,
with the original title of “A Decided Loss”; and on 1 December, “Bon-Bon”.
4 He also collaborated with other magazines, such as Evening Mirror, Broadway
Journal and Godey’s Lady’s Book. He even tried to publish his own magazine, The
Stylus, although unsuccessfully. Poe’s career as a journalist, reviewer and editor has
recently been examined by British writer Peter Ackroyd (also the author of a biog-
raphy of Dickens) in his Poe. A Life Cut Short, particularly chapters 5, 6 and 7
(“The Journalist”, “The Editor” and “The Man Who Never Smiled” respectively),
pp. 45–99.
5 For the connections between these three authors, cf. Mason, and for the pirate edi-
tion of “The Fall of the House of Usher” see particularly p. 117.
6 Franklin P. Rolfe, ed., “Additions to the Nonesuch Edition of Dickens Letters”,
Huntington Library Quarterly 5 (October 1941) 134, cited by Grubb, “Part
One” 22.
7 See, for instance, Moss 10–12, where the author speculates on the contents of
the two presumed interviews, although he is unable to provide any additional docu-
mentation.
8 Many of Poe’s biographers have commented on his lies and fantasies. He boasted of
foreign travels that never took place; on other occasions he deceived his relatives by
telling them he was living in utter destitution with the sole purpose of getting their
money. John Allan, the man who acted as adoptive father after Poe’s orphanhood,
was probably the first to grow aware of this behaviour, which at times verged on the
pathological. Hence the gradual separation between both, once Allan understood
that Poe had no scruples at all and told him monstrous lies in order to get his money.
Many examples of this can be found in Peter Ackroyd’s recent biography of Poe, for
example: 33–34, 37, 40–41, 86 and 92–93.
9 In 1950 Gerald G. Grubb wrote in his long study: “When Dickens’s American Notes
came out, it called forth much condemnation from the newspaper press and from
general readers, but his particular friends in America, excepting Poe, who remained
silent, received it with acclamation” (“Part Three” 216).
10 This and previous quotations have been taken from House et al 348, note 2.
11 A reprint of “English Notes” was published in 1920 in New York: English Notes:
Being a reply to Charles Dickens’s “American Notes”, with Critical Comments by Joseph
Jackson and George H. Sargent (New York: Lewis M. Thompson, 1920). A brief criti-
cal review was published in The Dickensian 16, issue 4 (1920), p. 178.
12 Q.Q.Q. “Dickens’s American Notes for General Circulation”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh
Magazine 52 (December 1842): 783–801.
13 For a detailed description of these misattributions cf. Grubb, “Part Two” 101–120;
Nisbet 295–302; Mason, “Poe and Dickens” 207–210; and Webb 80–82. For
Dickens’s letter to Felton, see vol. 3 of his correspondence, edited by House et al,
411–417 (the reference to Warren is on page 412).
14 Southern Literary Messenger, 2 (June 1836): 457–458.
15 For a detailed analysis of Dickens’s debt to Blackwood’s see Sucksmith, “The
Secret” 145–157. Poe himself wrote a satiric parody initially published under the
title “The Psyche Zenobia” in The American Museum of Science, Literature and
the Arts (Baltimore, November 1838), later as “The Signora Zenobia”, in Tales of
the Grotesque and Arabesque (Philadelphia, 1840), and finally as “How to Write a
Blackwood Article” in The Broadway Journal, 27 July 1845.
16 Southern Literary Messenger 2 (November 1836): 787.
17 For a comment on Poe’s preference in this case, see Garrett (54–55): “The tales Poe
praises are like several of his own, brief first-person narratives of madness and crime
that trace the growth of obsession, the destruction of innocent victims, and the expo-
sure of guilt. In acclaiming Dickens he turns him into his double, a writer whose
power is more evident in the intensity of such self-enclosed forms than in the looser
extended narratives that surround them”.
18 A detailed study of the influence the Blackwood’s authors exerted on Dickens can
be found in Sucksmith, “The Secret”. For a specific comparison between Dickens
and Warren, see pp. 149–150. This author has also demonstrated, in his book The
Narrative Art, chapter 3, the full extent of that influence in later works by Dickens,
such as Oliver Twist, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, Bleak House, Little Dorrit,
etc. Numerous paragraphs from these works are examined along with Dickens’s
manuscripts, which clearly show the author’s intention to create a realistic style akin
to Blackwood’s tales of terror: “Since Dickens published his first work of fiction in
December 1833, we may conclude that the realistic Blackwood tale of terror, which
was making an impact on him just eleven months later (when he had published only
the first ten of the fifty-six pieces that were to make up Sketches by Boz), was one of
the earliest influences on his career and may well have been decisive in indicating an
important direction his narrative art was to take” (79).
19 He wrote a review of this third novel for the Gentleman’s Magazine 5 (December
1838): 330.
20 Graham’s Magazine 18 (May 1841): 248–251.
21 This review was lost for a long time; some critics even thought it had never been
written (see Sir William Robertson Nicoll, in British Weekly 5 February 1913); but
The Dickensian published a reprint in its issue of July 1913: “Barnaby Rudge: the
Original Review by Edgar Allan Poe”, The Dickensian 9 (July 1913): 274–278. A
reprint can also be found in Poe, Essays and Reviews 218–224.
22 “Barnaby Rudge”, in Graham’s Magazine 19 (February 1842): 124–129, reprinted in
Collins 105–111.
24 Fernando Galván
23 Cf. the anonymous “Poe and Dickens”; Grubb, “Part One” 8–12, and Grubb, “Part
Three” 209–221; Mason, “Poe and Dickens” 207–210; Westburg; and Rice.
24 See George E. Woodberry, The Life of Edgar Allan Poe, Personal and Literary, 2 vols.
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909), I, 197–198, cited by Grubb, “Part Two” 115.
25 Cf. Poe’s letters to Lowell dated 30 March, 28 May and 2 July 1844, in Ostrom
246–247, 253–254, and 258 respectively.
26 This biographical sketch was planned for the September 1844 issue, but it appeared
later, in the February 1845 issue.
27 Gerald G. Grubb mentions that at the time of Bulwer-Lytton’s planned visit to the
United States in 1844, Poe compared both writers and praised Dickens as the great-
est (see Grubb, “Part Two” 119–120).
28 Grubb cites as his source James T. Fields, Yesterday with Authors (Boston: 1872),
p. 142.
Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire:
The Artist as the Elite Victim
SONYA ISAAK
UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG
Charles Baudelaire first discovered his American alter-ego Edgar Allan Poe
in a French translation in 1846 or 1847 and felt that in finding Poe, he was
finding himself, thoughts he himself had had but never uttered: ‘La première
fois que j’ai ouvert un livre de lui, j’ai vu, avec épouvante et ravissement, non
seulement des sujets rêvés par moi, mais des PHRASES [sic] pensées par
moi, et écrites par lui vingt ans auparavant (Baudelaire, C 2 386 ).’1
Both Poe’s writing and their similar biographies accounted for Baude-
laire’s fascination with his American idol. Henceforth, he became Poe’s
greatest admirer and made use of every opportunity to call people’s attention
to his American counterpart. Some critics have perceived that the similarities
in the life and literature of Poe to his own were so striking that he began to
make an effort to increase these parallels, so as to come closer to fully incar-
nating his role model.2 This intense preoccupation explains why Baudelaire
devoted sixteen years of his life to translating Poe’s writing, particularly his
prose. Of the poems, he translated only “The Raven”, “The Conqueror
Worm” and “The Haunted Palace”.
Baudelaire analyzed Poe as he would himself, claiming that Poe’s
problems with substance abuse were a deliberate means of self-destruction,
a long-term suicide attempt to escape the harsh realities of an evil out-
side world (Preußner 52). Baudelaire himself would also attempt suicide.3
For the most part, the conflict-ridden biographies of Poe and Baudelaire
were so similar in nature that the Frenchman did not have to exaggerate
affinities. While both had grown up in affluent middle class families, this
material security did not make for a happy childhood. Both had to deal
with surrogate father figures who could not give them the love and mental
26 Sonya Isaak
stability they so craved. The conservative nature of Mr. Allan and Colonel
Aupick clashed greatly with that of their rebellious liberal-minded sons.
While both Poe and Baudelaire did receive some emotional support from
their maternal figures, this love was not as stable as might have been good
for a maturing child. Baudelaire’s mother Caroline never considered asking
her son whether or not he agreed when she married Colonel Aupick shortly
after Baudelaire’s father had died. Mrs. Allan, although a loving second
mother to Poe, could not be there for her son when he most needed her
since she became ill and died young. In times of need both sons turned to
protective, surrogate mothers. When Mrs. Allan died, Poe found a third
mother in his aunt, Mrs. Clemm. Baudelaire’s somewhat contentious rela-
tionship with his mother prompted him to seek stability in a romantic
relationship. However, harboring misogynist views and repeatedly desert-
ing his companion, Jeanne Duval, Baudelaire never achieved the harmoni-
ous bond he so desired. Poe’s quest to replace his young wife Virginia when
she passed away was also not met with success.
Another correspondence that would prompt Baudelaire to identify
with Poe was their similar, tragic worldview. Both Poe and Baudelaire
felt that they were ostracized and reflected this perception in both their
correspondence and writing. In a letter to his mother Baudelaire writes:
‘[…]vous avez perdu tout droit à la philanthropie vis-à-vis de moi, car je ne
peux pas parler du sentiment maternel. Vous avez donc intérêt à montrer
des sentiments maternels à un autre que moi (Baudelaire, C 1 168).’ He
regrets that his mother seems to be more protective of the notary “maî-
tre Ancelle” than of her son. In a late letter to the photographer Nadar,
he mentions that a certain friend was spreading rumors that Baudelaire
had failed to appear at the former mother’s funeral (Baudelaire, CI 681).
Baudelaire must have felt unjustly accused, for he was not aware that she
had died.
Poe must also have felt a victim of his personal situation. In a letter to
his stepfather, he remarks:
Sir, After my treatment on yesterday and what passed between us this morning, I can
hardly think you will be surprised at the contents of this letter. My determination is at
length taken – to leave your house and indeavor [[sic]] to find some place in this wide
world, where I will be treated – not as you have treated me – (Poe to John Allan, March
19, 1827).4
Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire: The Artist as the Elite Victim 27
In a letter to Mrs. Clemm in which he fears losing Virginia, he expresses

his devastation:
I am blinded with tears while writing this letter – I have no wish to live another hour
[…] My bitterest enemy would pity me could he now read my heart. […] – I have no
desire to live and will not (Edgar Allan Poe to Maria and Virginia Clemm – August
29, 1835).5
Both Poe and Baudelaire rebelled against leading political tendencies and
against the rapid technological progress they witnessed. Though he was
never politically active, in a nation dominated by Jacksonian democracy,
Poe, who was never with the mainstream, wrote for a Whig magazine
(Bloomfield 72). In his enigmatic poem “Le Cygne”, Baudelaire lamented
that his native Paris had completely changed under Georges Haussmann:
“Le vieux Paris n’est plus (la forme d’une ville change plus vite, hélas! que
le œur d’un mortel)” (Baudelaire, OC1 85).
The self-willed isolation and defiant nature of both men is fur-
ther exemplified in their dandyism. During the Romantic era, the gap
between the individual and society widened, leading to an estrangement
of the individual. This alienation was also one typical of the prototype
Romantic poet. One could refer to the ensuing state of mind of the poet
as “Weltschmerz”. According to August Buck, when Baudelaire and Poe
slipped into their roles as dandies this was not just an aesthetic pose, but
also symptomatic of a tragic existential problem: Ultimately, the literary
artist and society were incompatible and destined to be in constant conflict
(Preußner 60). Being a dandy meant rebelling against some ideas estab-
lished by society: Poe protested against the mob, favoring the intellectual
elite, and Baudelaire too associated with the intellectual and artistic elite
of his times, as his reputation as a leading contemporary art critic seems
to confirm. Furthermore, he detested the rule of the masses, embodied
in the reign of the bourgeois king Louis-Phillipe, whom he mockingly
referred to as a “monarque en pantoufles” (Preußner 63). Being a dandy,
then, did not just involve wearing elegant, eccentric clothes, which, inci-
dentally, both authors chose to do. It meant striving for an aesthetic ideal.
It meant taking art to the extreme to create an apotheosis of beauty. It
meant acknowledging the primacy of art over nature.
28 Sonya Isaak
The authors share, above all, the desire to define themselves in a new
way, as elegant outsiders. Poe sought to present himself as a Southern
gentleman with refined tastes. To seem more convincing, he “[traded] on
the reputation of his paternal grandfather, General David Poe, […] by
portraying himself as the son of the genteel John Allan and then, after
Allan’s death, by establishing an alternative model of gentility through the
medium of his writing” (Person 129–167).6
The writers’ biographies correlated with the style and choice of sub-
ject matter of their writing. Both Poe and Baudelaire integrated the rel-
evant autobiographical theme of alienation from society into their works.
Never do they forget what role they are playing, that of the elite artist,
frowning upon the mediocre bourgeoisie or proletariat. Their protagonists
are heroes who deliberately retreat from society or else demonstrate their
superiority in an aesthetic attitude of revolt against the everyday, common
life. Poe deliberately excludes some readers from a deeper understanding
of his works by introducing French words and titles, such as “The Duc
de L’Omelette” and setting his stories in Paris, or other exotic places.7 He
further employs code language, hieroglyphics and even attempts to fool
his reader into believing some of his pseudo-scientific stories are based on
true incidents. He is known for having furthered the genre of the hoax.
His target audience is not the masses, as is the case with Jack London, but
rather an intellectual elite, capable of comprehending his “secret” code.
In his “The Literati of New York City”, Poe took revenge on some of his
contemporaries, clearly proving his dominance, and demonstrating relent-
lessly that he was capable of making or breaking reputations.8 He was the
artist, the voluntary exile from their society, peering from the outside in,
making shrewd comments and sometimes, subtle accusations. The subtitle
of his Literati reads “Some Honest Opinions At Random Respecting Their
Autorial Merits, With Occasional Words of Personality”. According to one a
reliable source, it was Poe’s “fervent desire to found a new literary magazine
that would appeal to the elevated tastes” [emphasis mine] (Person 132–
133). Poe begins by pointing out the hypocrisy of some other leading jour-
nalists of his time: “[…] the very editors who hesitate at saying in print an
ill word of an author personally known, are usually most frank in speaking
about him privately”.9 He criticizes the lack of individuality on the part of
members of literary society by remarking sarcastically:
“[…] on all literary topics there is in society a seemingly wonderful coincidence of

opinion”. He then deliberately sets himself off from this behavior: “It must be expected,
of course, that, in innumerable particulars, I shall differ from the voice, that is to say,
from what appears to be the voice of the public- but this shall be of no consequence
whatever”.10
Baudelaire went even further. Frequenting the greatest artists, musicians

and literati of his times, such as Manet, Courbet, Delacroix, Gautier and
Wagner, his ego must have thrived. His review of the Salons of 1845 and
1846 in Paris demonstrate his exceptional ability to judge the art and lit-
erature of others. In his introduction to his review of the Salon of 1845,
Baudelaire pokes fun at the bourgeoisie, first taking pity on them, then
defending them and finally suggesting one eliminate the term from the
dictionary or vocabulary of the critics of the bourgeoisie altogether: “Ce
mot, qui sent l’argot d’atelier d’une lieue, devrait être supprimé du dic-
tionnaire de la critique” (Baudelaire, OCII 351–414). By discussing the
merits and vices of the bourgeoisie, he makes a claim that he does not
belong to this class, that he is an onlooker from the outside.
Further elitist tendencies are apparent in his use of Latin in a poem
of his Fleurs du Mal in an effort to render his writing more difficult to
decipher. Many critics are convinced that his Flowers of Evil possess a
hidden, underlying architecture- one, which critics are still attempting
to comprehend.11 It is not mere coincidence that Poe and Baudelaire are
considered fathers of Symbolism, an intellectual literary movement in
France in the 19th century, which was not accessible to the masses. One
had to be able to perceive the hidden underlying meaning implied by
the text, the “correspondences”. Baudelaire’s poem bearing this title is
considered a pillar of the Symbolist movement. The poem suggests there
is a hidden bond underlying everything, uniting the senses and elements
of the universe.12
Both authors designed their personalities, cultivating a dandy image.
However, they did not stop there, adopting passages they liked from other
works. They had no second thoughts when they plagiarized the works of
others, convinced that their readership would surely not notice. They were
not wholly mistaken, since to this day many critics still cite Baudelaire as
having written an essay on Poe, which he had in fact stolen and translated
from English to French.13 Poe would not have objected to such practices,
30 Sonya Isaak
which he himself was all too familiar with. In The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym, Poe’s scientific references are a scrapbook of excerpts from
various contemporary texts.14 This shows both writers believed they could
get away with taking advantage of the gullibility of their readers.
The works themselves abound with anti-heroes who either attempt to
escape from society, preferring their own company or that of a select few, or
else are outcasts, who simply do not “belong”. What unites these two types
of isolation, voluntary and involuntary, is a tendency of the characters to
either pity themselves, or to seek pity. Poe’s characters are usually deliber-
ate “fugitives”. In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Roderick Usher is a
Romantic artist figure who plays stringed instruments, draws and writes.
He has sought refuge from the outside world in the microcosm of his
house. In the tale “The Murders of the Rue Morgue”, the protagonist,
Dupin, while officially a detective, also plays the part of the secluded
artist. However, rather than being a passive victim of society, he deliber-
ately renounces society and wants to isolate himself: ‘Our seclusion was
perfect. We admitted no visitors. Indeed the locality of our retirement
had been carefully kept a secret from my own former associates […] we
existed within ourselves alone (Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Peithman 200).’
Baudelaire’s characters however, are excluded against their will. In Les
Fleurs du Mal, the poet protagonist, or first-person “narrator” is cursed by
birth. He has no control over the role he plays in society: He is and will
remain an outcast, an “artiste maudit”. In the opening lyric poem of Les
Fleurs du Mal which bears the ironic title: “Bénédiction”, the mother of
the artist balls her fists at God and curses the night of brief pleasure during
which her son was conceived:
Lorsque par un décret des puissances suprêmes,
Le Poëte apparaît en ce monde ennuyé,
Sa mère épouvantée et pleine de blasphèmes
Crispe ses poignes vers Dieu, qui la prend en pitié:
-Ah! Que n’ai-je mis bas tout un noeud de vipères,
Plutôt que de nourrir cette dérision!
Maudite soit la nuit aux plaisirs éphémères
Où mon ventre a conçu mon expiation!
(Baudelaire, OC1 7–8).
Before the artist even has a chance to express himself, his mother wants to
cast her child away, calling it her “expiation”, or vile secretion. She would
rather take care of a whole nest of snakes, “tout un noeud de vipères” than
nurse this mockery, “cette dérision” (Baudelaire, OC1 7–8).
The prose poem “Déjà!” further illustrates the protagonist’s involun-
tary isolation from society. In this poem, which is about travelers on a boat
that is about to reach the harbor, the narrator is the only passenger who
seems to love the ocean. He describes the other passengers’ reaction to the
sea journey: They are suffering because of the wind, which causes their eyes
to tear, and they have trouble with the movement of the ocean and would
prefer a regular immobile armchair to relax in after having eaten. Whereas
the other passengers are looking forward to their arrival, to seeing land and
returning home, exclaiming “enfin!”, or “finally!”, the narrator regrets the
approaching end of the trip, crying out “déjà!”, or “already!”. He is afraid of
returning to his solitude. Even though the narrator aspires to be one of the
crowd in that he wants to stay on the ship in the company of the others, he
does not ultimately succeed. As in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”,
the ship in Baudelaire’s “Déjà!” resembles a microcosm. “Land” stands for
home. The ship is a microcosmic monde intérieur and the passengers repre-
sent society. The narrator’s perceptions on traveling differ drastically from
those of the other passengers and thus from those of “society”.
Although the narrator wants to belong in that he stays on the ship in
the company of the others since he fears solitude, this aspiration is doomed
to failure: In voicing his desire to stay on the ship, he is revealing that he
is different, a stranger. His perceptions of life, represented by his ideas on
traveling, disable his acceptance by society. As opposed to the others, who
look forward to their homes, “qui pensaient à leur foyer, qui regrettaient
leurs femmes infidèles et maussades, et leur progéniture criarde”, nobody
is anticipating the narrator’s return (Baudelaire, ed. Kopp 116–117). Here
the “artist”, even though he may want to belong cannot succeed in so
doing since he his different and must therefore remain an outcast who will
never be able to identify with others.
“Déjà!” is reminiscent of Poe’s story “The Man of the Crowd”, a story
which Baudelaire translated. Here, like the man seeking to stay on the ship,
the protagonist attempts to escape solitude by mingling with the crowd:
“This old man” I said at length “is the type and the genius of deep crime,
He refuses to be alone, He is the man of the crowd” (Poe, ed. Mabott 505–
518). In both Baudelaire’s prose poem and Poe’s tale, the protagonists are not
aware that they are outsiders revolting against society. In Poe’s story the first
32 Sonya Isaak
person narrator-protagonist bears witness to the outsider’s strange behavior,

but makes no attempt to communicate with him. This allows the reader to
perceive one anti-hero lost in the midst of the crowd mirrored by another.
We cannot help but ask ourselves who the “Man of the Crowd” is. The title
could refer both to the narrator as well as to the man the narrator follows.
This deliberate ambiguity ingeniously underlines the theme of alienation.
Perhaps Baudelaire and Poe too, were men of the crowd, one mirror-
ing the other, afraid of solitude, but always aware of their revolt against
society. Though surely they saw themselves as victims in their personal situ-
ations and were critical of society at large, both Poe and Baudelaire sought
to please and intrigue the crowd as dandies and to provoke through their
striking criticism and innovative writing. They themselves were anti-heroes
waiting to be honored by posterity.
References
Benjamin, Walter. “The Paris of the Second Empire”. Charles Baudelaire: A

Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Trans. Harry Zhon. London:
NLB, 1973.
——. Charles Baudelaire. Ein Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969.
Baudelaire, Charles. Oeuvres Complètes. Correspondances. Ed. C. Pichois.
Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1975.
——, ed. Robert Kopp. Petits Poëmes en Prose (Le Spleen de Paris). Paris:
Gallimard, 1973.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Th. O. Mabbot.
Cambridge: Belknap, Harvard University Press, 1978.
——, ed. S. Peithman. The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. New York:
Doubleday & Company, 1981.
——. Edgar Allan Poe to John Allan – March 19, 1827, <www.eapoe.org/
works/letters/p2703190.htm>.
——. Edgar Allan Poe to Maria and Virginia Clemm – August 29, 1835,
<www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p3508290.htm>.
——. Godey’s Lady’s Book, <www.eapoe.org/works/misc/litratb 1.htm>.
Bandy, W.T.: “New Light on Baudelaire and Poe”. Yale French Studies 0/10
(1952): 65–69, <www.jstor.org/>.
Beebe, Maurice. “The Universe of Roderick Usher”. A Collection of Critical
Essays. Ed. R. Regan. New Jersey: Englewood Cliffs, 1967.
Bloomfield, Shelley Costa. The Everything Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. The
life, times and work of a tormented genius. Avon, Massachusetts: F+W
Publications, Inc., 2007.
Lawler, James. Poetry and Moral Dialectic. Baudelaire’s Secret Architecture.
New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.
Parson, Amy Catherine. “And a Hundred Other Shadowy Things: Specters
of the Transnational in Nineteenth-Century American Literature”.
Diss. University of California, Irvine, 2007.
Person, Leland. S. “Poe and the Nineteenth Century Gender Construc-
tions”. A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. G. Kennedy. Oxford
University Press, 2001.
Pollin, Burton R., ed. The Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe (Vol 1. The
Imaginary Voyages: Pym, Hans Pfaall, Julius Rodman). Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1981.
Poulet, Georges. Wer war Baudelaire? Genève: Editions d’Art Skira, (übersetzt
ins Deutsche von Peter und Béatrice Grotzer), 1969.
Preußner, Markus. Poe und Baudelaire: Ein Vergleich. Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang, 1991.
Quinn, Hobson A. (1941). Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Thomas, Dwight and David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: a Documentary Life
of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1987.
Wetherhill, P. M. Charles Baudelaire et La Poésie d’Edgar Allan Poe. Paris:
Nizet, 1962.
Notes
1 Unless otherwise specified, citations are based on the Pléiade édition. The Corre-
pondances will be abbreviated with CI or C2, indicating the corresponding volume;
Œuvres Complètes will stand as OCI or OC2 respectively.
34 Sonya Isaak
2 See Georges Poulet and Peter Wetherhill.

3 The French painter Eduard Manet was inspired by Baudelaire’s notion of suicide.
In his painting “Le Suicide”, (1877–1881) Stiftung E.G. Bührle, Zürich, Ölskizze,
suicide remains as the only possible heroic solution to escape the sickness of an urban
society.
4 See <www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p2703190.htm>.
5 See <www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p3508290.htm>.
6 John Allan never officially adopted Poe.
7 In the title, “The Duc de L’Omlette”, Poe mixes French and English, thereby deliber-
ately introducing foreign elements into the reader’s native language, creating confu-
sion, and thereby making his writing less accessible to the masses.
8 The original manuscript of this series of literary reviews and criticisms was lost, only
the text remains. It appeared in Godey’s Lady’s Book. <www.eapoe.org/works/info/
pmlny.htm>.
9 See <www.eapoe.org/works/misc/litratb 1.htm>.
10 See <www.eapoe.org/works/misc/litratb 1.htm>.
11 See Lawler, James. Poetry and Moral Dialectic. Baudelaire’s Secret Architecture. New
Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.
12 As a reader, to this day, one must speculate whether or not his collection of prose
poems, Le Spleen de Paris, does not constitute a secret pendant to Les Fleurs du Mal.
13 Baudelaire had access to critical essays by J.R. Thompson and J. Daniel. See Preußner,
45.
14 For a full account of Poe’s plagiarism on this and other occasions, see Burton Pollin’s
annotated edition of The Adventures Of Arthur Gordon Pym in The Collected Writings
of Edgar Allan Poe (1981). Here, Pollin demonstrates that Poe borrowed elements
from bestsellers of his day, incorporating entire passages into his text. Poe’s sources
included J.N. Reynolds’ “Address on the Subject of a Surveying and Exploring Expe-
dition” and Benjamin Morell’s “Narrative of Four Voyages”. See also Amy Catherine
Parson’s discussion in her dissertation, “And a Hundred Other Shadowy Things”:
Specters of the Transnational in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, 13–77.
Two Romanticisms but the Same Feeling:
The Presence of Poe in Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer’s
Leyendas
RICARDO MARÍN - RUIZ

UNIVERSITY OF CASTILLA - LA MANCHA
The starting point of this paper is that the influence of Edgar Allan
Poe on Spanish Literature seems to be a fact out of any kind of literary
polemic. The works of writers such as Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, Rosalía
de Castro, Ros de Olano or Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer himself are clear
examples of how the American author had a certain bearing not only
on the literary production yielded in Spain during the 19th century, but
also on the literature written in other Spanish-speaking countries during
that period. Though their respective literary universes were also shaped
by the influences of writers like Hoffman, Maupassant or the German
romantic poets, Poe left his mark on some of their books. It is certain that
sometimes we mistake a distant literary affinity for a real influence. For
instance, this is true if we shed light on the case of Alarcon’s Narraciones
inverosímiles (1896): this collection of tales displays a set of thematic
and stylistic features that could be easily bound to Poe’s influence at first
sight. We can say that they are closer to German Romanticism than to
the author from Boston, above all if we take into account that Alarcón
wrote some of his tales a few years earlier than he got down to read Poe.1
Bécquer is a different case, though. Obviously, it is not intended here to
state that he wrote his works only under Poe’s influence, since Bécquer
kept literary ties to Hoffman, Heine, and Musset, among others. How-
ever, his poetry and his prose – on which we are going to focus when
talking about Leyendas (1871) – reflect as very few literary works written
in Spanish the reminiscences due to Poe. The study of the relationships
between these two writers becomes more interesting if we consider the
36 Ricardo Marín-Ruiz
importance they have in their respective literary contexts. On the one

hand, Poe is one of the most representative authors of American Roman-
ticism along with Washington Irving. On the other, Bécquer holds an
outstanding position within Spanish Romanticism, which thrived in
Spain lately in relation to other countries. When dealing with the paral-
lelisms between the two writers, we will make reference to those that have
been traditionally mentioned in classical essays.2 In addition, we would
like to propose further similarities. By doing so, we hope to strengthen
even more the bounds that link the literary worlds of Edgar Allan Poe
and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer.
Hard lives and creative imaginations:

Two meeting points between Poe and Bécquer
According to Englekirk, Bécquer reflects like any other Spanish writer

from the 19th century the influence of Poe (1934: 127). The scholar lays
this argument on the basis of two clear parallelisms that can be established
between them: on the one hand, they followed lives full of harsh experi-
ences that were present in their respective works to a certain degree. On
the other, both of them paid a great heed to death and the supernatural.
Bécquer’s life story was as short as disgraceful. Like Poe, his existence
was overshadowed by suffering and economic troubles. We just have to
look at the first years of the Sevillian writer to see how they resemble
the life of Poe: whereas the American author became an orphan at three
and then adopted by a young and prosperous couple from Richmond,
Bécquer lost his parents when he was nine and was left to the care of his
godmother. If we go on to unveil the life stories of each of them, we can
see how they both tried to earn a living on their own writings after having
left behind their respective adoptive families; once Poe realized that he
had been tricked by his new father when this broke his promise of paying
for his university studies, he quit Charlottesville to live in Baltimore with
his aunt Maria Clemn. It was then when Poe strained to make his way
as a writer with contributions to newspapers and magazines for which
he was paid scarce sums of money. When he was a teenager, Bécquer left
Two Romanticisms but the Same Feeling 37
his godmother and made for Madrid, where he started his literary career.
Like Poe, the Spanish writer did not know any prosperity until the very
end of his days, though, in fact, he never got rid of financial needs. More-
over, both writers had to face up to traumatic deaths. The marriage of
Poe with her young cousin Virginia Clemm in 1836 can be addressed as
one of the few happy periods of time in his life. However, happiness did
not last as long as he would have wished; towards January 1842, Virginia
displayed the first visible symptoms of tuberculosis as she began to cough
blood. In those days, there was no remedy for such an illness – those
who suffered from it were known as “the living dead” – and she died five
years later when she was only twenty-five. After that, Poe fell in a moody
state of mind from which he tried to escape by sheltering in women and
alcohol. As for the Spanish author, he also had to witness how one of his
most beloved persons was embraced by death when his brother Valeriano
died in September of 1870. Bécquer was not able to get over from this
loss. His feeble health, which was spoilt by tuberculosis, could not resist
the shock caused by this disgraceful event, and he died a few months later,
in December. In the following chart, we can appreciate and contrast in a
synthetic way the main disgraceful events that overshadowed the lives of
both writers:
Tragic milestones Poe Bécquer
Parents’ death in the He became an orphan at 3 and His parents died when he
early years was adopted by a well-off couple was 9 and his goodmother
from Richmond took care of him
Independence and After having felt deceived by his He left Seville to set about
the beginning of stepfather, he made for Baltimore a new life in Madrid.
a long and hard where he started his career as There he tried to make
literary career a writer. Despite his frequent a living by writing, but
contributions to newspapers and prosperity would not
magazines, his incomes were low come until his last days
Irreparable losses He could not recover from His brother’s loss in

the death of his wife, Virginia September 1870 pre-
Clemm, whom he had married in cipitated his death a few
1836. She died at the age of 24. months when he was 34.
To some extent, we can say that the ghastly experiences they both under-
went had a certain bearing on their literary creations. This turns out to be
quite clear in Poe. Since he lived the painful loss of his wife, the stories he
composed later are in some extent linked to this unforgettable episode in his
life. Some elements of Poe’s tales, such as the women depicted in his Gothic
tales, reflect these tragic circumstances. Unlike the grotesque stories, where
the female characters are merely plain and caricatured creatures, those women
who take part in the Gothic tales display a beauty which is both corporeal
and spiritual. Though rickety and slender they may seem, their bodies are
regarded as beautiful since they fulfill the Romantic model of fragile and pale-
skinned woman. When the female body does not spread its enchantments
before the male eyes, it is turn then for an astonishing wisdom that can be
either noble – Eleonora – or perverse – Ligeia – (Rigal 1998: 247). But what
it is more interesting for our topic is to know that most of these women are
strongly related to death, since by doing so, Poe immerses himself in the pain-
ful and bitter recall of the beloved women he lost during his lifetime. This
statement is held up by the idea that the American writer sought to reflect
on this kind of fortune-forsaken characters the image of his mother and his
first wife, whose deaths were tragic milestones for him. As a consequence, Poe
wanted to materialize the memory of those women who played a title role in
his life by creating female characters who were as beautiful as sickly.
As we read Bécquer, it is clear that he longs for an ideal of beauty that
appears before his eyes wrapped up in the body of women whose physical
features are close to those displayed by the female characters in Poe´’s Gothic
tales. Therefore, it can be stated that the Spanish author also imagines women
of an unparalleled beauty. However, Bécquer does not follow the very same
path as Poe when dealing with the other sex: the author of Leyendas does not
see in women as much the memory of his beloved as the intended mate-
rialization of a dream. By enhancing uncommon female qualities, Bécquer
underlines his Romantic spirit, since one of the main forces that encour-
age the Romantic soul is the search for the sublime beyond mundane reality
(Izquierdo 1995: 60). Unlike Poe, women are surrounded by religious con-
notations in Leyendas, where they play the role of agents of Evil many times.
Frequently, they resemble the image of Eve as they drive male characters to
sins that are punished with death or madness. In “Los ojos verdes”, Fernando
dies drowned because he is tempted by the shocking beauty of a mysterious
woman who turns out in the waters of a lake at night. In “La ajorca de oro”,
María Antúnez uses her diabolical beauty to convince Pedro Alfonso de Orel-
lana – the man who loved her – to steal the bracelet of the statue of the Virgin.
After that, he has to pay for this with the disturbance of his senses, which are
not capable of keeping him away from illusions and hallucinations.
Here it comes another meeting point between Poe and Bécquer: the
blurred frontier between reality and fantasy. Sometimes, when reading the
stories of any of these writers, we are immersed in an atmosphere of terror
and mystery that may make the reader feel astonished. If there is a bridge that
clearly links Bécquer to Poe, this is the attraction towards the supernatural. As
many Romantic writers, the Spanish author felt a great fascination for every-
thing having to do with the great beyond. This led him to take interest in the
way in which those writers who had followed the steps of Hoffmann, who
started the literary treatment of fear (Izquierdo 1995: 44). One of these writ-
ers was Edgar Allan Poe. But why did Bécquer fix his eyes especially on this
master of terror? Though many explanations may be handled to answer this
question, there is a fact that sheds light on it: the coincidence of the arrival of
Poe’s tales in Madrid with the formative period of Bécquer. It was then when
“they made a strong appeal to the young, impressible poet” (Englekirk 1934:
126). It is no surprising then that the two of them make use of terror as a
means of transgressing reality and mixing it up with the irrational. Further-
more, fear and mystery may be put down to the same origins in both writers.
As we read either “The Tell-Tale Heart” or “La ajorca de oro”, we will feel
impressed basically for one and the same reason: how madness can take any
of us to unsuspected extremes. Similarly, fear and terror stem from the super-
natural in Poe and Bécquer, though a slight difference must be made in this
point: whereas the former regards usually the presence of the supernatural in
his Gothic tales as the consequence of a mind disturbed by drugs and alcohol,
the latter frequently mentions startling events that are supposed to have been
real. Moreover, Bécquer places the supernatural very close to religion, as we
can see in stories like “El Cristo de la calavera” or “La cruz del diablo”.
Further resemblances between Poe and Bécquer
Apart from the similarities mentioned above, the literary worlds of both writ-
ers share some more features. This is clear when we take into account some
narrative patterns they make use of, the characters they beget, or just the
atmospheres they depict. Whether we get down to reading a tale by Poe or by
Bécquer, it will not take a long time to notice that they both resort to similar
narrative conventions like the lineal development of the actions related and
the introductory comments opening some stories. In regard to the first one,
we can say that neither the American writer nor the Spanish tend to provide
their tales with no more than one action. This narrative simplicity that can be
observed in their writings is even bigger if we pay attention to the lineal struc-
ture of many of their respective stories. As a result, the action usually starts
and comes to an end in a different time and/or setting. Most of the times,
the reader can follow this course of the events through a first-person narrator.
In order to check this similarity, we have just to compare some “leyendas”
like “Maese Pérez, el organista” or “La cruz del diablo” to “The Black Cat”,
“Morella”, or “The Imp of the Perverse” among many other tales written by
Poe in this narrative modality. But if there is a resource that shows the affinity
between the two writers in the way of telling their tales that is the comments
inserted by the narrator at the beginning of the story. In some of his “leyen-
das” – “Los ojos verdes”, “La corza blanca”, “El Miserere”, or “El gnomo” –,
Bécquer reveals in a few lines the main topic, which will be widely developed
later. These brief explanations given by the Spanish author recall those obser-
vations made by Poe in tales like “The Black Cat”, “The Cask of Amontil-
lado”, or “The Imp of the Perverse”. However, what the reader can find in
these stories is not exactly a summary of the main topic, but the confessions
and reflections of harassed beings. In “The Black Cat”, the main character –
who is also the narrator – needs to tell the horrible events he witnessed as a
means of setting himself free of the strong emotional burden that he is bear-
ing. The first lines of “The Cask of Amontillado” are the words of a person
dogged by a feeling of guilt who tries to justify the murder he committed. As
for “The Imp of the Perverse”, the reflections that cross over the mind of the
narrator take up most part of the story. In this last case, the narrator intends
to draw the attention of the reader to his thoughts rather than to his deeds.
It is not unusual to see how Poe and Bécquer choose noblemen for
playing the title role in many of their stories. The main characters in “Los
ojos verdes”, “El rayo de luna”, or “El Cristo de la calavera” are noblemen
who are not apparently in economic troubles, since their only concerns
are focused on immaterial things like the love of a woman or the wish of
grasping what is behind a mysterious ray of light. By depicting this kind of

characters, the Spanish author followed the footsteps of a Romantic model
that Poe put into practice in many of his Gothic tales: the introduction of
rich and wealthy men as the main characters of the stories.
The length of a short story does not leave too much room for a great
number of characters, that is why both authors tend to arrange their fic-
tional materials around a few characters. Poe usually makes use of two
main characters in most of his Gothic tales. Sometimes, he can also intro-
duce a third one whose participation in the action is not considerable – like
Jupiter in “The Gold Bug” or Lady Madeline in “The Fall of the House
of Usher”. Alike the American writer, Bécquer resorts to very few figures,
as we can see in “La ajorca de oro”, “El Cristo de la calavera”, or “Los ojos
verdes”. Taking these three stories as examples, it is also noticeable how the
Spanish author displays his characters in oppositions: Pedro and María; the
knights Alonso de Carrillo and Lope de Sandoval, who fight for the love of
a third character – Inés de Tordesillas; Fernando and the ghostly green-
eyed woman that draws him to the lake where he dies drowned. Similarly,
Poe finds in counterpoint a suitable technique to weave the relationships
among his characters; just let us think in the oppositions between Ligeia
and Lady Rowena, William Wilson and his own self, or those stories where
the victims appear inevitably tied to their murderers – “The Black Cat”,
“The Tell-Tale Heart”, or “The Cask of Amontillado”, among others.
It is also interesting to mention a thematic and stylistic feature that is
not only common to Poe and Bécquer, but also to most Romantic writers:
the night and the mournful as the main elements in the scenery where fic-
tion takes place. The night is the favorite space for the American writer; it
is then when Dupin and his partner wander the streets or when the mur-
ders described are committed. Night is the scenery for shadows and dark-
ness, which intensify the presence of the supernatural, as we can see in
“Ligeia”, “Berenice”, or “The Oval Portrait”. Sometimes, the feeling of ter-
ror increases when Poe gets the action out of urban spaces and takes it to a
savage nature, like the mansions of the Usher, of Egaeus – “Berenice” – or
that owned by Lady Rowena’s husband – “Ligeia”. Along with darkness and
recondite places, religious architecture linked to death – graves, niches, and
desecrated sarcophagi – is another element that contributes to recreate a
mournful and terrifying atmosphere.
Despite being considered as a post-Romantic author, Bécquer adopts

many of these esthetic items. Thus, he is prone to provide his stories with
an atmosphere of melancholy and mystery by setting the action in old
buildings – castles, abbeys – as well as in a lonely and remote nature. In
order to overcome the reader with a deeper terror, these places are usually
cloaked in the dusk veil of night, which reveals itself as a chief element in
Bécquer’s tales. Apart from being essential to make the story more intrigu-
ing, its relevance is also noticeable if we consider its presence in the main
events related; it is at night when Fernando falls in love with the mys-
terious woman in “Los ojos verdes”, or when the duel between the two
knights takes place in “El Cristo de la calavera”. For this reason, I think
that night does not only play a decorative role in Leyendas, as García-Viñó
stated (1969: 340), but also a symbolic one; night represents the unknown
and the unexpected, as it is the suitable place for facing the supernatural,
madness, and death. This is even more evident if we pay attention to sto-
ries like “El monte de las ánimas” or “La ajorca de oro”. In the first of these
stories, Beatriz feels terrified as she hears hair-raising sounds and rumors
at night. In the second, we can see how darkness and guilty get together to
drive Pedro Alfonso de Orellana mad. The Spanish writer also establishes
a close relationship between terror and religion, as we can see in “La ajorca
de oro”: in this story, Bécquer takes the reader to the Cathedral of Toledo.
Once inside, he skillfully displays a set of elements – the statues, the graves,
the twilight – that the madness suffered by the main character will change
into a scary setting. Everything is framed in a Gothic-styled architecture,
which was regarded by the Romantic writers as a suitable scenery for rep-
resenting the union between the real and the fantastic.
Conclusions
There is probably no better framework than the celebration of a milestone

in the life of such a renowned and celebrated writer like Edgar Allan Poe
to reflect on his life and work. Though it is true that a great deal of schol-
ars have only focused on aspects concerning the turbulent existence and
fascinating literary production of this author, there many others who have
transcended the bounds of his life and manuscripts to cast some light on
the legacy of the Bostonian author overseas.
When dealing with the presence of Poe in European literatures, it
is well known the fundamental role which Baudelaire played in the Old
Continent as he decided to translate another “accursed” writer like Poe
himself. However, few researchers have deepened in the real implica-
tions and magnitude of Baudelaire’s translation in the reception of Poe in
Europe.3 And this is a fact which is worth being borne in mind since it is
hard to understand the presence of the American writer throughout many
European countries without being related to the figure of the French poet.
Spain was not an exception as the first encounter that significant authors
like Pedro Antonio de Alarcón and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer held with
Poe’s fiction took place on the pages translated by Baudelaire.
Maybe Bécquer’s Leyendas constitute the instance which best reflects
the influence of the writer from Boston in the belated Spanish Romanticism.
Despite the fact that Bécquer never referred to his work as a tribute to Poe, it
really seems so, especially considering the numerous stylistic features which
Leyendas share with Poe’s tales. Even though such analogies were not enough
to underline the ties existing between both writers, their lives fraught with
similar ill-fated episodes would enhance by themselves the closeness which,
in several senses, joined these two outstanding figures of the literature writ-
ten on both sides of the Atlantic during the first half of the 19th century.
References
Englekirk, John E. Edgar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature. New York: Insti-
tuto de las Españas en los Estados Unidos, 1934.
García Viñó, M. “Los escenarios de las Leyendas becquerianas”. Revista de
Filología Española 52 (1969): 335–346.
Izquierdo, Pascual. “Presencia de lo lírico, atmosférico y maravilloso en las
Leyendas de Bécquer”. Proceedings of the “VII Congreso de Literatura
Española Contemporánea”, November 9–12, 1993. Málaga: Publica-
ciones del Congreso de Literatura Española Contemporánea, 1995:
33–61.
Rigal-Aragón, Margarita. “La figura femenina y Edgar A. Poe: realidad

y ficción”. En el fluir del tiempo. Ed. Lucía Mora González et al.
Cuenca: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La
Mancha, 1998.
—— . “Malentendidos en torno a la vida y obra de Edgar A. Poe”. Revisión
del canon literario norteamericano: 1607–1890. Ed. Lucía Mora
González and Margarita Rigal-Aragón. Cuenca: Servicio de Publica-
ciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2000, 291–313.
Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan, Santiago. Presencia de Edgar Allan Poe en la
Literatura Española del siglo XIX. Valladolid: Servicio de Publicaciones
de la Universidad de Valladolid, 1999.
Notes
1 For further information about the influence of Poe on 19th-century Spanish writ-
ers see Rodríguez-Guerrero-Stratchan. Presencia de Edgar Allan Poe en la literatura
española del siglo XIX. Valladolid: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de
Valladolid, 1999.
2 We refer to essays such as Englekirk, John E. Edgar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature,
New York: Instituto de las Españas en los Estados Unidos, 1934.
3 See for example Rigal-Aragón, Margarita. “Malentendidos en torno a la vida y obra
de Edgar A. Poe”. Mora González, Lucía and Rigal-Aragón, Margarita, eds. Revisión
del canon literario norteamericano: 1607–1890. Cuenca: Servicio de Publicaciones de
la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2000, 300.
PART TWO
POE’S LEGACIES: DETECTIVES,
THE GOTHIC, AND SCIENCE FICTION
The Thousand-and-Second Dupin of Edgar A. Poe1
MARGARITA RIGAL - ARAGÓN

In eighteen forty-five Poe published the “Thousand-and-Second Tale of

Schererazade”. In the opening lines of this hoax the narrator talks of inves-
tigations which have led him to discover that the literary world has been
in error and that critics are to blame in not having gone further regarding
the fate of the vizier’s daughter:
Having had occasion, lately, in the course of some oriental investigations, to consult
the Tellmenow Isitsoörnot […] I was not a little astonished to discover that the literary
world has hitherto been strangely in error respecting […] Scheherazade, as that fate is
depicted in the “Arabian Nights”, and that the dénouement there given, if not alto-
gether inaccurate, as far as it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much
farther (Poetry and Tales2 787).
It is my opinion that the world has also been strangely in error respecting
how many detectives were created by this literary genius and we are also to
blame in not having gone much further. If we study closely his complete
production, we discover that Poe’s rationalization is at work in many of his
stories, and we find out that Dupin is just but one of the several “detec-
tives” invented by this controversial writer.
In the 1895 edition of The Works of E. A. Poe, Edmund Clarence Stedman
and George Edward Woodberry provided one of the first classifications of
Poe’s complete tales, including as tales of rationalization “The Gold Bug”,
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”, “The
Purloined Letter” and “Thou Art the Man”. Almost a century had elapsed
when the Argentinian Cortázar (1970) and the Americans Susan and Stuart
Levine (1976) defended that Poe’s analytic stories were “The Gold Bug”,
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”, “The
48 Margarita Rigal-Aragón
Purloined Letter” (the former) and the same ones plus “The Oblong Box”
(the latter). And although these are the most representative – and the most
widely read – of the author’s “analytic stories”, I believe this interpretation
to be a very restrictive one: we have to read his narratives with an open
mind, without previous classifications, definitions, denominations, etc.
that might influence our point of view. In doing so, we need to proceed
as Poe, himself, suggested in the 1842 January issue of Graham’s Magazine
(Essays and Reviews 3 1031–1032). This is, he proposed to “limit literary
criticism to comment upon ART”, and to review only “the book” and not
also the author. Besides this, he describes what a critic should be like: “he
must have courage to blame boldly, magnanimity to eschew envy, genius
to appreciate, learning to compare, an eye for beauty, an ear for music,
and a heart for feeling”, adding “a talent for analysis”, what is even more
important for our purposes, since it can be appreciated that even a literary
critic should act as his “Dupin”, according to Poe. But, which are the char-
acteristics of the mind of an analytical person? In the long introduction
that Poe chose to include in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841),
before the beginning of the “proper” fiction, the narrator explains them in
the following way:
He [the analytical] derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his
talents into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in
his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension
praeternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul an essence of method, have,
in truth, the whole air of intuition. […] The faculty of re-solution is possibly much
invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which,
unjustly, as merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par
excellence, analysis (P T 397).
However, before the publication of the above lines, at the very beginning of
his literary career, Poe drew characters ready to show the rational powers of
their intellects. For instance, the very first of Poe’s tales and one of his most
forgotten narratives, published on January 14th 1832 in the Saturday Courier,
“Metzengerstein”, features a young male with a strong imaginative and ana-
lytical mind, a baron who, like Dupin, is a solitary soul. If scrutinized, the
tale also proves to follow a structure similar to that of “The Murders in
the Rue Morgue”. There is a foreword on the theme which is going to be
dealt with in the tale (the forces of “Metempsychosis”). Additionally, the

presentation of the main character is comparable. A mystery is introduced,
developed and resolved. In this case a horse, represented in a tapestry which
hung from the walls of “a desolate upper apartment of the family palace of
Metzengerstein” (PT 136), was altering its position in front of the horrified
eyes of the young Baron. The mystery develops as the horse, disappearing
from the tapestry, comes to live and becomes the inseparable companion
of the Baron. The mystery is resolved by means of the “deductive powers”
of the young, but also with the help of an assistant who asks the neces-
sary questions to put in motion the mind of the “detective”. It is deduced
that the horse is the reincarnation of his long-time enemy Wilhelm, Count
Berliftzing, who died right at the precise moment in which Metzengerstein
saw the horse leaving the tapestry: “Have you heard of the unhappy death
of the old hunter Belifitzing?” said one of his vassals to the Baron […]. “I-n-
d-e-e-d-!” ejaculated the Baron, as if slowly and deliberately impressed with
the truth of some exciting idea” (PT 138–139).
Again, in 1833 Poe gifted his readers with two characters who can
also be considered as “detectives”, one is the protagonist of “MS. Found
in a Bottle” (1833), who throughout the narration is closely studying
any clue which might be of help to understand his fate (ìAn incident has
occurred which has given me new room for meditation. Are such things
the operation of ungoverned chance? […]. I have made many observa-
tions lately upon the structure of the vessel”, PT 195–197). The other is,
for me, the author’s clearest antecedent of Dupin: the narrator of “The
Assignation” (1833), another of Poe’s less known tales. The “sinful” love
between a Venetian Marchesa and a “stranger” is described here. Worth
noticing is the fact that in this tale it is the narrator himself who possesses
the deductive imagination. When presented with the situation, we are
told that it was night (as in Murders), and a mystery is laid upon our eyes:
the son of the Marchesa di Mentoni falls into the canal and is rescued by a
man “muffed in a cloak” (PT 202). Then the Marchesa is observed to blush
by the attentive eye of the narrator, and the narrator, in consequence, asks
himself why, and shows the reader the wonderings of his mind:
Why should that lady blush! To this demand there is no answer – […] What other
possible reason could there have been for the glance of those appealing eyes – for the
convulsive pressure of those trembling hand? – that hand which fell, accidentally, upon
the hand of the stranger. What reason could there have been for the low – the singu-
larly low tone of those unmeaning words which the lady uttered hurriedly in bidding
him adieu? “Thou hast conquered” – she said – “thou hast conquered – one hour after
sunrise – we shall me – son let it be!” (PT 203).
From there on the narrator continues to guess. He recognises the man,

with whom he had a slight acquaintance, and profusely describes him to
the reader (the same as Dupin is described in Murders), observing (like in
Dupin’s manners) “a degree of nervous unction – an unquiet excitability of
manner which appeared to me at all times unaccountable, and upon some
occasions even filled me with alarm” (PT 208). The narrator then focuses
his attention on the discovery of some data about the origins of that male,
showing, again, deductive procedures equal to those followed by the yet
not conceived Dupin:
I was too well aware of the extent of his acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he
took in concealing them from observation. […] It had been originally written London,
and afterwards carefully overscored – not, however, so effectually as to conceal the word
from a scrutinizing eye. […] I well remember that, in a former conversation, I particu-
larly inquired if he had at any time met […] (PT 209).
And finally, “a consciousness of the entire and terrible truth flashed sud-
denly over” his soul: he deduces that both the stranger and the Marchesa
have agreed to kill themselves at exactly the same hour.
It was still the year 1833: Poe had published these three gothic nar-
ratives, and rationalization is already present in the author. Why do we
usually fail to trace these reasoned intellects? Because we concentrate on
the obvious and pay special consideration to more evident facts; such as
the death of a beautiful woman in “The Assignation”, isolation in “MS”,
and soul transmigration in “Metzengerstein”. But so far (year 1833) Poe
had also published several satiric tales: “The Duc De L’Omelette”, “A Tale
of Jerusalem”, “Loss of Breath”, “Bon-Bon” and “Four Beasts in One”.
If we take, for instance, “Loss of Breath”, we are confronted with a nar-
rator, Mr. Lackofbreath, who acts detective-like in search of his lost breath:
“Although I could not at first precisely ascertain to what degree the occur-
rence had affected me, I determined at all events to conceal the matter
from my wife, until further experience could discover to me the extent of
this my unheard of calamity” (PT 151–152). And, as Dupin, he throws

himself upon a chair and “remains for some time absorbed in medita-
tion” (PT 152). When his wife leaves the house, he returns to “the scene
of [his] disaster” (PT 153), and commences a “vigorous search” (PT
153), which lasts for some time: “Long and earnestly did I continue
the investigation” (PT 153). After many accidents and adversities, Mr
Lackofbreath encounters his breath in possession of the person of his
neighbour, Mr Windenough: “It is impossible to conceive […] the joy
with which I became gradually convinced that the breath so fortunately
caught by the gentleman (whom I soon recognized) was, in fact, the
identical expiration mislaid by myself in the conversation with my wife”
(PT 161).
In the following years both in his gothic and satirical pieces, Poe persists
to research the figure of his Dupin. The narrators of some of the author’s
most discussed pieces of work, those which describe “bewitched” love
stories (“Morella” [1835], “Berenice” [1835], “Ligeia” [1838], and “The
Fall of the House of Usher” [1839]) or which deal with the bi-parted soul
(“William Wilson” [1839]), are masters of solving puzzles. And so are those
of his least known tales, those in which Poe carries on dealing – with great
doses of humour – with the political, economical, literary, etc. facts of the
America of his time (“Mystification” [1837], “How to Write a Blackwood
Article” [1838], “A Predicament” [1838], “The Man That Was Used Up”
[1839], “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” [1839],
and “The Business Man” [1840]). In all of them either the narrator or the
protagonist show their logical abilities, as it can be appreciated in these
excerpts taken from “The Fall of the House of Usher” and from The Man
That Was Used Up”:
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence – an incon-

sistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to
overcome an habitual trepidancy – an excessive nervous agitation. For something of
this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of
certain boyish traits and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conforma-
tion and temperament (PT 321–322).
I […] took a leave of him at once, with a perfect understanding of the true state
of affairs – with a full comprehension of the mystery which had troubled me so long. It
was evident. It was a clear case. Brevet Brigadier General John Smith was the man – was
the man that was used up (PT 316).
In December of 1840, Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine published “The

Man of the Crowd”. According to Gerald Kennedy (185–191), Jonathan
Auerbach (29), and many other critics, this enigmatic masterpiece, which
appeared a few months before Murders, deserves to be considered Poe’s
first tale of ratiocination, the purest kind of detective fiction. The narrator
just wants to “know”, wants to “find out more”: “‘How wild a history’, I
said to myself, ‘is written in that bosom!’ Then came a craving desire to
keep the man in view – to know more of him” (PT 392). As stated, this
piece was soon followed by “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”; since that
publication, Poe has been acclaimed worldwide as the father of modern
detective fiction. Later on he added the “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”
(1842–43) and “The Purloined Letter” (1844) to the Dupin series. Prob-
ably, if it had not been for these two sequels, Dupin would have remained
almost unknown and Poe could hardly be called today the father of mod-
ern detective fiction.4 As I have noted in previous essays (Rigal 2001, 205),
it can be affirmed that many of the ingredients used by subsequent “ratio-
cination” writers re present: a) an intelligent and eccentric detective and
his assistant as the main characters of the story; b) the incompetent police-
man; c) the mystery as the starting point of the story; d) the locked room;
e) the corruption of big cities as a background of the story; f ) the necessity
of applying psychological methods to solve the cases; and g) the relevance
of the procedure followed to resolve the mystery. Thus, he invented the
characters and the procedures. For, as Bloom (85–86) explains, when deal-
ing with these stories, it is not the mystery itself that matters but the steps
given by the analytic observer to disentangle it: “Attention is centered on
the unraveling of the tangled skein rather than on the knot itself. The
emotion aroused is not surprise, it is recognition of the unsuspected capa-
bilities of the human brain”. It should, then, come as no astonishment that
Poe’s main aim was to show the supreme mental capabilities of Dupin.
It is said that the idea of writing Murders came to his mind when,
after having read the first installment of Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge, Poe
believed that he had ascertained who the murderer was. In May 1841, he
published in the Saturday Evening Post an article in which he explained:
“We say in accordance with poetical justice – and in fact, it will be seen
hereafter referring to new installments of Dickens’s work that Barnaby, the
idiot is the murder’s own son” (ER 219). Poe also pointed out that Dickens
had been led to it “less by artistical knowledge and reflection, than by that
intuitive feeling for the forcible and the true, which is the sixth sense of the
man of genius” (ER 213–223). This experience and others, as a recognized
solver of cryptograms (for instance), gave him the confidence of writing a
story in which the clarification of a murder was the major purpose, so that
he could, helped by Dupin, show his own outstanding intelligence (and
the “sixth sense” he thought he possessed) to his reading public.
Even though Poe himself pointed out5: “These tales of ratiocination
[…] – people think them more ingenious than they are – on account of
their method […] Where is the ingeniousity of unraveling a web which
you yourself (the author) have woven for the express purpose of unravel-
ing?” (Ostrom, 1: 328)”, he was very proud of his achievements both with
Murders and “The Purloined Letter”. So pleased was he hat he continued to
recreate the figure of his Dupin, both before and after he had written the two
Dupin’s sequels. However, he never again used the same name. Sometimes,
he played it “serious”, and other times, he played it comic, like in “Three
Sundays in a Week” (1841). (I will go back to it later.) His most achieved
and applauded “duping” reappeared in “The Gold Bug”, published between
the months of June–July 1843, in the Dollar Newspaper; this masterpiece is
also regarded among the best of his ratiocination tales.6 The protagonist, as
it is well known, is Mr. William Legrant. As Dupin, he is a ruined aristocrat
who has retired from society: “To avoid the mortification consequent upon
his disasters, he left New Orleans, the city of his forefathers […]” (PT 560).
Also as in Murders, the narrator and the hero become first acquaintances
and friends afterwards. Legrand is described as “well educated, with unusual
powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse
moods of enthusiasm and melancholy. (Notice that he could be Dupin’s
twin or his double.) The treasure-searching performed by the narrator,
Legrand, and his servant, Jupiter, is similar to the “murder” hunting carried
out by Dupin and his assistant/narrator in Murders. There is no crime, but
there is a mystery unravelled, and there is no Dupin, but Legrand; however,
they are both of the same “flesh”, for he proves to have a superior intellect,
is fond of enigmas and puzzles, and is willing to put his powers to the test.
By deciphering a code on a scrap of paper, he exemplifies Poe’s ideas on
cryptography as expressed in his article “A Few Words on Secret Writing”.7
In relation to this story, Robert Daniel explains that Poe only needed to put
together three of his previous procedures: “His fancied genius for solving
puzzles, the love of paradox that characterizes his reviewing, and the deca-
dent aristocrat who dominates the tales of horror and terror”, 129.
“Three Sundays in a Week”, written some months after Murders des-
cribes the way he narrator, Bobby, and his betrothed manage, thanks to
their deductive minds (and to luck), to tease their grand uncle Rumgudg-
eon8 so that they could finally obtain consent to their marriage. When
first asked, his uncle had abruptly answered: “Well, you shall be married
precisely – precisely, now mind! – when three Sundays come together in a
week!” (PT 475). From here on the young couple seek help (as Dupin), and
encounter it in the person of two naval officers who had just come back
after a year’s absence from London; with their intermission, as they had
“preconcertedly” (PT 477) planned, they got their uncle’s agreement:
Captain Pratt […], when he had sailed twenty-four thousand miles west, was twenty-
four hours […] behind the time at London. Thus, with me [Smitherton], yesterday was
Sunday – thus, with you [Mr. Rumgudgeon], to-day is Sunday – and thus, with Pratt,
to-morrow will be Sunday. And what is more, Mr. Rumgudgeon, it is positively clear
that we are all right; for there can be no philosophical reason assigned why the idea of
one of us should have preference over that of the other (PT 480).
As far as my knowledge goes, it has never been pointed out that Kate, the
narrator’s future wife, could be considered the first woman detective-like
character, and the two of them, the first detective-like couple, since they
both work together in order to deceive their uncle in a prodigious way. Of
course this is another different reading from the ones which are usually
applied to this tale, but it is my “analytical” proposal.
In 1844, Poe produced another two tales in which ratiocination can
be appreciated clearly; the “detective”, in these cases, was a friend who hap-
pened to be nearby the “scene” of the “murder”. I refer to “Thou Art the
Man” and “The Oblong Box”. (It is interesting to note here that although
Stedman and Woodberry – in the first case – and the Levines – in the
second – pointed out the importance of these two tales regarding Poe’s
deductive stories, not many other scholars have done the same.9) Through
both narratives Poe seems to be “deconstructing” his own theory of detec-
tive fiction. In the “Oblong Box” the narrator is not able to deduce what is
inside the box, he investigates in vain, and he is totally wrong. If it had not
been for the captain of the ship, he (and the readers) would have remained
ignorant. However, through the whole of the narrative he is trying to solve
the mystery inside the “mystifying” box. In “Thou Art the Man”, one of
Poe’s most neglected ratiocination tales, the possessor of the deductive mind
is a friend of the wronged guilty, who, by a series of coincidences, is at the
right place in the correct moment, being present when Mr. Goodfellow
promises to take revenge on Pennifeather or when he induces Mr. Shuttle-
worthy to offer him a box of Château Margaux. Due to its satiric tone, as
the narrator himself announces – “This event – which I should be sorry to
discuss in a tone of unsuitable levity – occurred in the summer of […]”,
(PT 728) – the piece is considered as a minor one. However, in it, most of
the characteristics of ratiocination above discussed are present, and it is the
tale – among this type – in which the presence of the cui bono is clearest. It
is also a tale with many morals: people are not what they appear (Mr. Good-
fellow is not “good” and Mr. Pennifeather is not so worried about pennies
as people around him think, the masse is never to be followed. And, above
all, it is a story with many implications for detective fiction: all crimes are
not committed in big cities, the one who seems guiltier is not necessarily
the criminal, the one who is too ready to assist the police is usually guilty of
something, and detection does not necessarily have to be serious.
But these are not the only tales, after the Dupin series, in which ana-
lytical minds can be found. Examples of them are to be found throughout
Poe’s narrative pieces by means of his many characters. For instance, his
murderers – “The Black Cat” (1843), “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), “The
Imp of the Perverse” (1845), “The Cask of Amontillado”(1846), and “Hop-
Frog” (1849) – plan crimes with mathematical precision, and have acute and
awake brains, like Dupin’s. The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” provides
a magisterial example:
You should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded – with what
caution—with what foresight I went to work. […] And now have I not told you that
what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses? […]. If you still think
me mad, you will think me no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for
the concealment of the body (PT 555–559).
Also, the narrators of his sketches – “The Domain of Arnheim” (1842) and
“Landor’s Cottage” (1849) – describe perfectly laid out landscapes, being
the result of scrupulous mathematical arrangements, and providing – as a

consequence – pieces “of composition in which the most fastidiously critical
taste could scarcely have suggested an emendation” (PT 887). The characters
of the “Cosmic Conversations”10 reach “cosmic” knowledge after death, and
proceed like Dupin does in their disquisitions with a system of question-
and-answer discourse. The story-tellers which deal with the subject of soul
transmigration11, when discovering a case of such phenomena, also act like
investigators: “When I first saw you, Mr. Bedloe, it was the miraculous simi-
larity which existed between yourself and the painting, which induced me
to accost you, […] I was urged […] by an uneasy, and not altogether hor-
rorless curiosity respecting yourself ” (PT 66312). And the protagonists of his
last satiric tales13, through humor and criticism (as Dupin does), achieve to
show the deductive powers of satire: “As it is well known that the ‘wise men’
came ‘from the East’, and as Mr. Touch-and-go Bullet-head came from the
East, it follows that Mr. Bullet-head was a wise man” (PT 91714).
Poe, the mystifier, has mystified his public again. Just in the same
way as the Baron Ritzner Von Jung applies the science of mystification to
Hermann (who was said to possess a “logical” talent), Poe has applied it
to us. In consequence, we – readers and researchers – are to blame because
we have failed to notice that ratiocination is one of the major procedures
in Poe’s narrative, present not only in the Dupin series and the pseudo-
detective stories, but in almost his whole production. As it has been proven,
Edgar Allan Poe was, certainly, the father of modern detective fiction, but
he achieved it not only by a series of clues he gave in a few of his stories, but
through a whole philosophy of story-writing that he bequeathed thanks to
his complete narrative. This is why it is only when we study his tales as a
whole that we encounter the greatness of this master of story-telling.
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——. Poetry and Tales. New York: The Library of America, 1984b.
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American Detective Character”. Popular Texts in English. Eds. Lucía
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Notes
1 I am very much indebted to Richard Fusco, from Saint Joseph University for his
attentive reading and skill recommendations on a first and shorter draft of this
paper. I also do thank Kathy Radosta, from The University of Nebraska at Omaha
and Beatriz González, from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, for their kind
suggestions on the final version.
2 Quotations from Poe’s tales are all taken from Edgar Allan Poe. Poetry and Tales. New
York: The Library of America, 1984, hereafter quoted as PT in the text.
3 Quotations from Poe’s tales are all taken from Edgar Allan Poe. Essays and Reviews.
New York: The Library of America, 1984, hereafter quoted as ER in the text.
4 For detailed analyse of these three tales, see Kopley, Gruesser, and Rigal-Aragón and
González-Moreno. For a detailed study of “Murders”, see Burton R. Pollin. For a
detailed explanation of “The Mystery”, see Walsh.
5 In a letter sent to Philip P. Cooke on 9th August 1846.
6 See the very illuminating work of Richard Fusco, 1993.
7 Graham’s Magazine, July 1841 (ER 1277–1291).
8 Frequently it has been pointed out that Poe refers to his foster father, John Allan. But
this is another story.
9 See Fusco, 1.
10 “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” (1840), “The Colloquy of Monos and
Una” (1841), and “The Power of Words” (1845).
11 “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” (1845), “Mesmeric Revelation” (1844), etc.
12 From “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains”.
13 “Three Sundays in a Week” (1841), “Diddling Considered as One of the Exact
Sciences” (1843), “The Spectacles” (1844), “The Angel of the Odd” (1845), “The
Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scherezade” (1845), “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof
Fether” (1845), “Some Words With a Mummy” (1845), “Mellonta Tauta” (1849),
“Von Kemplen and His Discovery” (1849), and “X-ing a Paragraph” (1849).
14 From “X-ing a Paragraph”.
Approaching the Dupin-Holmes
(or Poe-Doyle) Controversy1
BEATRIZ GONZÁLEZ - MORENO

Sherlock Holmes, turning a hook nose and busy eyebrows

toward his friend, cried, “Quick, Watson! The Needle!?” He
had been reading a number of current detective stories to
Craig Kennedy and Dupin in that Literary Limbo where all
good fictional characters go. Holmes, recovering his equa-
nimity, put down the book he was reading with a sigh. “In
my days,” he said, “we ordered things differently. There was
suspense, a certain amount of literary characterization, thrills
that suggested some plausibility, in short,” and Sherlock
Holmes proceeded to fill his large briar pipe, “detective fic-
tion was of some moment.” […] “And I”, said Dupin. “Mon
Dieu! But I was the original deducer. If it had not been for
me none of you would have been conceived.”2
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle arrived in America in 1894 to give a series
of lectures, one of the first questions he had to answer was the following:
“Now, weren’t you influenced by Edgar Allan Poe when you wrote Sherlock
Holmes?,” asked the reporter.
A hush fell in the room. It could be heard as distinctly as if the string of a violin had
snapped, but Dr. Doyle liked the question and replied to it, at once, impulsively:
“Oh, immensely! His detective is the best detective in fiction.”

“Except Sherlock Holmes,” said somebody.
“I make no exception,” said Dr. Doyle very earnestly. “Dupin is unrivaled. It was Poe
who taught the possibility of making a detective story a work of literature.”3
Why the hush? Why was it such a troubling question? Ever since A Study
in Scarlet appeared in 1887, Conan Doyle was accused of paying little, if
any, tribute to Edgar Allan Poe. From the very beginning, critics started to
60 Beatriz González-Moreno
pinpoint Poe’s influence on the British writer but, for many, those “influ-
ences” turned Conan Doyle into an ungrateful plagiarist. When A Study
in Scarlet appeared, The Scotsman said: “This is as entrancing a tale of
ingenuity in tracing out crime as has been written since the time of Edgar
Allan Poe” (in Pascal 2000: 62). Such a remark was certainly flattering for
Conan Doyle, who had always admired the American writer, but it was
also the beginning of a long penance on Conan Doyle’s part for creating a
character whom, paradoxically, he fully disdained.
No doubt, Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), as Dorothy
L. Sayers has pointed out, “constitutes in itself almost a complete manual of
detective theory and practice” (in Stuart 1998: xiv) and it certainly inaugu-
rated what we today think of as the classic formula of detective fiction: the
Watson-like narrator, the so called “locked-room” mystery4, the somewhat
eccentric but brilliantly cerebral detective and the scientific analysis of evi-
dence through deductive reasoning, to quote just a few topics very much
present in Conan Doyle’s stories (Hutchisson 2005: 114 and ss.).5 In a long
but necessary introduction we are informed about the principles of the ana-
lytical deduction by the narrator:
The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little suscep-
tible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among
other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a
source of the liveliest enjoyment. […]. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hiero-
glyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the
ordinary apprehension præternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and
essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition (Poe 1994: 118).
That was the first of the three tales of ratiocination where the reader is
introduced to C. Auguste Dupin, a man endowed with analytical powers.
For Conan Doyle, Poe had come up with the ideal detective, and that was
so because of Monsieur Dupin’s mental acuteness; having acknowledged
that, he had as a “must” that he had to follow in the same main track
(Conan Doyle 2008: 54). In that respect, notice how Conan Doyle has
Sherlock Holmes rephrasing the same ideas in A Study in Scarlet:
Let me see if I can make it clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of events to
them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in
their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few
people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own
inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what
I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically (Doyle 1992: 61).6
Thus, so far we have two characters sharing analytical powers. The idea of
the arm-chair detective was introduced by Poe in “The Mystery of Marie
Rogêt” (1842–43) and Conan Doyle also echoes that idea in A Study in
Scarlet when Holmes declares:
I’m a consulting detective, if you can understand what that is. Here in London we have
lots of government detectives and lots of private ones. When these fellows are at fault,
they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay all the evi-
dence before me, and I am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history
of crime, to set them straight. […]
“But do you mean to say,” I said, “that without leaving your room you can unravel
some knot which other men can make nothing of, although they have seen every detail
for themselves?”
“Quite so. I have a kind of intuition that way. Now and again a case turns up
which is a little more complex. Then I have to bustle about and see things with my
own eye” (1992: 17).
So far, so good. But the fact that in the very same story he had Holmes
criticizing Poe’s Dupin when the British detective was echoing the prin-
ciples of the American was not very welcome.
“It is simple enough as you explain it,” I said, smiling. “You remind me of Edgar Allan
Poe’s Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories.”
Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. “No doubt you think that you are compli-
menting me in comparing me to Dupin,” he observed. “Now, in my opinion, Dupin
was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends’ thoughts
with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour’s silence is really very showy and
superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a
phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine” (1992: 18).7
A letter by M. A. Lesser was published in The New York Times (February

10, 1900) in answer to a correspondent on what was to be termed “the
Dupin-Holmes (or Poe-Doyle) controversy”:
Perhaps the most gaudy example of this kind of freebooter is furnished by Dr. A. Conan
Doyle. His alleged detective, Sherlock Holmes, out of whom he has made so undeserved
a reputation, will be found, by any one who takes the trouble to compare Holmes’s exploits
and methods with those of Dupin, about the crudest and most contemptible imitation
of a strong original in all literary annals […]. He actually endeavours to bluff the reader
and critic off the scent by making Sherlock Holmes resent a suggestion from a friend as to
the likeness between his methods and those of Poe’s Dupin. Holmes asserting airily that
Dupin was clumsy and amateurish in comparison with himself (February 10, 1900).
M. A. Lesser should have noticed that it was Holmes and not Conan Doyle
who was despising Dupin, and that that was simply a literary device, such
as the one used by Poe himself when he had Dupin criticising Vidocq. But
at that stage Conan Doyle did not reply or answer back. Nevertheless, the
controversy was not to abate.
In 1892, the first of many short stories starring Sherlock Holmes, “A
Scandal in Bohemia”, appeared. The story was well-received by the public
and the editor of The Strand Magazine, Greenough Smith, commented:
“I realized that here was the greatest short-story writer since Edgar Allan
Poe”, and he offered Conan Doyle a contract for six Sherlock Holmes mys-
teries (Pascal 2000: 72). Again parallels may be drawn between this story
and Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” (1844). In both of them women play an
important role to the point that they emerge triumphant in the end; both
involve the “purloining” of an item (the Minister’s letter and Irene’s photo-
graph); and in both a distraction is used in solving the mystery.8 This time
it was Harry Houdini who also had something to say.
The magician and Conan Doyle became friends in 1920 during the
former’s tour of England. They both shared a vast knowledge of the spirit
world although their views on the subject were quite the opposite. Conan
Doyle was convinced that Houdini’s ability to unbolt locked doors was
undoubtedly due to mediumistic powers; and whereas the magician tried
to persuade his friend again and again that it all was a trick, Conan
Doyle became even more convinced than before of his friend’s super-
natural powers. In 1923 his friendship was finally destroyed when a
medium Conan Doyle highly supported, Margery (Mina Crandon), was
discredited by Houdini. On December 30, 1924, tired of the frequent
attacks received by the medium’s defenders, the American illusionist
launched a challenge to Margery: to appear with him at Symphony Hall
on January 2 or 3 and produce manifestations he could not explain.9 The
audience packed the hall but she did not turn up. Houdini then started
to denounce the so-called mediums and mocked his ex-friend Conan

Doyle. And when somebody from the audience yelled: “I will tell you
one thing; you can’t fill a house like Conan Doyle did twice!”. Houdini
answered back:
“Well, all right, if ever I am such a plagiarist as Conan Doyle, who pinched
Edgar Allan Poe’s plumes, I will fill all houses […]”
“Do you call him a thief?”
“No, but I say that his story Scandal in Bohemia is only the brilliant letter [sic] by Poe
[…] I walked into his room at the Ambassador Hotel [in Atlantic City] and I saw
twenty books, French, English and German; a paragraph marked out of each one of the
detective stories. I don’t say he used them […]” (Polidoro 2001: 156–157).10
Many accusations between Houdini and Conan Doyle followed. The lat-
ter wrote an article in the Boston Herald (January 26, 1925) defending
Margery “to fight for the truth” and Houdini replied by saying that Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle was “a menace to mankind” (Polidoro 157–158).
That was the end of a strange friendship; and by then, as we will see later on,
Conan Doyle had also seen the end of his fight for his own truth as a writer.
In 1903 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had “The Dancing Men” published
by the Strand magazine (December) and in America by Collier’s Weekly,
December 5, 1903. Only three weeks later, on December 26, Conan
Doyle made headlines again in The New York Times: “Is Conan Doyle a
Plagiarist?”. Such was the result of a letter by Frank H. Warrick, who drew
attention to the similarities between Doyle’s “The Dancing Men” and Poe’s
“The Gold-Bug” (1843).11 The truth is that Conan Doyle did heavily bor-
row from Poe’s tale. The very title is inspired by Poe’s lines at the beginning
of “The Gold Bug”, where he quotes an epigraph from Charles Dibdin’s
All in the Wrong : “What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad !/ He hath
been bitten by the Tarantula” (273). But the most outstanding borrowing
is the one concerned with the frequency letters are used:
Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is e. […]. E however predomi-
nates so remarkably that an individual sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it
is not the prevailing character (Poe 303).
As you are aware, E is the most common letter in the English alphabet, and it
predominates to so marked an extent that even in a short sentence one would expect to
find it most often (Doyle 1993: 163).
Holmes also echoes Legrand’s statement in “The Gold-Bug”:
Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such
riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an
enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve
(Poe 302). What one man can invent, another can discover (Doyle 1993: 165).
But Conan Doyle was not an ungrateful son towards the man whom he
considered the “originator of the detective story” (2008: 55). He did pay
tribute to Edgar Allan Poe and acknowledge the influence received by the
American writer. In 1907 Conan Doyle wrote Through the Magic Door, a
literary tour where he talks about the authors and the books he cherished
and their effect on his life. When referring to the great short stories of the
English language, Conan Doyle does not hesitate:
Poe is the master of all […]. Poe is, to my mind, the supreme original short story writer
of all time […]. To him must be ascribed the monstrous progeny of writers on the
detection of crime […]. If every man who receives a cheque for a story which owes its
spring to Poe were to pay tithe to a monument for the master, he would have a pyramid
as big as that of Cheops (2008: 54–55).
For Conan Doyle two stories are the epitome of perfect excellence: “The
Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Gold-Bug”. “I do not see how
either of those could be bettered” Conan Doyle wrote (2008: 55); narra-
tions which were highly intensified by their principal actors: Dupin in the
one case and Legrand in the other. For Conan Doyle, who firmly believed
that his literary talent lay elsewhere, his first stories introducing Sherlock
Holmes were a poor attempt to pay tribute to someone who could not
be bettered. But homage continues. Conan Doyle honoured the American
writer in London on the occasion of Poe’s centenary. On March 1, 1909,
Conan Doyle gave the Edgar Allan Poe Centenary address at London’s
Hotel Metropole. The New York Times echoed the news and referred to
Conan Doyle as having paid a glowing tribute to Poe’s works when he said:
“It is the irony of Fate that he should have died in poverty, for if every man
who wrote a story which was indirectly inspired by Poe were to pay a tithe
toward a monument it would be such as would dwarf the pyramids” (NYT
1909, March 2).
Nevertheless, Holmes’ words discrediting Dupin in A Study in Scarlet

were not forgotten by many, as well as Conan Doyle’s “borrowings”. In
December 1912, an American humorist named Arthur Guiterman published
a rhymed address in Life magazine entitled “To Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”:
Faith! as a teller of tales you’ve the trick with you!

Still there’s a bone I’ve been wanting to pick with you:
Holmes is your hero of drama and serial:
All of us know where you dug the material!
Whence he was moulded-’tis almost a platitude;
Yet your detective, in shameless ingratitude
Sherlock your sleuthhound with motives ulterior
Sneers at Poe’s “Dupin” as “very inferior!”
Labels Gaboriau’s clever “Lecoq,” indeed,
Merely “a bungler,” a creature to mock, indeed!
This, when your plots and your methods in story owe
More than a trifle to Poe and Gaboriau,
Sets all the Muses of Helicon sorrowing.
Borrow, Sir Knight, but in decent borrowing! (Stashower 2000: 278–279).
This time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle answered back. His rebuttal, entitled “To
an Undiscerning Critic”, appeared in London Opinion on December 28:
Sure there are times when one cries with acidity,

“Where are the limits of human stupidity?”
Here is a critic who says as a platitude,
That I am guilty because “in ingratitude,”
Sherlock, the sleuthhound, with motives ulterior,
Sneers at Poe’s Dupin as very “inferior.”
Have you not learned, my esteemed commentator,
That the created is not the creator?
As the creator I’ve praised to satiety
Poe’s Monsieur Dupin, his skill and variety,
And have admitted that in my detective work,
I owe to my model a deal of selective work.
But is it not on the verge of inanity
To put down to me my creation’s crude vanity?
He, the created, the puppet of fiction,
Would not brook rivals nor stand contradiction.
He, the created, would scoff and would sneer,
Where I, the creator, would bow and revere.

So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle.
The doll and the maker are never identical (Stashower 2000: 279–280).
Conan Doyle never stopped acknowledging Poe’s influence, and given

the fact that he spent the rest of his life loathing the creature that had
come with a life of his own, he was being quite honest when in his
Memoirs (1924), talking about how he came up with the idea of Sher-
lock Holmes, he wrote: “Poe’s masterful detective, M. Dupin, had from
my boyhood been one of my heroes”. And after referring to Joe Bell as
another source of inspiration and how both Holmes and Watson came
into life, he declared: “And so I had my puppets and wrote my Study in
Scarlet” (1989: 74–75). And puppets they were, although many mistook
the puppet for the puppeteer. Conan Doyle looked upon Poe as “the
world’s supreme story writer”, who set before him “a supreme example
of dignity and force in the methods of telling a story” (Conan Doyle
2008: 57). And Poe had what Conan Doyle did not and for this he surely
envied the American writer: an identity of his own as a writer. T.S. Eliot
put it neatly: “Perhaps the greatest of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries is
this: that when we talk of him we invariably fall into the fancy of his
existence […]; Poe is more real than Dupin; but Sir A. Conan Doyle,
the eminent spiritualist of whom we read in Sunday papers, the author
of a number of exciting stories which we read years ago and have forgot-
ten, what has he to do with Holmes?” (Orel 1992: 66).12 The New York
Times finally made amends and depicted both Dupin and Sherlock (Poe-
Doyle) as friends living in the literary limbo where all good fictional
characters go.13
References
Bryan-Brown, Freddy. “The Influence of Edgar Allan Poe on Doyle and

Holmes”. SHJ, 20 (Summer 1992): 124–127.
“Conan Doyle as he appears here”. The New York Times 3 October 1894: 4.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. Memories and Adventures. Oxford: OUP, 1989.
——. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1992.

——. The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1993.
——. Through the Magic Door. Standard Publications, Inc., 2008.
“Dupin and Sherlock Holmes as Book Reviewers”. The New York Times
Magazine 23 January 1921: 44.
Ernst, Bernard M. L., and Hereward Carrington. Houdini and Conan
Doyle: The Story of a Strange Friendship. New York: Albert and Charles
Boni, 1932.
Fleisser, Robert P. “Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes’s Initial
Again”. Baker Street Journal, 41(1991): 226–229.
Fusco, Richard. Fin de Millénaire: Poe’s Legacy for the Detective Story. Balti-
more: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1993.
“Honor Poe in London”. The New York Times 2 March 1909: 4.
Hutchisson, James. Poe. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
Lesser, M. A. “Dupin and Sherlock Holmes”. The New York Times Satur-
day Review Of Books And Art 10 February 1900: BR11.
Orel, Harold. Critical Essays on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Universidad de
Michigan: G. K. Hall & Company, 1992.
Pascal, Janet. Arthur Conan Doyle. Beyond Baker Street. Oxford: Oxford U P,
2000.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Selected Tales. London: Penguin, 1994.
Polidoro, Massimo. Final Séance: the Strange Friendship between Houdini
and Conan Doyle. New York: Prometheus Books, 2001.
Rigal, Margarita. Aspectos estructurales y temáticos recurrentes en la narrativa
breve de Edgar Allan Poe. Cuenca: UCLM, 1998.
——. “Dupin and Quinn: Deconstructing the North American detec-
tive Character”. Popular Texts in English: New Perspectives. Ed. Lucía
Mora and Antonio Ballesteros. Cuenca: Servicio de Publicaciones de
la UCLM, 2001.
——. “La narración policíaca: el nacimiento de un género”. Grandes hitos
de la Historia de la novela euroamericana. Ed. Juan Bravo Castillo. vol.
II. Madrid: Cátedra, 2009 (forthcoming).
Stashower, Daniel. Teller of Tales. The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. London:
Penguin, 2000.
Stuart Davies, David, ed. The Shadows of Sherlock Holmes. Ware: Words-
worth Classics, 1998.
Taylor, Beverly J. “Poe’s The Purloined Letter and Doyle’s A Scandal in

Bohemia: More Alike than Different?” 21 October 2008 <www.
crimeandsuspense.com/Archives/06-09/Poes-PL&Doyles-SIB-arti-
cle-Taylor.pdf>.
Thomas R., Thomas “Edgar Allan Poe’s Influence on Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle”. Part 1 and 2. 9 June 2009 <www.worlds-best-detective-crime-
and-murder-mystery-books.com/poeinfluenceondoyle01-article.
html>.
Warrick, Frank H. “Is Conan Doyle a Plagiarist?” The New York Times
Saturday Review Of Books And Art 26 December 1903: BR10.
Appendix 1
Dupin and Sherlock Holmes as Book Reviewers14
Appendix 2
Main (Dupin-Holmes/Poe-Doyle) Topics:
A Comparison of Different Excerpts15
1. Science of Deduction
• The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in them-

selves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in
their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are
always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of
the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical abil-
ity, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glo-
ries the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives
pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent
into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics;
exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears
to the ordinary apprehension præternatural. His results, brought
about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the
whole air of intuition. (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, 118).
• The was no flaw in any link of the chain. I had traced the secret to its
ultimate result (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, 140).
• “No doubt you will think me fanciful – but I had already established
a kind of connexion. I had put together two links of a great chain”
(“The Gold-Bug”, 297).
• “So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we
are shown a single link of it” (A Study in Scarlet, 17).
• “I hardly expected that you would. Let me see if I can make it clearer.
Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you
what the result would be. They can put those events together in their
minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There
are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be
able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps
were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I
talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically” (A Study in Scarlet, 61).
2. Breaking in on his companion’s thoughts
• “Dupin,” said I, gravely, “this is beyond my comprehension. I do not

hesitate to say that I am amazed, and can scarcely credit my senses. How
was it possible you should know I was thinking of –?”[…]. “Tell me, for
Heaven’s sake,” I exclaimed, “the method – if method there is – by which
you have been enabled to fathom my soul in this matter” […]. “There
are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused
themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their
own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest;
and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently
illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the
goal” (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, 123–124).
• “It is simple enough as you explain it,” I said, smiling. “You remind
me of Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals
did exist outside of stories.” Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe.
“No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in compar-
ing me to Dupin,” he observed. “Now, in my opinion, Dupin was
a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends’
thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour’s silence is
really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no
doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared
to imagine” (A Study in Scarlet, 18).
• “You are right, Watson,” said he. “It does seem a most preposterous
way of settling a dispute.” “Most preposterous!”, I exclaimed, and
then suddenly realizing how he had echoed the inmost thought of
my soul, I sat up in my chair and stared at him in blank amazement.
“What is this, Holmes?” I cried. “This is beyond anything which I
could have imagined.” He laughed heartily at my perplexity. “You
remember,” said he, “that some little time ago when I read you the
passage in one of Poe’s sketches in which a close reasoner follows the

unspoken thoughts of his companion, you were inclined to treat
the matter as a mere tour-de-force of the author. On my remark-
ing that I was constantly in the habit of doing the same thing you
expressed incredulity” (“The Cardboard Box”, 308).
• “So, Watson,” said he, suddenly, “you do not propose to invest in
South African securities?” I gave a start of astonishment. Accustomed
as I was to Holmes’s curious faculties, this sudden intrusion into my
most intimate thoughts was utterly inexplicable. “How on earth do
you know that?” I asked. He wheeled round upon his stool, with a
steaming test-tube in his hand, and a gleam of amusement in his
deep-set eyes. “Now, Watson, confess yourself utterly taken aback,”
said he. “I am.” “I ought to make you sign a paper to that effect.”
“Why?” “Because in five minutes you will say that it is all so absurdly
simple.” “I am sure that I shall say nothing of the kind.” “You see,
my dear Watson” – he propped his test-tube in the rack, and began
to lecture with the air of a professor addressing his class – “it is not
really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent
upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one
simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one’s audi-
ence with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce
a startling, though possibly a meretricious, effect” (“The Dancing
Men”, 151).
3. The Arm-Chair and the Consulting Detective
• “Dupin, sitting steadily in his accustomed arm-chair, was the embodi-

ment of respectful attention” (“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”, 204).
• G.’s saying that he had called to consult us, or rather to ask the opin-
ion of my friend, about some official business which had occasioned
a great deal of trouble (“The Purloined Letter”, 337).
• “It is evidently the theory of some arm-chair lounger who evolves all
these neat little paradoxes in the seclusion of his own study. It is
not practical. I should like to see him clapped down in a third class
carriage on the Underground, and asked to give the trades of all his
fellow-travellers. I would lay a thousand to one against him.” “You
would lose your money,” Sherlock Holmes remarked calmly. “As for
the article I wrote it myself.” […]”Well, I have a trade of my own. I
suppose I am the only one in the world. I’m a consulting detective
[…]” “But do you mean to say,” I said, “that without leaving your
room you can unravel some knot which other men can make nothing
of, although they have seen every detail for themselves?” “Quite so.
I have a kind of intuition that way. Now and again a case turns up
which is a little more complex. Then I have to bustle about and see
things with my own eyes” (A Study in Scarlet, 17).
4. Mocking the police and previous detectives
• The Parisian police, so much extolled for acumen, are cunning, but no
more. There is no method in their proceedings, beyond the method
of the moment. They make a vast parade of measures; but, not unfre-
quently, these are so ill adapted to the objects proposed, as to put
us in mind of Monsieur Jourdain’s calling for his robe-de-chambre –
pour mieux entendre la musique. The results attained by them are not
unfrequently surprising, but, for the most part, are brought about by
simple diligence and activity. When these qualities are unavailing,
their schemes fail. Vidocq, for example, was a good guesser and a
persevering man. But, without educated thought, he erred continu-
ally by the very intensity of his investigations. He impaired his vision
by holding the object too close. He might see, perhaps, one or two
points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost
sight of the matter as a whole (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”,
132–133).
• “You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin. I had no idea that
such individuals did exist outside of stories.” Sherlock Holmes rose
and lit his pipe. “No doubt you think that you are complimenting
me in comparing me to Dupin,” he observed. “Now, in my opin-
ion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. […]. He had some analytical
genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as

Poe appeared to imagine.” “Have you read Gaboriau’s works?” I
asked. “Does Lecoq come up to your idea of a detective?” Sherlock
Holmes sniffed sardonically. “Lecoq was a miserable bungler,” he
said, in an angry voice; “he had only one thing to recommend him,
and that was his energy. That book made me positively ill. The
question was how to identify an unknown prisoner. I could have
done it in twenty-four hours. Lecoq took six months or so. It might
be made a text-book for detectives to teach them what to avoid.” I
felt rather indignant at having two characters whom I had admired
treated in this cavalier style. I walked over to the window, and stood
looking out into the busy street. “This fellow may be very clever,”
I said to myself, “but he is certainly very conceited” (A Study in
Scarlet, 18).
5. Dual Nature of the characters
• “Observing him in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon

the old philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul, and amused myself with the
fancy of a double Dupin – the creative and the resolvent” (“The Mur-
ders in the Rue Morgue”, 123).
• “I found him [Legrand] well educated, with unusual powers of
mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse
moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy” (“The Gold-Bug”,
273–274).
• “Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon
him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on
end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering
a word or moving a muscle from morning to night” (A Study in
Scarlet, 14).
• “Strange,” said I, “how terms of what in another man I should call
laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigour.” “Yes,”
he answered, “there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer, and
also of a pretty spry, sort of a fellow” (The Sign of Four, 113).
6. The Dull World around: no crimes, no criminals
• “The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in them-

selves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in
their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are
always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the
liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability,
delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories
the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives plea-
sure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into
play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, hieroglyphics; exhibit-
ing in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the
ordinary apprehension preternatural. His results, brought about by
the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of
intuition” (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, 118).
• “The Chevalier dismissed the affair at once from his attention, and
relapsed into his old habits of moody reverie. Prone, at all times, to
abstraction, I readily fell in with his humor; and, continuing to occupy
our chambers in the Faubourg Saint Germain, we gave the Future to
the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull
world around us into dreams” (“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”, 200).
• “There are no crimes and no criminals in these days,” he said, queru-
lously. “What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know
well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives
or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of
natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what
is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling
villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard offi-
cial can see through it” (A Study in Scarlet, 18).
• “My mind,” he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give
me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate
analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then
with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I
crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own par-
ticular profession, – or rather created it, for I am the only one in the
world.” “The only unofficial detective?” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“The only unofficial consulting detective,” he answered. “I am the
last and highest court of appeal in detection” (The Sign of Four, 65).
7. The Ordinary […] unusualness of the case
• “I need scarcely tell you,” said Dupin, as he finished the perusal of my

notes, “that this is a far more intricate case than that of the Rue Morgue;
from which it differs in one important respect. This is an ordinary,
although an atrocious instance of crime. There is nothing peculiarly
outré about it. You will observe that, for this reason, the mystery has
been considered easy, when, for this reason, it should have been consid-
ered difficult, of solution” (“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”, 213).
• “The fact is, the business is very simple indeed, and I make no doubt
that we can manage it sufficiently well ourselves; but then I thought
Dupin would like to hear the details of it, because it is so excessively
odd.”
“Simple and odd,” said Dupin.
“Why, yes; and not exactly that, either. The fact is, we have all been
a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us
altogether.”
“Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault,”
said my friend.
“What nonsense you do talk!” replied the Prefect, laughing heartily.
“Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain,” said Dupin (“The Pur-
loined Letter”, 338).
• “Indeed, I have found that it is usually in unimportant matters that
there is a field for the observation, and for the quick analysis of cause
and effect which gives the charm to an investigation. The larger
crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime the more
obvious, as a rule, is the motive” (“A Case of Identity”, 147).
• “As a rule,” said Holmes, “the more bizarre a thing is the less mysteri-
ous it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which
are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to

identify” (“The Red Headed League”, 139).
• “The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more diffi-
cult it is to bring it home” (“The Boscombe Valley Mystery”, 160).
8. The Enigmatic clue
• “In investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so

much asked “what has occurred,” as “what has occurred that has never
occurred before” (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, 135).
• I have before observed that it is by prominences above the plane of
the ordinary, that reason feels her way, if at all, in her search for the
true, and that the proper question in cases such as this, is not so much
“what has occurred?” as “what has occurred that has never occurred
before?” (“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”, 213).
• “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” “The dog
did nothing in the night-time.” “That was the curious incident,”
remarked Sherlock Holmes (“Silver blaze”, 303).
Notes
1 I would like to thank Kathy Radosta, from The University of Nebraska at Omaha for
her kind suggestions on the final version. I am also grateful to Margarita Rigal for her
enthusiasm, support and expertise all this time.
2 “Dupin and Sherlock Holmes as Book Reviewers”, in The New York Times (January
23, 1921). Illustration included in appendix 1.
3 The New York Times (October 3, 1894). During his first American lecture tour,
Doyle visited the grave of Edgar Allan Poe.
4 We can also find this motif in Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”.
5 For an insightful analysis of the origins of detective fiction, see the chapter “La pul-
sión analítica” in Margarita Rigal’s Aspectos estructurales y temáticos recurrentes en la
narrativa breve de Edgar Allan Poe. See also Rigal’s “Dupin and Quinn: Deconstruct-
ing the North American detective Character” for a description of the ingredients in
“The Rue Morgue” used by subsequent authors.
6 Further detailed comparisons can be found in appendix 2.

7 That breaking in on his friend’s thoughts that Holmes is condemning as showy
and superficial will be frequently used, nevertheless, by Holmes himself right at the
beginning in A Study in Scarlet, “The Cardboard Box” and “The Dancing Man” – to
quote just a few. See the appendix for further examples.
8 For a further analysis, see Beverly J. Taylor: “Poe’s The Purloined Letter and Doyle’s
A Scandal in Bohemia: More Alike than Different?”. Also Fleisser: “Poe’s C. Auguste
Dupin and Sherlock Holmes’s Initial Again”.
9 In 1924 Houdini wrote a pamphlet entitled “Houdini Exposes the Tricks Used
by the Boston Medium ‘Margery’ to Win the $2500 Prize Offered by the Scien-
tific American. Also A Complete Exposure of Argamasilla, the Famous Spaniard
who Baffled Noted Scientists of Europe and America, with his Claim to X-Ray
Vision”.
10 For the letters exchanged between Houdini and Conan Doyle, see Bernard M. L.
Ernst and Hereward Carrington. Houdini and Conan Doyle: The Story of a Strange
Friendship. New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1932.
11 For the influence of “The Gold-Bug” on Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of the Four,
see Richard Fusco. Fin de Millénaire: Poe’s Legacy for the Detective Story. Baltimore:
The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1993.
12 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 60 stories (56 short stories and 4 novels) starring
Sherlock Holmes and Watson. His literary talent was more than proven.
13 See the opening quote and the appendix.
14 “Dupin and Sherlock Holmes as Book Reviewers”, in The New York Times (January
23, 1921).
15 Of course, Holmesians can find, and surely have found and will miss, many more
examples. See, for example, Drew R. Thomas’ comprehensive list of passages at <www.
worlds-best-detective-crime-and-murder-mystery-books.com/poeinfluenceondoyle01-
article.html>.
“The Horrors Are Not To Be Denied”:
The Influence of Edgar A. Poe on Ray Bradbury
ÁNGEL MATEOS - APARICIO MARTÍN - ALBO

The micro-arsenic-dose swallowed here prepares you not to

be poisoned and destroyed up ahead. Work in the midst of life
is that dosage. To manipulate life, toss the bright-colored orbs
up to mix with the dark ones, blending a variation of truths.
We use the grand and beautiful facts of existence in order to
put up with the horrors that afflict us directly in our families
and friends, or through newspapers and TV.
The horrors are not to be denied. Who amongst us has
not had a cancer-dead friend? Which family exists where some
relative has not been killed or maimed by the automobile?
I know of none. […] The list is endless and crushing if we do
not creatively oppose it.
Which means writing as cure. Not completely, of
course. You never get over your parents in the hospital or your
best love in the grave.
I won’t use the word “therapy,” it’s too clean, too sterile a
word. I only say when death slows others, you must leap to set up
your diving board and dive ahead into your typewriter.
The poets and artists of other years, long past, knew
all and everything I have said here. […]
Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing.
The influence of Edgar Allan Poe (Boston, 1809–Baltimore, 1849) on

Ray Bradbury (Waukegan, Illinois, 1920–) is quite evident and emerges
in several aspects of his work. At a first glance, most readers would easily
recognize the similarities in style, setting and atmosphere in the work
of both writers, as well as their preference for a sumptuous language
that often does not correspond with the gruesome nature of their plots
and crooked machinations of their characters. This initial resemblance,
80 Á ngel Mateos-Aparicio Martín-Albo
however, can easily be understood in the context of a longer literary

tradition to which both of them belong. Poe and Bradbury use pro-
fusely the conventions, settings and themes of Gothic literature, and
stand out as prominent examples of the American contribution to this
tradition, together with other well-established writers like Washington
Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ambrose Bierce. Existent critical ana-
lyses have focused mainly on the issue of Poe’s influence on Bradbury
from this perspective, and have thus treated the similarities between the
two writers in the context of the overall importance of Gothic litera-
ture in Bradbury’s narrative, often disagreeing in the role played by Poe
in the formation of the Gothic style, setting and themes of the writer
from Illinois. Nevertheless, the analysis of the specific literary connec-
tion between the two writers has received little critical attention, and this
absence is more significant because there are several works focusing on
the individual influence of Poe on other authors of the American Gothic
tradition, like Hawthorne or Bierce.1 As a consequence, this chapter will
therefore transcend this general approach; on the contrary, it will center
on the particular incorporation of Poe’s motifs into Bradbury’s literary
universe and will try to offer a new insight into Bradbury’s reception
and interpretation of Poe’s literary production as well as into the points
where Bradbury’s work diverges from the Bostonian’s.
Bradbury’s name tends to be associated mainly with science fiction lit-
erature, due to the fact that his two best-known novels, The Martian Chronicles
(1951) and Fahrenheit 451 (1953), belong clearly to this genre. However,
a more comprehensive analysis of his narrative reveals that the author from
Illinois has written several novels and short stories influenced by the most
significant elements of the Gothic tradition. Stories like “Skeleton”, “The
Small Assassin”, or “The Scythe”, and novels such as Something Wicked
This Way Comes (1962) and The Halloween Tree (1972) are good examples
of Bradbury’s Gothic production and justify the author’s position in the
American Gothic tradition. However, Bradbury’s style is as indebted to the
Gothic tradition as it is devoted to the innovation of Gothic conventions.
His narrative blends Gothic and science fiction elements, and in his stories
it is common to find rockets, astronauts, Martians, atomic holocausts and
time travel sharing the setting and the plot with mummies, skeletons, ruins,
haunted houses, dark basements, cemeteries and corpses. As a result of this
“The Horrors Are Not To Be Denied”: The Influence of Edgar A. Poe on Ray Bradbury 81
mixture, Bradbury’s style transformed the writing of science fiction as it was

understood in the United States in the 1950s and revitalized the American
Gothic, setting the author in a privileged place in both traditions and in a
unique position in his contemporary literary context.
The influence of the Gothic tradition in general and of Poe’s work in
particular thus played an essential role in the development of Bradbury’s
style and fictional universe, as both the author himself and the critics who
have analyzed his work have remarked. In Zen in the Art of Writing (1992),
a collection of miscellaneous and unstructured essays on childhood reading
preferences, references to favorite writers, reflections on the nature of fiction
and advice for future writers, Bradbury singles out Edgar A. Poe as one of
his major literary influences on his formation as a writer: “I wrote at least a
thousand words a day from the age of twelve on. For years Poe was looking
over one shoulder, while Wells, Burroughs, and just about every other writer
in Astounding and Weird Tales looked over the other” (1992: 15). The writer
from Illinois even confesses that some of his first writings were attempts to
imitate Poe and other authors with little success:
I grew up reading and loving the traditional ghost stories of Dickens, Lovecraft, Poe,
and later, Kuttner, Bloch, and Clark Ashton Smith. I tried to write stories heavily influ-
enced by various of these writers, and succeeded in making quadruple layered mudpies,
all language and style, that would not float, and sank without a trace. I was too young
to identify my problem, I was too busy imitating (Bradbury 1992: 14).
The result of this mixture of Gothic and science fictional influences in Brad-
bury’s formative years as a writer is his peculiar style, where the scientific
aridity predominant in the American science fiction of the 1940s and 1950s
is penetrated and softened by the nostalgia for a past full of magic, imagina-
tion and tame horror. Thus, Bradbury’s style, although explicitly belonging
to science fiction, generates an effect that William Touponce describes as
“reverie” (1984: xiii), as well as a distinct vision of the imaginary universe
of science fiction that Eric S. Rabkin named “fairyland” (1980: 111) and
Brian Aldiss called “Teddy-bearish view of the universe” (1986: 247).
However, the specific influence of Poe’s work on Ray Bradbury goes
beyond the use of a number of stylistic features belonging to the Gothic
tradition. In fact, a brief comparison of their literary careers will render a
revealing parallelism between the two authors. On the one hand, Poe’s major
literary production consists recognizably of short stories where the Gothic

elements are predominant and which were compiled in collections like Tales
of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1839) and The Gift for 1845 (1844). Yet the
writer from Boston has also become part of the American literary canon for
his poetry, with poems like “The Raven” and “Al Aaraaf”, for his critical and
aesthetic essays, the most significant of which could be “The Philosophy of
Composition” (1846) and “The Poetic Principle” (1850), and he even tried
longer narrative forms, like The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838). At
the same time, he is widely recognized as the creator of some modern narra-
tive genres: science-fiction itself, with pioneering stories such as “The Facts
in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845) and “Mellonta Tauta” (1849) and the
detective genre, where his stories “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)
and “The Purloined Letter” (1844) stand out as the first example of what
was to become a new literary expression.2 On the other hand, Bradbury’s
literary production consists of novels that indisputably belong to science fic-
tion (see above) as well as others where the magic, Gothic, or fantastic atmo-
sphere is predominant, like Dandelion Wine (1957) and Something Wicked
This Way Comes (1962). Bradbury also wrote two novels that blend detective
fiction elements and conventions (murder, mystery, investigation, gumshoe
detective and final confession, for instance) with fictional autobiography:
Death Is a Lonely Business (1985) and A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990). Like
Poe, Bradbury has shown a marked preference for short narrative forms, as
the long list of his short story collections demonstrates: The Golden Apples of
the Sun (1953), The October Country (1955), The Machineries of Joy (1964)
or I Sing the Body Electric (1960), to mention just a few. His literary career
also includes poetry books, plays and cinema scripts, such as his film adapta-
tion of Moby Dick (directed by John Huston in 1956), as well as a number
essays compiled in Zen in the Art of Writing (1990), where the author reflects
on the nature of literary creativity and inspiration. Poe’s and Bradbury’s ver-
satility is noteworthy, as this review of their literary careers shows, and the
comparison between Poe’s and Bradbury’s literary productions reveals not so
much a dependency but a coincidence of interests and tastes.
Academic criticism has not overlooked the influence of Poe on Ray
Bradbury, but has rather focused on the general importance of Gothic
elements in Bradbury’s narrative. In Trillion-Year Spree, his well-known
history of science fiction, British science fiction writer and critic Brian Aldiss
described this influence from a broad perspective, and stated: “Bradbury is

of the house of Poe” (1986: 248). In more specialized studies, other critics
have recognized Poe’s influence on Bradbury in general but have introduced
new nuances. Hazel Pierce, for instance, agreed that the use of Gothic
conventions, themes and settings in Bradbury’s work justified his position in
the American Gothic tradition and suggested that Poe’s influence was deci-
sive in the development of Bradbury’s Gothic atmosphere: “Poe is a major
link between Ray Bradbury and the Gothic Tradition” (1980: 169). Con-
trarily, David Mogen argued that Bradbury intended mainly to imitate Poe’s
exuberant style, but the allegorical and mythical connotations of his narra-
tive, as well as his specifically American imagery had rather been inspired by
Hawthorne and Melville (1986: 31–32). Similar studies also highlight the
significance of Gothic elements in Bradbury’s fictional universe, but instead
of focusing on possible sources, they emphasize the subversive power of the
use of Gothic elements and an ornate style in science fiction. According to
Marvin E. Mengeling, for example, the primary objective of Bradbury’s use
of allegorical, symbolic, and fantastic elements, as well as mystery, horror
and suspense was to undermine the conventions of the science fiction genre,
where the faith in science and technology went unchallenged. Using Gothic
and science fiction elements simultaneously allowed Bradbury to maintain
a connection between past and future that Mengeling calls “a kind of futur-
istic anachronism” (1980: 102). According to this critic, Bradbury believed
that the enthusiasm for science and technology should not mean the ban-
ishment of human emotion and sentiment from science fiction literature.
Robin Ann Reid expands the subversive nature of Bradbury’s style, adding
to the mixture of science fiction and fantasy the ambiguous relationship
between Bradbury’s literary production and canonical or mainstream litera-
ture, which will also mean the end of the academic marginalization of these
two genres (2000: 10–13). In short, as a consequence of the influence of
Gothic literature in general and of Poe’s fictional universe and style in par-
ticular, Bradbury’s narrative intends to counteract the strictly scientific view
of reality with a perception enriched with mystery and illusion.
Nevertheless, the recognition of Poe’s influence on Bradbury has
not lead to studies that center on the particularities of this influence. As
mentioned above, most critical analyses tend to read Poe’s influence on
Bradbury as a part of the overall importance of the Gothic tradition in
the inspiration of the writer from Illinois. However, the analysis of Poe’s
direct influence on two short stories by Bradbury where the references to
Poe are obvious and have a marked intertextual intention should provide a
new insight into the actual consequences of Bradbury’s use of Poe’s work.
Similarly, the comparison between Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and
Bradbury’s “Some Live Like Lazarus”, two short stories whose common
points are not evident at first sight, should clarify how Poe’s motifs has
been assimilated and revised by Bradbury.
Contrary to what it may seem, it is not an easy task to find sto-
ries where Poe’s influence is explicit, because Bradbury’s short stories only
rarely use identifiable settings or characters from Poe’s works. The writer
from Illinois has his own particular fictional universe, and uses Poe’s stories
for his own purposes. In this sense, two short stories stand out because they
incorporate direct references to Poe and to his work: “Usher II” and “Pillar
of Fire”. The first one has a Martian theme and therefore belongs to the
group of stories that compose Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950),
although it was removed from later editions of the novel and included in
another collection of short stories that could work as a novel: The Illustrated
Man (1952).3 “Pillar of Fire” was first published in 1948 and was later
included in the collection A Medicine for Melancholy (1960), whose 1990
edition is used here. These two stories include direct references to Poe and
are examples of an intertextual play between the two authors. “Usher II”
begins with a quotation from “The Fall of the House of Usher” (the initial
description of the house) and recounts the story of Mr William Stendahl,
an eccentric millionaire who travels to Mars in order to build the equiva-
lent of a theme park inspired by Poe’s stories: the House of Usher itself. The
story has a strong social and political criticism. Stendahl is in fact escaping
from an over-moralizing tendency that has overcome creative freedom on
Earth, establishing a hard censorship on all cultural expressions that do not
fit into the ideology of the “Clean-Minded people” (Bradbury 1995: 105).
Mystery, horror and detective tales have been banned and the “Society
for the Prevention of Fantasy” promotes a strict control over culture. The
Gothic thrills of Poe’s stories have been forgotten, and Bradbury’s point is
that the over-emphasis on a scientific, technological and utilitarian society
deprives humans of imagination. The members of “Society for the Preven-
tion of Fantasy” are described as “Spoil-Funs” (Bradbury 1995: 112), and
represented as repressive authorities: Garret, an “Investigator of the Moral

Climates”, is sent to check on the morality of Stendahl’s establishment.
The mere mention of the words “horror”, “blood”, and “death” to Garret
suffice to convince him to shut down Stendahl’s horror mansion:
An old witch sat in a niche, quivering her wax hands over some orange-and-blue tarot
cards. She jerked her head and hissed through her toothless mouth at Garret, tapping
her greasy cards.
“Death!” she cried.
“Now that’s the sort of thing I mean,” said Garret. “Deplorable!” […] “I must say
you’re taking this all so well.”
“It was just enough to be able to create this place. To be able to say I did it. To say I nur-
tured a medieval atmosphere in a modern, incredulous world” (Bradbury 1995: 107).
Like his haunted fun-house, Stendahl’s response to Garret is inspired by

Poe. He promises Garret to burn the house but invites him to attend a
farewell party before doing it. The party turns out to be a costume ball,
where Stendahl has planned to kill all the moral authorities that come to
witness the destruction of his Martian House of Usher. As it happens in
Poe’s “Hop-Frog”, the ball is in fact a set-up, and the guests die one by one
in different traps or killed by robot vampires, witches and wild dogs. But
the destiny reserved for Garret is particularly macabre, and is presented as
a playful game with the reader:
‘What do you want to show me down here?’

‘Yourself killed.’
‘A duplicate?’
‘Yes. And also something else.’
‘What?’
‘The Amontillado,’ said Stendhal, going ahead with a blazing lantern which he held
high. Skeletons froze half out of coffin lids. Garrett held his hand to his nose, his face
disgusted.
‘The what?’
‘Haven’t you ever heard of the Amontillado?’
‘No!’
‘Don’t you recognize this?’ Stendahl pointed to a cell.
‘Should I?’
‘Or this?’ Stendahl produced a trowel from under his cape, smiling.
‘What’s that thing?’
‘Come,’ said Stendahl (Bradbury 1995: 117).
Contrary to what happens in “The Cask of Amontillado”, where the reader

never finds out why Montresor kills Fortunato, Stendahl’s revenge seems
well deserved and is justified by Stendhal: “[D]o you know why I’ve done
this to you? Because you burned Mr Poe’s books without really reading
them. You took other people’s advice that they needed burning. Otherwise
you’d have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down
here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr Garret” (Bradbury 1995: 119).
Although also resulting in death, Bradbury’s ending introduces a justifica-
tion that adds a moral and a didactic element to the story. There is not
only a criticism of ideological censorship and political authoritarianism,
but also of the social rejection of fantasy and imagination in favor of a
“rational” single view of reality.
The references to Poe raise similar issues in “Pillar of Fire”. This story,
included in the collection A Medicine for Melancholy (1960), is set in the
23rd century and describes a society where death is treated unemotionally
and corpses and dispatched with the same cold efficiency one would use
to burn city waste. This rational and ultra-hygienic world is upset by the
body of a dead man, William Lantry, who comes back to life and starts to
decompose after three hundred years, as if awakened from a mesmerism
process like Valdemar’s body in Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M Valde-
mar”. Lantry’s walking and stinking cadaver is a threat to the social stabil-
ity of the 23rd century and a challenge to its rationalistic and dispassionate
world-view, just as Poe’s stories were a threat to nineteenth-century posi-
tivism. The decomposing body of Lantry is a link with a past where issues
like death were not treated matter-of-factly. Poe’s Gothic stories, which
often deal with death, murder and ghosts, remain in Lantry’s memory as a
threat to the dominant frame of reference:
“May I help you?”
He looked at the librarian. May I help you, may I help you. What a world of helpful
people! “I’d like to ‘have’ Edgar Allan Poe.” This verb was carefully chosen. He didn’t
say read […].
“What was that name again?”
“Edgar Allan Poe.”
“There is no such author listed in our files.”
“Will you please check?”
She checked. “Oh, yes. There’s a red mark on the file card. He was one of the authors
in the Great Burning of 2265.”
“How ignorant of me.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “Have you ever heard much of him?”
“He had some interesting barbarian ideas on death,” said Lantry.
“Horrible ones,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Ghastly.”
“Yes. Ghastly. Abominable, in fact. Good thing he was burned. Unclean […]”
(Bradbury 1990a: 161–162).
The totalitarian nature of this society is here represented by Bradbury’s

favorite symbol for repressive social and political systems, the burning of
books, which is the major fictional element of Fahrenheit 451. Burning
Poe’s books indicates the rejection of all Gothic pleasures. Poe’s literary
universe is therefore essential for the interpretation of these stories, even if
“Usher II” and “Pillar of Fire” belong clearly to Bradbury’s science fiction,
as their futuristic setting suggests.
Poe’s influence is even more obvious when Bradbury’s imagination
turns to the Gothic tradition for inspiration, as it happens in short story
collections such as The October Country (1955) and The Machineries of Joy
(1964). In this sense, the comparative analysis of Bradbury’s “Some Live
Like Lazarus” and Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” reveals underlying
narrative patterns that are common to both writers although perhaps they
are not evident at first sight. Bradbury’s “Some live like Lazarus” (1960)
was originally published as “Very Late in the Evening” in the Playboy mag-
azine. Like Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”, it is the story of a plan to
commit murder. In Poe’s story, Montresor, one of the two main characters,
plans his friend Fortunato’s death as a consequence of his unmentionable
insults. Murder is also the fictional element that links Anna Marie and
Roger Harrison in “Some Live Like Lazarus”, where they intend to kill
Roger’s mother because she disapproves of their love. Both stories are nar-
rated in the first person (by Montresor and Anna Marie, respectively) to
enhance the effect of the narrators’ secret confession of their evil deeds.
Moreover, the narrators seem to tell their stories long after the assassina-
tions occurred, so the reader has to assume that they have already carried
out their plans and have escaped justice. “Some Live Like Lazarus” begins
as follows:
You won’t believe it when I tell you I waited more than sixty years for a murder, hoped
as only a woman can hope that it might happen, and didn’t move a finger to stop
it when it finally drew near. Anna Marie, I thought, you can’t stand guard forever.
Murder, when ten thousand days have passed, is more than a surprise, it is a miracle
(Bradbury 2000: 129).
Suspense, horror, and perhaps a morbid curiosity immediately attract the

reader’s attention due to the mention of murder this early in the narrative,
as it happens in “The Cask of Amontillado”:
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured
upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not
suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged, this
was a point definitely settled – but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved
precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity […].
It must be understood that neither by word or by deed had I given Fortunato
cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face,
and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation
(Poe 1986: 360).
The first paragraphs of both stories condense two moral dilemmas the
reader has to confront: the justification of the murders and the question of
impunity. On the one hand, the murders are justified by the evil nature of
the victims. In “The Cask of Amontillado”, Montresor describes Fortunato
as a perverse character who is prone to vanity and controlled by his vices.
Montresor uses these defects of Fortunato’s personality as an excuse for his
crime. At least theoretically, Fortunato seems to have a chance to escape if
his behavior does not fulfill Montresor’s expectations. As a consequence,
Montresor’s guilt becomes an issue for reflection by the reader. Similarly,
in “Some Live Like Lazarus” Anna Marie describes Mrs Harrison as an old,
egoistic crone who judges people according to the benefit she can get from
them. In Mrs Harrison’s mind, George’s function is to keep her company
while Anna Marie’s is just waiting on her. Besides, Anna Marie belongs to
a different social class and does not qualify as her son’s girlfriend:
She eyed me as I set her ice-cream sundae down before her, and eyed Roger as he said,
“Mother, I want you to meet –”
“I do not meet girls who wait on public tables,” she said, “I acknowledge they
exist, work, and are paid. But I immediately forget their names” (Bradbury 2000:
132–133).
Anna Marie’ hostility thus seems well justified by Mrs Harrison’s contemp-
tuous attitude. Also, her opposition to the lovers’ desires is a perfect (and
romantic) excuse to win the reader’s understanding.
On the other hand, the question of impunity is essential for the

story’s suspense and effect. The narrators, Montresor and Anna Marie,
recount the story from the vantage point of the present: the events they
are describing happened long ago in the time of the narration. This means
that suspense does not depend so much on whether they are going to com-
mit the crime or not, but on whether they will do so with impunity. Again
the question is a moral one: whatever the motives of a crime, the act is still
immoral. Like Montresor, Anna Marie speculates about how to carry out
their plans:
‘But if she did, if she took a turn for the worse, I mean, in the next two months –’ He
searched by face. He shortened it. ‘The next month, Anna, two weeks, listen, if she
died in two short weeks, would you wait that long, would you marry me then?!’ […]
‘But how can you be sure?’
‘I’ll make myself sure! I swear she’ll be dead a week from now, or I’ll never bother you
again with this!’
‘Roger, don’t – ’ I cried.
But my mind thought, Roger do, do something, anything, to start it all or end it all.
That night in bed I thought, what ways are there for murder that no one could know?”
(Bradbury 2000: 134).
At this moment in the narrative, tension in both stories is at its highest.

However, on their way to resolution, “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Some
Live Like Lazarus” begin to diverge. Poe’s story is coherent with the morbid
expectations generated at the beginning and the plot continues to narrate
Fortunato’s descent into Montresor’s deadly trap. No ghastly details are omit-
ted; Montresor’s resolve is not moved by Fortunato’s appeals to clemency. By
contrast, the narrative of “Some Live Like Lazarus” intentionally delays the
moment of murder. For all his promises, Roger does not dare to kill his
mother and when the pressure to do so becomes too high he attempts to
commit suicide. When Mrs Harrison’s servants come running to her house,
Anna Marie thinks he has finally done it. However, she soon finds out the
truth. Bradbury plays with the reader’s expectations:
The second day of the week, the third, the fourth and then the fifth and sixth passed,
and on the seventh day one of the maids came running up the path, shrieking.
“Oh, it’s terrible, terrible.”
“Mrs. Harrison?” I cried. I felt a terrible and quite uncontrollable smile on my face.
“No, no, her son! He’s hung himself!”
“Hung himself?” I said ridiculously, and found myself, stunned, explaining to her. “Oh,
no, it wasn’t him was going to die, it was –” I babbled. I stopped, for the maid was
clutching, pulling my arm.
“We cut him down, oh, God, he’s still alive, quick!” (Bradbury 2000: 136).
Roger is finally unable to fulfil his promise and the story begins its journey
toward an anti-climactic solution. Anna Marie gets married with some-
body else and Roger continues in his mother’s service. Times goes by and
Mrs Harrison dies a natural death, which Roger interprets as the eventual
fulfilment of his promise to Anna Marie. Roger believes he has finally
murdered his mother and is free to enjoy Anna Marie’s company. In a way,
he is too proud to admit the truth (perhaps like Fortunato). Instead of a
story of unabated hate like “The Cask of Amontillado”, “Some Live Like
Lazarus” can be read as precisely the opposite. The murder is never carried
out, and the final sentence of the story reveals Anna Marie’s forgiveness:
“I do not hate Roger any more” (Bradbury 2000: 140). The story’s end
contradicts the mounting tension generated at the beginning of the narra-
tion and Bradbury’s playful irony seems to substitute Poe’s bleak vision of
human nature.
This analysis of “Some Live Like Lazarus” proves the influence of Poe
on Bradbury’s narrative, but it also represents the differences between the two
writers. In “The Cask of Amontillado”, Poe is coherent with the expecta-
tions he generates at the beginning of the story, and he turns the story into
a symbol of the darkness of the human heart. Montresor perpetrates Fortu-
nato’s murder, and the reader has to accept Montresor’s victory and justice’s
failure. Whatever the seriousness of Fortunato’s insults, Montresor is a cold
and calculating murderer. Besides, Poe takes pleasure in enhancing the horror
of the act, because he spares the reader no macabre details in the description
of Fortunato’s death. The moral issues raised by the story are left unresolved
because they are less important that the aesthetic and emotional response
of the reader. By contrast, Bradbury’s story of a murder looks rather like an
enjoyable game. The murder is never carried out; the horror becomes a kind
of “frisson” and readers can identify themselves with Anna Marie on safer
ground. Roger’s lack of resolve and the final irony avert the assassination. The
effect of Bradbury’s story is like the chill one gets at a fairground attraction:
hair-raising and intense, but brief, liberating and playful. Bradbury’s view of
human nature turns out to be optimistic where Poe’s was bleak.
The most probable explanation for this difference can be found in the
writers’ approaches to the question of literature. Both Poe and Bradbury
have written essays on the nature of literature and on the most effective
ingredients of narrative. These essays provide first-hand information about
their inspiration and objectives when writing. Poe’s “The Philosphy of Com-
position” and Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing concur that short narra-
tive forms allow narrations to focus on single ideas or theses and readers
to perceive these ideas as a unified whole. Nevertheless, Poe states that his
stories aim to produce an intellectual, sentimental or irrational effect on
the reader: “I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect […]. I
say to myself in the first place, ‘Of the innumerable effects or impressions,
of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible,
what shall I, on the present occasion, select?’” (Poe 1986: 480). Contrarily,
Bradbury believes that the most important element of a short story is the
idea the writer wants to communicate. The goal of this message, teaching or
moral is to criticize some negative aspect of the modern technological and
rational world. He states: “So simply then, here is my formula. What do you
want more than anything else in the world? What do you love, or what do
you hate?” (Bradbury 1992: 7). The way Bradbury understands literature
thus contrasts deeply with Poe’s rejection of the didactic component. As the
Bostonian explains in “The Poetic Principle”, literature should not be mor-
alizing: “I allude to the heresy of The Didactic. It has been assumed tacitly
and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is
Truth. Every poem, it is said should inculcate a moral; and by this moral is
the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. We Americans especially have
patronized this happy idea. […]” (Poe 1986: 503). For Bradbury, the sources
of the best short stories are normally to be found in the writer’s own experi-
ences, especially if those experiences are directly put in words: “In quickness
is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest
you are” (1992: 13). Literature may hence convey truth when the writer’s
emotions are spilt onto the pages. And the writer must also aim to teach
something about reality.
The realities both writers were reacting against have in fact much
in common. After its troublesome and violent beginning, the nineteenth
century advanced toward the consolidation of rationalism and positivism.

Together with the rapid progress of modern science and technology, the
dominant ideological framework was relegating all non-rational expressions
of human experience as old-fashioned curiosities of an uncivilized past.
Poe’s sonnet “To Science” is an example of the author’s complains about the
destruction of the realm of the poetic. The heyday of Gothic literature had
already passed when Poe published his grotesque and arabesque stories and
his literary production expresses his resolution to continue with a literary
tradition that was losing ground in favor of realism. Unwilling to adapt to
this new reality, Poe obstinately kept on using the style and themes of the
Gothic, as H. Bruce Franklin suggests: “[Poe] preferred to look away from
physical and social reality […] towards his own illusory theories, unwork-
able intentions and imagined terrors” (Franklin 1978: 102–103). Similarly,
Bradbury reacted against a time when technology and science aspired to
dominate all aspects of reality. He also deplored the relegation of emotions
and thrills, but instead of representing mysteries and horrors as it had been
done in the past, he decided to adapt them to the new world-view. His
literary motifs are therefore a mixture of Gothic and technological ele-
ments, and his style remains highly poetic and evocative although dealing
with namely cold and rational technological realities. Bradbury’s attitude
is hence inclusive, and his main goal is to revitalize emotion, mystery and
imagination in a world that seems to have forgotten these sensations. For all
their twentieth-century technological and scientific prowess, humans still
have to face bleak prospects like death, fear and suffering. These horrors
are not to be denied, but Bradbury’s narrative helps to domesticate them
by celebrating the value of imagination as an essential part of the human
experience.
References
Aldiss, Brian. Trillion Year Spree. London: Victor Gollancz, 1986.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Ray Bradbury: Modern Critical Views. Philadelphia:
Chelsea House, 2001.
Bradbury, Ray. A Medicine for Melancholy. New York: Avon, 1990a (1960).
——. The Golden Apples of the Sun. New York: Avon, 1990b (1964).
——. Zen in the Art of Writing. Santa Barbara: Bantam, 1992.
——. The Illustrated Man. London: Flamingo, 1995 (1952).
——. The Machineries of Joy. London: Simon and Schuster, 2000 (1998).
Franklin, H. Bruce. Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nine-
teenth Century. Oxford: OUP, 1978 (1966).
Greenberg, Martin H. and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Ray Bradbury. New
York: Taplinger, 1980.
Hoskinson, Kevin. “Ray Bradbury’s Cold War Novels”. Bloom 125–140.
Johnson, Wayne L. Ray Bradbury. New York: Frederic Ungan, 1980.
——. “The Invasion Stories of Ray Bradbury”. Bloom 29–38.
Mengeling, Marvin E. “The Machineries of Joy and Despair: Bradbury’s
Attitudes toward Science and Technology”. Greenberg and Olander
83–109.
Miller, Arthur M. “The Influence of Edgar Allan Poe on Ambrose Bierce”.
American Literature 4.2 (May 1932): 130–150.
Mogen, David. Ray Bradbury. Boston: Twyane Publishers, 1986.
Pierce, Hazel. “Ray Bradbury and the Gothic Tradition”. Greenberg and
Olander 165–185.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings.
Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1986.
Pollin, Burton R. “Victor Hugo and Poe”. Revue de littérature comparée
42.4 (1968): 494–520.
——. “Poe and Henry James: A Changing Relationship”. Yearbook of
English Studies 3 (1972): 232–243.
Purdy, S. B. “Poe and Dostoyevsky”. Studies in Short Fiction 4.2 (1967):
169–172.
Rabkin, Eric S. “To Fairyland by Rocket: Bradbury’s The Martian Chron-
icles”. Greenberg and Olander 110–126.
Richard, C. “Poe et Hawthorne”. Études anglaises 22.4 (1969): 351–361.
Reid, Robin Anne. Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion. Westport: Green-
wood Press, 2000.
Rhodes, S.A. “The Influence of Poe on Baudelaire”. Romanic Review
18 (1927): 329–334.
Sprout, M. “The influence of Poe on Jules Verne”. Revue de littérature com-
parée 41.1 (1967): 37–53.
Slusser, George E. The Bradbury Chronicles. San Bernardino: The Borgo

Press, 1977.
Tarbox, R. “Blank Hallucinations in the Fiction of Poe and Hemingway”.
American Imago 24.4 (1967): 312–41.
Touponce, William F. Ray Bradbury and the Poetics of Reverie. Ann Arbor:
UMI Research Press, 1984.
Notes
1 See Arthur M. Miller and C. Richard. The number of academic articles dealing
with Poe’s influence on other American and European writers is considerable and
includes Henry James (Pollin 1972), Hemingway (Tarbox 1967) and (not surpris-
ingly) Baudelaire (Rhodes 1927), Victor Hugo (Pollin 1968) and Dostoyevski (Purdy
1967), to mention just a few. There is even a paper about the influence of Poe on
Jules Verne (Sprout 1967). Considering Poe’s evident influence of Bradbury, the lack
of a specific study is noteworthy.
2 Poe’s position as the creator and first writer of detective fiction is virtually unanimous
in the critical works dealing with this genre; however, his role in the development of
science fiction is much more controversial.
3 The Martian Chronicles is not a novel in the conventional sense but a series of short
stories which share the theme of the colonization of Mars. Critics have nevertheless
treated it as a novel because they have felt this unity of theme. The case of The Illus-
trated Man is more controversial. George Slusser considers the book as a collection of
stories (Slusser 1977: 9) and Kevin Hoskinson does not mention it in his analysis of
Bradbury’s Cold War novels (Hoskinson 2002: 126–139), but Robin A. Reid treats it
as a novel (Reid 2000: 20; 37–52), arguing that some of Bradbury’s novels originated
as short story collections.
PART THREE
POE, AESTHETICS AND
THE USE OF LANGUAGE
Poe’s Poetry: Melancholy and the Picturesque1
SANTIAGO RODRÍGUEZ GUERRERO - STRACHAN

UNIVERSITY OF VALLADOLID
Little attention has been paid to Edgar A. Poe’s poetical picturesque. Kent
Ljungquist wrote about it in his outstanding book, The Grand and the
Fair. Poe’s Landscape Aesthetics and Pictorial Techniques (1984), and John
Conron devoted a chapter to the issue in American Picturesque (2000).
Beatriz González-Moreno (2000) and Louis A. Renza (1995) have written
two revealing articles on the picturesque and “The Island of the Fay”.
In general, critics pay more detailed attention to the short story than to
the poetry. It is my view, however, that despite their accurate choice of
focusing on Poe’s tales, some words may be said about the picturesque in
Poe’s poetry. I am going to read some of his poems against the picturesque
as theorized, and exemplified, by Conron. Although I will analyse the fea-
tures of the picturesque, my aim is an investigation of the picturesque in
Poe’s poetry and the role that the poetic voice plays in it.
There is an agreement as regards the nature of the picturesque in
American culture. It was, as Conron argues, the first American aesthetic
(xvii), and as Ljungquist rightfully points out, the picturesque “acquired
a peculiarly native flavor” (10). Conron enumerates three characteristics
of the American picturesque: its eclecticism, its semiotic reading, and
its fusion of nature with art (xviii). Furthermore, as he says, “Bound-
aries between the picturesque arts […] also become blurred. Aesthetic
discourse comes to be characterized by a kind of synesthesia. Paintings,
prose narratives, and landscape architecture are said to enact a ‘poetry of
scene’ or a ‘poetry of light’. Literature and landscape architecture are both
understood to ‘paint’ scenes” (xix).
The importance of the picturesque can be seen in the number of works
that were devoted to its analysis, theory or practice during the 1800. From
98 Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan
Emerson’s Nature (1836) to Poe’s literary criticism to essays by painters such

as Thomas Cole’s “Essay on American Scenery” (1836) or Asher Durand’s
“Letters on Landscape Painting” (1855) or Samuel Morse’s Lectures on the
Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts (1826), the abundance and
variety indicate the importance it had in the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. As Kenner points out, in the eighteenth century nature became either
a furnished house or a mysterious otherness (Kenner 93–98). Martin Price
rightfully observes that pictures art is a “drama more than a composition”.
Consequently, “our response is to the presentation of character rather than
to the internal coherence of the object”(277).
The picturesque as defined by eighteenth-century theorists is some-
thing that pleases “capable of being illustrated by painting”, as Gilpin
says in the first essays of his book Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; on
Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching Landscape (1808) (3). For Uvedale
Price in his Essays on the Picturesque, as Compared with the Sublime and the
Beautiful (1810) the picturesque is mainly based in variety and intricacy.
He defines the latter as “that disposition of objects, which, by a partial and
uncertain concealment, excites and nourishes curiosity” (I: 22). They are
so connected that the one can hardly exist without the other. Later on he
says, “Upon the whole, it appears to me, that as intricacy in the disposi-
tion, and variety in the forms, the tints, and the lights and shadows of
objects, are the great characteristics of picturesque scenery” (I: 22). Both
Gilpin and Price mention roughness in their essays. As Gilpin points,
“roughness forms the most essential point of difference between the beau-
tiful, and the picturesque” (6).
The picturesque focuses on the rough or rugged, the crumbling form
and the complex or difficult harmony, as well as it seeks a tension between
the disorderly or irrelevant and the perfected form, as Price enumerates,
because it is interested in the oppositional forces that are at stake in the
Romantic period. The picturesque allows a representation of contrasts
that is absent in the beautiful or in the sublime. By focusing on the rug-
ged or the twisted, the picturesque may symbolize the tensions of the
poet’s soul that will be voiced in the landscape that he describes verbally.
This is, probably, one of the reasons why ekphrasis seems absent from
Romantic literature. This idea is reinforced by a comment of Uvedale
Price. He is writing about the Renaissance painters, and he says “Those
Poe’s Poetry, Melancholy and the Picturesque 99
great masters (nor need I have gone so far back for example) considered
pictures and nature as throwing a reciprocal light on each other, and as
connected with history, poetry, and all the fine arts” (I: 10). There is a
connection between nature and painting that makes them be very similar,
if not identical, and makes it unnecessary a device such as the ekphrasis,
at least ekphrasis of nature.
A reading of Poe’s poems reveals that the landscapes are based on
intricacy, roughness and variety. Take for example “Alone” (1829):
The myster y which binds me still –

From the torrent, or the fountain –
From the red cliff of the mountain –
From the sun that ‘round me roll’d
Its autumn tint of gold –
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by –
From the thunder, and the storm –
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view – (13–22).
The scenery is typically picturesque with the brook, the mountain and
the golden shades of autumn. It moves, however, close to the sublime as
it proceeds with the mention to the storm, and the demon. Yet it keeps
within the boundaries of the picturesque. The landscape has been chose
because it mirrors the poet’s mood. Particularly he says, “I could not bring/
My passions from a common spring –/From the same source I have not
taken/My sorrow –” (3–6), and “ […] – In my childhood – in the dawn/
Of a most stormy life” (9–10). If we read “The Lake – To –”, we find the
same pattern. First the poet describes a picturesque nature, and then, as
his self becomes more important in the poem, nature moves towards the
sublime, though it does not become such fully.
So lovely was the loneliness

Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines around.
But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by

Murmuring in melody –
Then – ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake (ll. 5–13).
In these poems Nature is determined by the poet’s mood, which was one
the romantic conventions that he followed in his early poetry. Furthermore,
Poe sought alternatives to rational, empirical ways of knowing, as Peeples
argues in Edgar Allan Poe Revisited (28).This leads us to the question of the
poet’s ratiocinative powers. These powers are linked to the poet’s state of
mind that is present in the poems. Some critics have argued the biographi-
cal slant of the poetical works, while others have focused on sociological
aspects, though none has denied the autobiographical touch. I will not
reject either the biographical or the sociological approaches. Nonetheless,
I would like to draw the attention towards the aesthetic and scientific
currents of the period, and state that Poe knew them thoroughly well and
used them for his literary purposes.
Poe was one among a myriad of writers who despised empiricism, or
vulgar empiricism, as represented by Newtonian physics, and its popu-
larization in philosophy with John Locke’s works. As a matter of fact, he
made us of Newtonian optics with a very particular slant (Scheick 78).
As Lawrence Frank argues, Poe was engaged in a critique of traditional
thought, represented namely by Natural Theology (3). Poe, as many oth-
ers, believed that another approach to knowledge was possible. This was
represented by Johan Wolfgang Goethe, and his theory of colors, but also
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s scientific system (Levere 1981). A good
example of what I am arguing is “Sonnet – To Science”. In it Poe criticizes
that scientific knowledge has substituted poetic perception. As Peeples says
there is an inversion in the roles of poetry and science (15). The latter
alters the things whereas poetry represents things as they really are. There
is a reality beyond surface, as Poe implies with the myths he mentions.
II
Poe mentioned melancholy in his works, both in prose and in verse. As
regards poetry he mentioned it in “Introduction”:
I fell in love with melancholy,

And used to throw my earthly rest
And quiet all away in jest – (ll. 28–30).
He realized that the best state of mind to create an alternative approach to

scientific reality was that of the poet. Naturally, it is not the poet immersed
in contemporary society, which was mainly empiricist and utilitarian. The
poet had to break free from these constraints and for such a purpose, mel-
ancholy was a suitable temper. Melancholy was a fashionable mood in the
eighteenth century as G.S. Rousseau has demonstrated (105). Melancholy
encloses the self into his own reveries, and takes for real what is only imagi-
nary, as theorized by Thomas Willis in Two Discourses Concerning the Soul
of the Brutes, Which is that of the Vital and Sensitive Man (1683), and subse-
quently by other scientists such as John Haslam’s Observations on Madness
and Melancholy (1809), James Cowles Prichard’s Treatise on Insanity and
Other Disorders Affecting the Mind (1837), and Isaac Ray’s A Treatise on the
Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity (1838).
There are at the same time two alternative views regarding melancholy.
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century proto-neurological
research was beginning to make its way in science. These physicians pro-
posed a new set of symptoms and effects. There was a gradual loss of the
traditional theory of humours, although the medical description remained
stable. Melancholy was described as a form of insanity and chronic illness,
in which a fixed, false idea was always present. It was no longer seen as
deriving from Puritan guilt or from the theory of humours that had been in
vogue until the seventeenth century, and exemplified in Sir Robert Burton’s
Anatomy of Melancholy. However, the idea that it was a disease that affected
artists particularly still was accepted.
Why was Poe interested in mind disorders and maladies? And more
particularly, why was he interested in melancholy? The development in
psychology with the works of David Hartley, John Locke’s philosophy and
the early work on neurophysiology with Thomas Willis’s treatises would
account for such an interest. Michael S. Kearns analyses the metaphors of
the mind in the eighteenth ad nineteenth centuries in Metaphors of Mind
in Fiction and Psychology (1987). From the beginning of the eighteenth
century through the first third of the nineteenth, these metaphors of the
mind remained basically unchanged (45). The metaphor mind-as-entity

was intended to affect the readers’ emotions in the particular way exposed
in Gothic tales (46). David Hartley’s work on psychology opened the path
to a new understanding of how the mind worked. The operation of the
senses, as Kearns argues, “creates not only the mind’s ideas (its contents)
but also its structure – the preference for linking ideas contiguous in space
and time” (52). Undoubtedly this permitted new possibilities of combin-
ing perceptions that did not have to be restricted either spatial or tempo-
rally. The theory of the mind-as-entity metaphor that creates its own ideas
afforded an enormous freedom of the imagination from logical constraints.
As a consequence, a disordered mind would be much more interesting for
an exercise in psychological fiction, as Poe did, than a normal mind.
However influential these discoveries have been in society, the inter-
est, or obsession, in madness has other causes that Joan Burbick in Healing
the Republic (1994) attempts to explain. Burbick argues that in order “to
construct social order and maintain hegemony, a topology of the body
emerged during this period that privileged particular parts of the body”
(137). The brain came to be seen as “an object of wonder and intense spec-
ulation and, for some, became worthy ‘of almost religious worship’” (137).
Phrenology arises from this interest in the brain and the early attempt to
analyse it scientifically. Its main appeal was the vocabulary that it provided
to individuals “through which ‘character’ could be known” (139).
Another group of scientists, or related professionals, saw the neces-
sity of a new understanding of the brain if America was to be successful
(144). Their aim was not primarily scientific but social. Their research
led to an understanding of mental maladies as socially destabilizing. An
over-excited brain or simple a socially marginal management of it could
lead to a frightening nightmare of introversion. Mental instability could
be the unwanted consequence of simply not achieving any social objec-
tive. This would lead to intervals of distress that might become longer and
compress the previous intervals of tranquillity. Over-excitement, a con-
sequence of mental distress, is precisely one of the main features some of
Poe’s characters. The brain had to be properly managed so that an undue
use of the imagination may be prevented. Otherwise it is a threat, and
can lead to erroneous perceptions of reality, again another salient feature
of Poe’s characters.
Furthermore, melancholy was a fashionable disease particularly among

females of high-class society (Rousseau 1991: 105). That is one of the rea-
sons why the literature of the period made use of it. It was a trademark
of upper-class gentility and the female characters of eighteenth-century
novels exhibited this feature. But as Rousseau notes, there is another rea-
son, related to the psychology of arts, and that may be responsible, if such
term may be applied, for Poe’s interest in it. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-
centuries literature was full of mad characters, most of whom are artists
(105–06). Melancholic voices were a part of a socially marginal, high-risk
group in a moment when the literary market was demanding and creating
homogenized versions of authors and characters. Because of this cultural
milieu, it is important to note that melancholy would provide Poe with the
suitable poetic persona.
III
Now if we pay attention to the landscapes that Poe depicts in his poems,
we realize that there are some features that are melancholic, mainly the
loneliness and the reflection of the poet’s state of mind. As Ljungquist has
pointed, there is shift from “expansive prospects, vast images, and spatial
openness to enclosure, circumscription, and psychological limitation” in
Poe’s writings (184). “[The] pattern of spatial limitation in that external
scenery mirrors the psychological barriers of the mortal world” (184).
Moreover, the range of colors that Poe chooses help create a melancholic
effect. The reader does not see the poet and nature face to face, but nature
as perceived and depicted by the poet. There are two words that are central
to the melancholic facet: “Demon” in the first poem (l. 22) and terror in
the second (l. 13). “Demon in my view” clearly refers to the perceptive
capacity of the poet. It is not a view that may be regarded as objective or
neutral. The word demon highlights the artificial nature of human senses,
as they are mediated by the imaginative powers of the mind, and these
may sometimes be influenced by melancholy. It also refers to a genius or
to an evil spirit. We must consider that Poe, aware as he was of contempo-
rary theories of melancholy and madness, knew that there was a thin line
between both of them. That melancholy could turn to madness by a mere
shift of the symptoms. The evil spirit could lead the poet either to frenzy or
to a gloomy state. In the case of the poems I am discussing, the poet falls in
a state of sadness, a gloom that tinctures the landscape with golden shades.
These reinforce the picturesque view, as the landscape communicates a
feeling of tranquility rather than of exaltation.
The last lines of “The Lake” verge on the sublime, but the poem as
a whole does not strictly fall into the category of the sublime. Probably
it was difficult for Poe himself to avoid sublimity totally. This was part
of a long-standing tradition that permeated even his ratiocinative stories
(Ljungquist 191). Poe was aware of this and of the problems that the sub-
lime posed, as he explains in his review to James F. Cooper’s Wyandotté.
Poe discusses the tale of the Wilderness and that of sea adventure, both
of them sublime themes. “A man of genius will rarely, and should never,
undertake either” (1984: 479–480). The poet ends “The Lake” with “the
terror of the lone lake”. The situation is the opposite of the previous
poem. The poet wakes up and passes from a dreamy state to another of
vigil, in which reality imposes its facts, or at least, a different percep-
tion of the world. However, the terror influences the perception of the
world. In Burkean terms terror is associated with the sublime. It may be
thought then that the poem is not dealing with the picturesque but with
the sublime instead. However, lines 5–7 depict a picturesque scene. Poe
seemed aware that the sublime was an English cultural concept and the
picturesque, on the contrary was American, as Renza has demonstrated
(1995), which he favored in his works, to the point of even rewriting
some poems. Besides the poem could serve as an example of the differ-
ences and common points between the picturesque and the sublime. The
sublime could cause melancholy in the British Gothic novel whereas the
picturesque could be used for the same purpose in American literature.
Picturesqueness is associated to states of fantasy while sublimity is
associated to reality. The poet may imply that we need fantasy in order to
bear up with reality. Fantasy for Poe is basically produced by a disorder of
the mind, which means that melancholy may be instrumental in producing
such a state. In fact, as Immanuel Kant theorized the melancholic person
is characterized by a particular capacity for fantasy. On the Diseases of the
Mind, Kant argues that the melancholy person is a fantasizer who suffers
visions and fits of passion since the melancholy mood is characterized by
the intensity of sensations and an excessively meditative temper (257–271).
As Roger Bartra points out, Kant’s analysis of melancholy seems a condition

in his theory of the sublime, and in fact creates a state of mind that can
perceive sublimity (2004: 31). Melancholy, for Kant, avoids reason and
feels attracted by huge dark spaces. Kant’s theory on melancholy, that Poe
may have learnt in, say, Coleridge’s writings, supports the view that both
the picturesque and the sublime may arise from the same causes, i.e., a
melancholic temper. It is important to remark that melancholy is a state
of the mind that provokes an altered perception of reality and as such, it
may create a parallel or alternative view of the world. Poe, well acquainted
with contemporary debates on the picturesque and the sublime, realized
that melancholy, a temper he was interested in, could serve for his purpose
to create picturesque sceneries.
References
Bartra, Roger. El duelo de los ángeles. Locura sublime, tedio y melancolía en

el pensamiento moderno. Valencia: Pre-Textos, 2004.
Burbick, Joan. Healing the Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994.
Conron, John. American Picturesque. The Pennsylvania State University,
2000.
Frank, Lawrence. Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence:
The Scientific Investigations of Poe, Dickens and Doyle. New York: Pal-
grave, 2003.
Gilpin, William. Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; On Picturesque Travel;
and On Sketching Landscape. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2001.
González-Moreno, Beatriz. “Poe y los sueños de inmortalidad de un
poeta-jardinero”. Revisión del canon literario norteamericano: 1607–
1890. Eds. Lucía Mora González and Margarita Rigal-Aragón.
Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla- La Mancha, 2000:
165–174.
Kant, Immanuel. On the Diseases of the Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1963.
Kearns, Michael S. Metaphors of Mind in Fiction and Psychology. Lexington:

The University Press of Kentucky, 1987.
Kenner, Hugh. A Homemade World: American Modernist Writers. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975.
Kent Ljungquist. The Grand and the Fair. Poe’s Landscape Aesthetics and
Pictorial Techniques. Potomac, Md: Scripta Humanistica, 1984.
Levere, Trevor. Poetry Realized in Nature. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Early
Nineteenth-Century Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981.
Peeples, Scott. Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1998.
Poe, Edgar A. Poetry and Tales. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New York: The
Library of America, 1984.
Price, Martin. “The Picturesque Moment”. From Sensibility to Romanticism.
Eds. Frederick Hilles and Harold Bloom. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1965.
Price, Uvedale. Essays on the Picturesque, as Compared with the Sublime and
The Beautiful. Vol. I. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2001.
Renza, Louis A. “‘Ut Pictura Poe’: Poetic Politics in ‘The Island of the
Fay’ and ‘Morning on the Wissahiccon’”. The American Face of Edgar
Allan Poe. Eds. Shawn Rosenheim and Stephen Rachman. Baltimore:
The John Hopkins university Press, 1995: 305–329.
Rousseau, G.S. “The Discourses of Psyche”. Enlightenment Crossings: Pre-
and Post- Modern Discourses, Anthropological. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1991: 61–121.
Scheick, William J. “An Intrinsic Luminosity: Poe’s Use of Platonic and
Newtonian Optics”. American Literature and Science. Ed. Robert
J. Scholnick. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1992.
Notes
1 The article is part of the research project on poetry and painting (SA082A07) and the
research project on science and literature (VA003B07) both funded by Junta de Castilla
y León (Spain).
Functions and Values of Description, Metaphorical
Image and Comparison in “Ligeia”:
a Discursive-Rhetorical Study
EDUARDO DE GREGORIO - GODEO

This paper delves into the discursive-rhetorical functions of description,

metaphorical image and comparison in the fantastic short story in general,
and in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia” in particular.1 Assuming the basic prem-
ise that “the description of strange and inexplicable beings happens to be a
crucial element in the aesthetics of the fantastic as a genre” (Herrero 1997:
452), comparisons, metaphors and analogies may well contribute to shed-
ding light on the inexplicable and enigmatic dimension that, at a textual
level, comes to characterise these types of short stories.2 By exploring the
description of the enigmatic figure of Ligeia in the short story by Poe sim-
ilarly titled, this piece will examine the value of such discursive-rhetorical
strategies in the context of what may be taken to be “one of the key dimen-
sions to the fantastic atmosphere upon which this type of stories is based,
namely the description of beings whose mysterious identity is beyond the
laws of the natural and the known” (Ibid.). Through an integration of
Text Linguistics within the broader study of social discourses, the theo-
retical framework underlying this contribution approaches the short story
from the French Tradition of Discourse Analysis, where description in
general and comparisons and metaphorical images in particular are taken
to be discursive-rhetorical strategies incorporating different functions and
exerting various effects upon the reader.
In an attempt to “integrate the characteristic features of Text Lin-
guistics within the broader field of the study of social discourses” (Herrero
2006: 101), the theoretical scaffolding in this contribution draws upon the
approaches to the short story in the French Tradition of Text Linguistics
108 Eduardo de Gregorio-Godeo
(cf. Adam 1985, 1990, 1992, 1999; Adam and Lorda 1999; Adam and
Petitjean 1989; Adam and Revaz 1996; Ducrot 1980, 1984), where, rather
than being seen as a genre, the short story has come to be conceived of
as “a particular form of textual organisation characteristic of a variety of
discursive activity considering reality as a series of actions carried out by
someone and logically related to each other” (Herrero 2006: 102).3 From
this perspective, we adhere to Adam’s position in conceptualising the short
story – in accordance with the principles of the so-called ‘modern nar-
ratology’ inaugurated by such figures as Labov, Waletzki, Sacks and
Jefferson or Umberto Eco – as “resulting not only from textual construction,
that is, the level of its characteristic sequential organisation, but also from
pragmatic orientation, to wit, the level of the broader linguistic interaction”
(1985: 63). As it is, literary discourse, or rather, the literary as discourse,
may well be taken to include a fundamental pragmatic dimension since
“narrating consists in recording the fictitious discourse of a fictitious
speaker within fiction as such” (Garrido Domínguez 1996: 241).4 The
pragmatics of the story would accordingly be directly related
both to the ‘communicative purposes’ of the narrative in itself and to the discursive
strategies (i.e. tone and style adopted, narrative point of view, mechanisms of narration
and evaluation, etc.) of the text. Both dimensions manifest the illocutionary force of
the text and make it possible for the subject who has organised the story to activate the
‘contextual effects’, or rather, perlocutionary effects sought (Herrero 2006: 107).
Within a broader approach to social discourses as “the ensemble of phe-

nomena in and through which social production of meaning takes place”
(Mumbly and Stohl 1991: 315), Mey has disentangled the pragmatic
dimension of the literary text by seeing it a form of social product, where
the success of the text depends on the reader’s active collaboration in creating the tex-
tual universe […] The reader is partly to the textual discourse as much as is the author:
only in the ‘meeting of their heads’ […] will the story be successfully delivered and see
the light of day (2001: 793).5
This approach to the narrative as discourse means that description in gen-

eral, and comparisons and metaphorical images in particular, will become
discursive-rhetorical strategies incorporating different functions and values
Functions and Values of Description, Metaphorical Image and Comparison 109
which – considering the afore-mentioned pragmatic dimension of the

story – will exert various effects upon the reader based on the author’s use
of the story from a rhetorical stance. Although we take Gill and Whedbee’s
general assumption that “there is little consensus as to the meaning of the
word rhetoric” (1997: 157), this paper adheres to the view that “rhetoric
is discourse calculated to influence an audience toward some end” (Ibid.).
Bearing in mind a study of this type, the examination of the so-called
discursive-rhetorical strategies of narrated discourse is triggered by a rhe-
torical view of the story, where “textual organisation allows conceiving of
and accounting for the literary text as some form of material articulated at
different levels in accordance with its artistic intention”. (Albadalejo 1991:
178). Following Gill and Whedbee, a discursive-rhetorical focus on the
narrative will consequently be based on a view of “rhetoric as a means for
inducing cooperative activity” (1997: 157).
Taking into account this ample epistemological background, Text Lin-
guistics in general, and the approach to the descriptive text in particular,
will be herein considered in the context of the broader pragmatic dimen-
sion of the literary text – rather than being limited to its, strictly speaking,
structural level. The narrated story will accordingly be taken as a form of
discourse, which – following the French Tradition of Discourse Analysis – will
be understood as “speech directed by a specific speaker (an ‘I’) to a specific
audience or addressee (a ‘you’)” (Mathews 2005: 100).6 Thus, a view of
discourse will be privileged, in accordance with such a tradition of Discourse
Analysis in France, as ‘language above the sentence level’, that is, referring
“to larger units of language such as paragraphs, conversations, and inter-
views” (Crystal 1985: 83). However, given the pragmatic dimension of the
narrative as a form of discourse, the notion of discourse will be necessarily
amplified to contemplate it as language in use or used language:
The analysis of discourse is, necessarily, the analysis of language in use. As such, it
cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the pur-
poses or functions which these forms are designed to serve in human affairs” (Brown
and Yule 1983: 1).
Within this overall theoretical framework, Adam and Petitjean (1989)

argue that the descriptive sequence is prototypically organised on the basis of
a theme-title (in French ‘thème-titre’), that is, the element being described,
whose properties may be thematised in turn by means of descriptive opera-
tions of aspectualisation.7 Properties that have been thematised once may
be in turn thematised at a lower level. Metaphor, comparison, synecdoche,
enumeration, and so on, will thus become descriptive operations of rhe-
torical character within the discursive sphere of the narrated. Given the
pragmatic function of the story, such rhetorical operations echo not only
the “techniques of exposition and persuasion” (Alcaraz Varó and Martínez
Linares 1997: 503) characteristic of classical rhetoric, but rather – and
perhaps more importantly – the wider ‘pragmatic and communicative
dimension’ (Ibid.) characterising the story; hence the discursive-rhetorical
approach followed in this paper in consistence with the French Tradition
of Discourse Analysis.
In an attempt to initiate the examination of the story by Poe under
examination in this piece, it is worth pointing out, to start with, that this
is a narrative focalised by the subjectivity of Ligeia’s lover, narrator and
character, who will reify the features characterising such a fascinating and
seductive figure as Ligeia through a first-person narrative serving the sub-
ject to inscribe his own personality and viewpoint in the text. In other
words, Ligeia’s lover – a character as such in the story – will narrate the
story itself, his own personality ‘oozing’ from the narrative and being, so
to speak, ‘leaked’ into the text in the course of the narrative.8 Such a –
simultaneously – narrator and character will become a describing subject
concurrently contemplating Ligeia’s mesmerizing and captivating identity,
thereby constructing his extraordinary and intriguing beloved on the basis
of his own subjectivity in the course of the various descriptions engraved
in the story.
Poe’s tale is full of descriptive sequences which are embedded into
in the main story by focusing on different dimensions, to which differ-
ent degrees of importance are attached for the development of the short
story. The description of such a fundamental place as the narrator and
Lady Rowena’s bridal suite (Poe 1986: 118–120) is significant of how, in
addition to characters, locations are subject to descriptive operations given
their relevance in the story.9 Although the macrostructure of this particular
descriptive excerpt is somehow confusing on the whole (e.g. “and here there
was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic display” (119)), the description
of this bedroom follows the technique of the describing viewpoint (‘regard

descripteur’) identified by authors like Hamon (1981: 186–197). So, after
mentioning the situation of the chamber at the top of a high turret, the
narrator proceeds to describe the southern side of the room, including the
ceiling and its various hangings, only to bring the description to an end
by depicting the furniture in the bedroom. In so doing, Adam’s (1992:
84–93) prototypical descriptive framework is accurately activated through
a number of descriptive operations where the location of different parts of
the room is specified:
The room lay in a high turret [...] was pentagonal in shape [...] Occupying the whole
southern face of the pentagon [...] Over the upper portion of this huge window,
extended the trellice-work of an aged vine [...]. From out the most central recess of this
melancholy vaulting [...]. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic
sarcophagus of black granite […] (119).
Such descriptive metonymy-based operations go hand in hand with others

taking shape through aspectualisation and comparative analogy, where the
different sections and objects in the chamber are listed: “[…] as if endued
with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of parti-colored fires […] as
a canopy for the bed” (119).
Nonetheless, it is Lady Ligeia who, without the slightest doubt, trig-
gers the most significant descriptive passages which happen to be central
to the story. From the very beginning of the story, the narrator-character
anticipates the mysterious and inscrutable identity of such an ineffable
and supernatural being as Ligeia by referring to different variables of the
macrostructure of what is to become the description of his beloved: “[...]
the character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid cast
of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low musical
language […]” (110, our emphasis). The meticulous description of Ligeia
undertaken by the describing subject progresses from the physical to the
intellectual, so that, as pointed out by Adam (1992: 84), a large descriptive
sequence could be admitted to come into shape, where the theme-title –
Ligeia – is subjected to a series of describing operations of aspectualisation
based on all three major dimensions of Ligeia as theme, which, at this
initial point of the narrative, are already announced: (1) Ligeia’s physical
beauty: “There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me

not. It is the person of Ligeia” (111); (2) her personality: “An intensity in
thought, action, or speech, [which] was possibly, in her, a result, or at least
an index, of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse,
failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence” (114);
and (3) her knowledge: “I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was
immense – such as I have never known in a woman” (303).
Such three properties are thematised in turn, Ligeia’s strictly physical
dimension being particularly significant. Describing operations of aspectu-
alisation are subsequently carried out in this respect, where different parts
of her body will be thematised in the course of a sequence moving form the
more general aspects to the more specific: 1.1 her body as a whole: 1.1.1 her
height; 1.1.2 her slenderness: “in her latter days, even emaciated” (111);
1.1.3 her demeanour and majesty; 1.1.4 her weight: “the incomprehen-
sible lightness and elasticity of her footfall” (111), which is once again the-
matised by means of an operation of comparative relation: “she came and
departed as a shadow” (111); and 1.2 her face, where a number of themati-
sations are again articulated at a lower level. Indeed, descriptive operations
are carried out in this regard by means of descriptive operations of assimila-
tion through comparison: “In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her”
(111); and metaphor: “It was the radiance of an opium-dram – an airy and
spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered
about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos” (111).
A new operation of aspectualisation may be traced which consists
in focusing on the different aspects of her face, that is, her features. As
a result, Ligeia’s face description entails a new instance of thematisation
including one first operation of aspectualisation whereby the different fea-
tures of her face will be introduced in the text:
Her features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to war-
ship in the classical labors of the heathen [...] although I saw that the features of Ligeia
were not of a classic regularity – although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed
‘exquisite’ (111).
One subsequent operation of aspectualisation by synecdoche follows,

where the different features of Ligeia’s face will be described in detail: her
forehead; her hair; her nose; her mouth, which is thematised in turn by
focusing on the description of such a remarkable part of Ligeia’s mouth
as her teeth; her chin; and her eyes. Nevertheless, each of these features is
thematised at a lower level again10:
• Ligeia’ forehead, involving, to start with, an aspectualisation of both

her properties (i.e. tall, pale, impeccable, broad, calm) and her parts:
“the skin rivalling the purest ivory” – be it noticed the thematisation
arising through metaphorical assimilation; and “the noble promi-
nence of the regions above the temples”.
• Her hair, which is aspectualised both by pointing out its qualities:
“the glossy, the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses”; and by mak-
ing reference to the relation which, from Ligeia’s lover’s viewpoint,
it bears to other elements through comparison (“raven-like”) and
metaphor (“setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet,
‘hyathinthine’”).
• Her nose, including a relational operation of assimilation through
comparison: “and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the
Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection”; as well as another aspec-
tualisation operation activated through an inventory of its qualities
(“tendency to the aquiline”) and its parts (“luxurious smoothness of
surface [...], harmoniously curved nostrils”).
• Her mouth, which entails various descriptive operations: (i) of met-
aphorical assimilation (“here was indeed the triumph of all things
heavenly”); (ii) of aspectualisation through an enumeration of its
parts: “the short upper lip” (which is in turn thematised by aspec-
tualising its qualities: “soft”); the under lip (once again thematised
by means of an aspectualisation of its qualities: “voluptuous slum-
ber”); her dimples (likewise thematised through the subsequent pro-
cess of quality aspectualisation: “which sported and the color which
spoke”); her teeth, thematised as well by way of an aspectualisation
of their properties: “glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling,
every ray of the holy light which fell upon them” [thereby giving
rise to] “her serene and placid, yet most exultantly radiant of all
smiles”11; and (iii) of aspectualisation – of the mouth itself – through
an account of the qualities of the mouth, by way of example, its

expressive colour.
• Her chin, which is likewise related to a number of entities through
comparative assimilation: “and here, too, I found the gentleness of
breadth, the softness and the majesty, the fullness and the spiritual-
ity, of the Greek”; and metaphor: “the contour which the god Apollo
revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian”.
• Her eyes, which are finally portrayed (i) by means of descriptive opera-
tions of comparison: “even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of
the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad”; (ii) through aspectualisation pro-
cesses implemented by means of the indication of its parts: “far over
them, hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly irregular
in outline, had the same tint”12; and (iii) by use of aspectualisation
of various other qualities of Ligeia’s eyes: their models (“For eyes we
have no models in the remotely antique”); their colour (“the hue of
their orbs was the most brilliant of black”); and their expression. In
a significant way, Ligeia’s expression is then thematised in the text: (i)
by means of an aspectualisation operation focusing on such notewor-
thy qualities as its strangeness and inscrutability (“the ‘strangeness’,
however, which I found in her eyes [...] must, after all, be referred to
the expression”); (ii) by resorting to comparison (“that [her expres-
sion] something more profound than the well of Democritus”); and
(iii) through local metonymy (“[that] which lay far within the pupils
of my beloved”). Ligeia’ pupils are indeed thematised both through
an operation of aspectualisation of her qualities: “those large, those
shining, those divine orbs”; and through a metaphorical assimila-
tion highlighting their relation with further entities in the sky: “they
became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astro-
logues”.
Ligeia’s eyes are especially illuminating of the unfathomable and impen-

etrable nature of the protagonist of the tale, so that their description may
be argued to serve to bridge the gap between Ligeia’s physical dimension
and her psychological features. As underlined by the narrator of the story,
Ligeia’s eyes are but an expression of her huge volition:
An intensity in thought, action, or speech, was possibly, in her, a result, or at least an

index, of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse, failed to give other
and more immediate evidence of its existence […] The outwardly calm, the ever-placid
Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And
of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those
eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me (114).
As a matter of fact, throughout the tale Ligeia’s willpower will be several

times related to an excerpt written by Joseph Glanvill where volition is
identified with a force even more powerful than death, God being thereby
conceived of as a major form of will:
And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will,
with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness.
Man doth not yield himself to the angels, not unto death utterly, save only through the
weakness of his feeble will (Joseph Glanvill) (110).
Hence the enumeration of objects, or rather readings, where Ligeia’s lover

finds a certain analogy to the expression on her beloved’ eyes:
And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of the uni-
verse, a circle of analogies to that expression [...] Among innumerable other instances, I
well remember something in a volume of Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from
it is quaintness – who shall say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment; “And the
will therein lieth, which dieth not […] Man doth not yield himself to the angels, not
unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will” (113).
Indeed, this passage by Glanvill seems to portray Ligeia’s personality in a

most accurate manner since the interpretation that, at the end of the story,
Ligeia’s love is stronger than death is quite as valid as the reading that
everything results from her lover’s hallucination: “But I was wild with the
excitement of an immoderate dose of opium” (122). Surely, the lover’s per-
ception of Rowena’s corpse is intermingled with his memories of Ligeia:
Then rushed upon me a thousand memories of Ligeia – and then came back upon my
heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that unutterable wo with
which I had regarded her thus enshrouded. The night waned; and [...] I remained gaz-
ing upon the body of Rowena” (123).
By and large, the lover conception of Ligeia’s as a ‘quasi-divine’ being is

summarised in Ligeia’ last words before expiring when quoting Glanvill’s
passage: “Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save
only through the weakness of this feeble will ” (117–118). Therefore, it is not
by chance that, on many an occasion throughout the text, Ligeia’s alleg-
edly divine identity is constructed through textual isotopies charging this
woman with emblematic, archetypical and connotative features akin to
those of other divine entities.13 This is substantiated by the way in which
her lover describes her as though she were a goddess:
[…] or was it rather a caprice of my own – a wildly romantic offering on the shrine of
the most passionate devotion? (100)14;
[…] it was [...] an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies
which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos (111);
[…] I examined the contour the lofty and pale forehead – it was faultless – how cold
indeed that word when applied to a majesty so divine! (301);
[…] I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly
(111);
[…] the teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of the holy
light which fell upon them in her serene and placid, yet most exultantly radiant of all
smiles (112);
[…] and at such moments was her beauty [...] the beauty on beings either above or apart
from earth – the beauty of the fabulous Houri of the Turk (112);
[…] subsequently to the period when Ligeia’s beauty passed into my spirit, there dwell-
ing as in a shrine […] (113);
[…] and of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of
those eyes […] (114).
In order to contribute to helping the reader imagine the somehow super-

natural, unspeakable and, at first sight, incomprehensible nature of Ligeia,
the lover’s – and, as such, the describing subject’s – evocation of Ligeia may
be claimed to be euphoric to such an extent that hyperbole will be recur-
rently drawn upon when this enthralling character is described. Hyperbole
consequently plays a vital role in assisting the narrator in striving to unveil
the sublime nature of Ligeia: “I would in vain attempt to portray the maj-
esty […] of her demeanor […] In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her
[…] It was the radiance of an opium-dream” (111). As things stand, the adjec-
tives utilized for describing Ligeia, and her qualities, (e.g. ‘incomprehensible’,
‘divine’, ‘exquisite’, ‘faultless’, ‘gentle’, ‘delicate’, ‘graceful’, ‘heavenly’, ‘mag-

nificent’, ‘gigantic’, ‘miraculous’, ‘immense’, etc.) encompass sublime and
hyperbolic connotations serving to build up the overall euphoric descrip-
tion of the protagonist of the tale.
To guide the reader’s interpretative cooperation into the communica-
tive effect of seduction and fascination which the narrator seeks to instil in
the reader’s subjectivity when reading the tale, Ligeia’s ineffable, supernat-
ural and, to some extent, divine nature will be illuminated by means of the
series of analogies, comparisons and metaphors drawn upon throughout
her description in the story. Along with such an assumingly divine char-
acter, Ligeia’s beauty will often be compared to entities from the Ancient
World and Classical Antiquity: “her marble hand” (111) and “the skin
rivalling the purest ivory” (111) are accordingly related to such precious
materials in the Ancient World. So, her face is claimed to be “an airy and
spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered
about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos” (111); and her hair
is asserted to instantiate “the full force of the Homeric epithet, ‘hyacin-
thine’ ” (111). As far as Ligeia’s nose is concerned, he lover states, “nowhere
but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar per-
fection” (111); and as for her chin, “here, too, I found the gentleness of
breadth, the softness and the majesty, the fullness and the spirituality of
the Greek – the contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to
Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian” (112), he asserts.
In short, we may conclude that Poe’s use of such discursive-rhetorical
strategies in the tale may be taken to be an indication of the author’s necessity
of moving beyond a form of strictly representative description to charge it
with an expressive value so that the real in the tale will come to be subverted
by the uncanny forces echoing and accounting for the enigmatic nature of
the human being and the mystery of death; hence the communicative effect
of fascination, bewilderedness and seduction which, in the form of aesthetic
pleasure, is exerted over readers in the course of their interpretative coopera-
tion activated in the act of reading the short story. “Ligeia” is indeed a mas-
terful example of the discourse of fantastic short stories in this respect, and
their “complex relation to both truth and value, on the one hand being seen
as providing a ‘truth’ about the human condition, and yet doing so within a
fictional and therefore ‘untrue’ form” (Mills 2004: 20). The utilization of the
rhetorical operations (Plett 1985: 59) herein examined arguably contributes

to illuminating what would be otherwise ineffable and inexplicable, which
is fully consistent with the overall persuasive effect (Spang 1997: 59) exerted
over the reader by means of the rhetorical strategies that we have explored.15
All in all, “the writer’s approach to the fantastic results in a problematic
reading faced with a series of misunderstandings and ambiguities causing
the reader’s interpretative cooperation to become more active and thrilling”
(Herrero Cecilia 2000: 194), so that, as underlined by Mey’s approach to the
pragmatic dimension of literary texts, “the author has to establish a universe
of discourse that the reader is willing to accept on the writer’s ‘author-ity’;
that authority in its turn is dependent on how skilfully the author manages
to arrange the events or persons she or he is depicting” (2001: 793).
Descriptions, analogies, metaphorical images and comparisons are
thus essential not only as resources accounting for Ligeia’s enigmatic and
eerie nature, but also to assist Poe in creating the fantastic aura of mystery
and ambiguity which surrounds this short story and with which the reader
is imbued when reading the tale.
References
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——. Élements de linguistique textuelle. Liege: Mardaga, 1990.
——. Les textes: types et prototypes. Paris: Nathan, 1992.
——. La linguistique textuelle. Des genres du discourse aux texts. Paris:
Nathan, 1999.
Adam, Jean-Michel, and Clara Ubaldina Lorda. Lingüística de los textos
narrativos. Barcelona: Ariel, 1999.
Adam, Jean-Michel, and André Petitjean. Le texte descriptif. Paris: Nathan,
1989.
Adam, Jean-Michel, and Françoise Revaz. L’analyse des récits. Paris: Seuil,
1996.
Albadalejo, Tomás. Retórica. Madrid: Editorial Síntesis, 1991.
Alcaraz Varó, Enrique, and María Antonia Martínez Linares. Diccionario
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Bal, Mieke. Teoría de la narración. Madrid: Cátedra, 1987.

Brown, Gillian, and George Yule. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge
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well Publishing. 2nd edition. 1985.
——. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell Publish-
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Ducrot, Oswald. Les échelles argumentatives. Paris: Minuit, 1980.
——. Le Dire et le dit. Paris: Minuit, 1984.
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sis, 1996.
Gill, Ann M., and Karen Whedbee. “Rhetoric”. Discourse as Structure and
Process. Ed. Teun van Dijk. London: Sage, 1997. 157–184.
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Oxford University Press, 2005.
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Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001. 787–797.
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Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1985. 59–84.
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Poems, Tales, Essays and Reviews. Ed. David Galloway. London: Pen-
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Notes
1 With significant modifications, this piece is based on the paper produced for a doctoral
seminar taught by Professor Juan Herrero Cecilia in the Faculty of Arts (University of
Castilla-La Mancha, Ciudad Real) in 1999.
2 All the quotations in the contribution from works written in languages other than Eng-
lish have been translated into English.
3 As stated by Crystal, “in recent years, the study of texts has become a defining feature of
a branch of linguistics referred to (especially in Europe) as textlinguistics, and ‘text’ here
has a central theoretical status. Texts are seen as language units which have a definable
communicative function” (1997: 386).
4 We take a broad definition of pragmatics as “the study of the speaker meaning as distinct
from word or sentence meaning” (Yule 1996: 133).
5 This broader idea that discourses are fundamental in both representing and constructing
the social dates back to Foucault’s theorising of discourses as “the practices that system-
atically form the objects of which they speak” (1972: 49); hence the assumption of the
existence of social discourses.
6 Incidentally, according to Chico Rico, “the scheme of rhetorical operations is to be
taken as a major antecedent of linguistic-and-textual, or rather, pragmatic-linguistic-
and-textual models” (1988: 52).
7 According to Adam and Petijean, aspectualisation takes shape through operations
whereby different aspects of the object being described are expanded upon (1989: 130);
in especial, aspectualisation occurs when a specific aspect becomes a new theme subject
to description again (Ibid.)
8 Focalisation may be understood as “the relation between vision and what is actually
‘seen’, that is, what is perceived” (Bal 1987: 108).
9 Only page numbers will be indicated henceforth when quoting the edition of Poe’s short
story employed for the present analysis.
10 The quotes that follow as far as Ligeia’s features are concerned may be found on pages
111–112 in Poe’s (1986) tale.
11 As it may be observed, such a property as Ligeia’s smile is thematised in turn by resorting
to the aspectualisation of its features.
12 Again, it may be remarked that the eyebrows and eyelashes are in turn thematised, which
results in the aspectualisation of their qualities.
13 According to Alcaraz Varó and Rodríguez Linares (1997: 308) “isotopies are articulated
through the repetition of ‘semes’ (i.e. semantic features) in a text without necessarily appear-
ing in the form of lexical units. Thus, given the utterance ‘The fishermen launched their
nets into the shoals […]’ , there is an isotopy of the seme ‘fish’ in fisherman, net and shoal ”.
14 Emphasis added in all the quotations that follow.
15 As maintained by Herrero Cecilia, “pursuing such a communicative effect consists in
taking into account the very reaction and participation which, in the very act of literary
production, the author seeks to produce and instil in the reader […] by succeeding in
drawing upon the most appropriate and effective procedures and strategies” (2000: 20).
PART FOUR
EPILOGUE
John Allan versus Edgar Allan, or Poe’s Early Years
JOSÉ ANTONIO GURPEGUI

UNIVERSITY OF ALCALÁ
When reaching the two-hundredth anniversary of Poe’s birth and enjoying

the privilege that a century and a half of critical scholarship on his liter-
ary production provides us, every scholar studying Poe’s work might ask
whether it is possible to bring new ideas to the analysis of this tortured
genius of world literature. The first conclusion leads us to dishearten,
since maybe everything about Poe has already been written and probably
twentieth-first century professors and critics’ only choice is to rummage
through trivialities and small details that others dropped away in view of
a juicy gold mine. It is true that Poe is still present with the same strength
as a century ago and that the same ghosts that frighten and paralyze his
characters still cause our nightmares and fears.
Who has never thought about being buried alive? Who has never felt
dominated by an atavistic emotion that misleads us to a state of confusion
that causes us to lose composure in the best of the cases, and even losing
our mind? Who, like Roderick Usher, the dreadful Quixote and narra-
tor of “The Fall of the House of Usher”, has never felt overwhelmed by
thoughts such as this – “nor could I grape with the shadowy fancies that
crowded upon me as I pondered”? Besides all this, the intellectual half-
heartedness, that astonishing ability to turn human miseries into beauty,
keeps attracting and captivating our attention for Poe’s work. We all know
that very often there is only an illusion, like the death premonition that
we found in the dainty work “the Sphinx” – “I was now immeasurably
alarmed, for I considered the vision of Esther as an omen of my death,
or worse, as the forerunner of an attack of mania”. Or the one that I spe-
cially consider as the biggest “narrative madness” of all, the most feverous
lucubration that a literary mind has ever created – I refer to “The Facts
126 José Antonio Gurpegui
in the Case of M. Valdemar” – that attracts us with the same magnetism

as the Argonauts in the Egeo – although we try not to listen, the sweat
tune of the unknown, of the surprise, of the fear, of the existential stress
keeps echoing.
These crazy ideas kept resounding within my mind when two years
ago, with a Jack Daniels bottle in my hand and with Mrs. M. by my side,
I visited Edgar Allan Poe’s grave in Baltimore. It is located in the remote
cemetery of Westminster Abbey, where La Fayette Avenue stops being safe
and welcoming to become a threatening region full of dark shadows wait-
ing to be cast upon us. Although it was a spring afternoon, winter harshness
remained while Mrs. M. started to complain about my wish to stand next
to that white marble monolith, where some of the mummy fetish pilgrims
like me, had left four red roses already withered and flabby like the dead
man’s soul. Mrs. M., tired of waiting kindly, told me that she would explore
the neighbourhood while I was becoming more familiar with “my beloved
dead”. I was glad to stay alone and when the brown Duffel coat disappeared
and I drunk some spirit from the bottle. The coal flavor impregnated my
mouth and I decided to share this sensation with my host by washing down
the engraving in one of the sides1 of his grave with this “firewater”, as the
massacred Indians would call it. I made myself comfortable, sitting down
on one of the steps of his mausoleum with my bottom just on his name
EDGAR ALLAN POE. I wanted to finish the bourbon that remained
before Mrs. M. would come back from her trip. From my seat I was look-
ing at the people that were passing by without even turning their glances to
Poe’s monolith. How many of those Americans who were passing by on the
other side of the fence, would know that one of their most distinguished
writers was buried only two meters away. I suddenly remembered the ini-
tial Tortilla Flat passage when Danny asks himself what have happened
with Arthur Morales. He replied – “dead for his country. Dead in a foreign
land. Strangers walk near his grave and they do not know Arthur Morales
lies there” (9). I realized that real life was a reflection of literature and after
finishing more than half of liqueur of the bottle, I thought what a miser-
able life he had had. Although maybe he was lucky in his final journey and,
he, as Truman Capote would write one century later about those who die
young and live fast, he could make a beautiful corpse. While I kept drink-
ing I tried to remember snippets of his life, or rather of his death.
There aren’t many lives as attractive to biographers as Poe’s short

existence. Hemingway’s biographical peripeteia, going from one wife to
another; Faulkner’s existential anguish, imprisoned in the claustrophobic
South or Pynchon’s social self-exile as mysterious as Monalisa’s smile. These
biographies seem to be handy, insignificant, or even vulgar in contrast to
Edgar Allan Poe’s life. An old Spanish saying asks God to be released from
the day when I will be praised (“Dios me libre el día de mis alabanzas”),
meaning death, since even people who have committed mean actions, are,
by Christian charity or tradition, praised in light of their good actions, con-
veniently forgetting their darkest actions. Nevertheless, in Poe’s obituary,
which appeared two days after his death in New York’s “Tribune” and signed
by a mysterious “Ludwig”, a pseudonym for Rufus W. Griswold, the writer
was described as a man who “had few or no friends”. This is not surprising,
considering that he was further portrayed as “cynical”, “arrogant”, “envi-
ous”, somebody who “had no moral susceptibility” and that “had little or
nothing of the true point of honor”. I usually write obituaries for North
American writers in “El Mundo” newspaper (the last one was John Updike’s
one month ago). I can assure you that if anytime I had to use the expressions
employed by the disguised Ludwig concerning Poe, I would be not only
fascinated but I would also read the works of a character that provokes such
strong emotions even after dead.
The author of the strangely beautiful Ligeia died on 7 October,
1849. In 1850 there appeared his first biography and ten years later Sarah
Helen Whitman edited Edgar Allan Poe and His Critics, a defense against
Griswold’s attacks. The first official biography written by British author
J. H. Ingram was published in 1880; titled Edgar Allan Poe: his Life, Letters
and Opinions2, it dismantled Griswold’s opinion. Another reference work
is G. E. Woodberry’s The Life of Edgar Allan Poe, Personal and Literary,
with his Chief Correspondence with Men of Letters, which was published a
century ago, in 1909, to commemorate Poe’s first centenary. In this work
he questioned the veracity of Ingram’s testimony. It seemed that even his
very biographers were lost into a labyrinth full of truths and lies, reality
and fantasy, maybe purposefully intended by Poe and his friends in some
cases or by his enemies in others.
As Harvey Allen wrote in the “Introduction” of The Complete Tales
and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe for the Modern Library, “at the time of his
death his reputation suffered one of the major misfortunes which can over-
take the fame of any author” (v). There are many expressions of this type
regarding Poe. One of the most pertinent ones defining the author’s per-
sonality best is that by John Seelye, who in his work Edgar Allan Poe: Tales
of the Grotesque and Arabesque stated that Poe was “a blowing seed that
never lodged” (113) – few definitions of the “unlucky author” par excel-
lence in American letters were more fitting than this one.
Already in the early approaches to Poe’s work there were some allu-
sions to the complex relationship between Poe’s chaotic life and his tur-
bulent short stories. The imminent psychoanalytical studies of Dr. Freud
in Vienna had a quick impact on the literary reviews that already started
to proliferate reviewing stories such as “The Black Cat”, “The Masque of
the Red Death”, “The Premature Burial” […] etc. If his death was marked
by tragedy, and his life chaotic, his birth, on 19 January, 1809, also seems
somehow traumatic since it was in the middle of an unstable and prob-
lematic marriage not only because of his parents’ unsteady work (they were
actors), but because of the personality and singularities of each of them.
When Edgar was born, they already had a child, William. Elizabeth, his
mother, was an actress of unquestionable talent but terribly influenced
by her husband’s rough personality, David Poe. In contrast to Elizabeth,
David was a mediocre actor that could not assume his continuous failures,
above all his wife’s success. He found in alcohol the only possible way out
and before his son Edgar was one year old, he abandoned them and there
were no more news about him. Poe’s mother did not stay much longer
either. She died of tuberculosis in December 1811 (there is speculation
whether his father could have died of tuberculosis that year) leaving a third
daughter, Rosalie, by an unknown father although she also received the
family name of Poe.
After their mother’s death, the three children were sent to live with
family members and friends. The paternal grandfather adopted William, the
eldest child, who died an alcoholic at twenty. Rosalie was sent to William
MacKenzie’s house and she lost contact with any member of Poe’s family,
suffering since her childhood serious mental problems. Lastly, Edgar was
adopted by John Allan, which accounts for the addition of “Allan” to the
original Edgar Poe.
At first sight, Edgar was the luckiest of the three siblings. John Allan
was a prosperous trader and tobacco exporter that could give him a well-off
and stable life together with his wife Frances. He could provide the child
with the best possible formation in the most exclusive and elitist education
centres of the time. The couple, though an example of a traditional mar-
riage preserving conservative family values, had produced no offspring.
However, the reality turned out to be different. John Allan had accepted
the adoption reluctantly and only to satisfy his delicate wife Frances’s wish,
unable to give him a legitimate child. Although John gave him his last
name, he never recognized him legally as his son. This type of informal
adoption was a common phenomenon in the nineteenth century, when
relatives used to foster orphan children. Moreover, John Allan still had the
hope of producing children of his own in the future (actually, he did from
his second marriage), so he refused to appoint Poe as his legitimate heir.
So we see that his life was a turbulent one ever since his early child-
hood years. This was just the first dilemma of the many that Poe had to
face during his whole life. It is the first twist of this labyrinth that his life
turned into. The seed for disappointment and failure was already planted,
even as such an early age. Let’s try then, as far as possible, to get into the
mind of that seven-year-old child that sailed to England.
He enjoyed a comfortable cabin, the most elegant clothes, an exqui-
site education and the regard of distinguished passengers and helpful
waiters. But at the same time there was no doubt that his soul and his
flesh were already marked by the family fights, his father’s drunken-
ness, the deprivations derived from poverty, the inherent uncertainty of
any artist, his mother’s affairs, the careless disappearance of his father,
the terrible presence of death, the traumatic separation of his brothers
[…] These were too many impressions for a spirit that had just started
to shape. Poe’s education during the first years of his early adolescence
was also peculiar. It was in Britain, specifically in the boarding school of
Bransky, where he received a solid classic education, especially outstanding
in Latin and History. Although it may be just a conjecture based on the
description of William Wilson’s schooling in the eponymous short story,
it might be an accurate representation of his life at the English school, the
memories of the narrator: “My earliest recollections of a school-life, are
connected with a large, rambling, Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking

village of England […]” (627). He then begs the reader to forgive him
for re-creating the memory of some years in which he could already guess
what the future might be:
Steeped in misery as I am – misery, alas! only too real- I shall be pardoned for seeking
relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling details. These,
moreover, utterly trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy,
adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality when and where
I recognize the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterward so fully over-
shadowed me (627).
However, business in the islands was not as successful as John Allan had
expected and five years after their coming, the family went back to the
United States, where they arrived in July, 1820.
The education of young Poe was entrusted to his old tutor, Joseph
Clarke, and Poe will be accepted into the University of Virginia3 without
any difficulty. The university experience ended as short as unlucky and it
would mark a turning point in his relationship with John Allan. Although,
as it has been already mentioned, John Allan never adopted legally Poe as
his son and heir, he always treated him as a son. Even in Britain, where
according to some authors the problems between them started, John Allan
treated him as if he were his own child. The financial situation of the fam-
ily, which was delicate after the failure in Europe, improved again after one
of Allan’s uncles died, the only heir in 1825.
When Poe enrolled in the University of Virginia, his benefactor hardly
provided him with enough money to cover his expenses.4 Poe aspired to
be like the children of the good Southern families and lived well beyond
his limits. As Cortázar pointed out, although Poe was born in Boston, he
grew up as a Southerner, and behaved as such for the rest of his life. In his
childish aspiration for grandeur, he invented fabulous journeys to Greece,
Arabia, the Mediterranean, adorning them with bizarre stories, such as his
made-up problems with his passport in St. Petersburg. During his univer-
sity year, he tried to make ends meet by gambling, which only worsened
his financial situation. His debts amounted to 2,500 dollars at the end of
the academic year, a sum of money which John Allan refused to pay off.
John Allan’s refusal caused a new source of tension in the family. After this
disastrous first year, Poe was forced to give up his university studies and
John Allan unsuccessfully tried to get his young protégée into his business.
Poe felt cheated and abandoned and took the decision to leave for Boston
in 1827. David Galloway, in his “Introduction” to Poe in the Penguin
Classics collection, considers that it was in this period when “the rift with
Allan made itself strongly apparent” (27). To add to his problems, when
he returned home to Richmond after the university failure, he discovered
that his sweetheart, Sarah Royster, was engaged to another gentleman.
Galloway comments that
Perhaps Allan had told the Roysters that Poe could expect nothing from his estate;
perhaps, too, Allan was jealous of the tireless affection which his wife showed for Edgar;
and by this time Poe was almost certainly knew that Allan was being unfaithful to his
wife (28).
Without going so far as to approach Poe from a psychoanalytic perspec-

tive, Poe must have felt something close enough to “repression”, following
Freud’s term. In a new U-turn in his complex life, he joined the army as
his only way out from the rigidity that John Allan tried to impose to him.
But, just as the rest of his life, his army career did not follow the expected
path either. He enrolled using a false name, Edgar A. Perry, and was sent
to Boston, South Carolina and Virginia.
Fanny Allan, who in contrast to her husband’s colder attitude, truly
regarded Poe as her own son, died in 1829 and this represented a new
change of direction in Poe’s relationship with John Allan. This time, the
change, however, was for the better for they met again in more friendly
terms, and, with John Allan’s recommendation, he was accepted to West
Point Military Academy. There, the old story of the university took place
again. Poe again made up the old story of glorious and wealthy ancestors
to reflect well on his rank and distinction. But the peace with John Allan
was not to last, since Poe neither accepted nor understood John Allan’s
remarrying. In a letter Poe sent from West Point he vented his unhap-
piness about the wedding and threatened with leaving West Point in
retaliation. That was not a boast for he was sentenced in a court martial
to expulsion from the army in February 1831. As it happened to Poe’s
character William Wilson, he “[…] was left to the guidance of my own

will, and became, in all but the name, the master of my own actions”
(627).
It is convenient to reflect on the influence that John Allan had in the
development of Poe’s personality for he was a key element, in my opinion,
for understanding the genesis and writing of many of his short stories.
Actually, the beginning of his writing career coincides in time with this
fall-out with John Allan. Obviously, Poe, as already mentioned, under-
stood his relationship with John Allan in repressive terms. John Allan was
a strict, and maybe too severe, person, not willing to consent Poe’s excesses
and resolved to correct his protégé’s rebellious attitude. The “conscious”
decision to give up his studies, as seen in the above-mentioned letter,
denotes an obvious attitude of defiance toward John Allan’s decision to
re-marry, and represents the realization of his “unconscious” desires. This
is a phenomenon described by Freud in these terms:
We are forced to accept that there exist processes or representations of the state of mind
with great energy of which, without being conscious of them, may provoke a range of
consequences in the state of mind, some of which may be conscious as new representa-
tions. […] The state in which these representations are before being conscious is what
we know with the term repression. […] Therefore, our concept of the unconscious has
as departing point the repression theory [translation mine] (2702).
Some have perceived in Poe’s complex personality signs of histrionics.

N. B. Fagin, in The Histrionic Mr. Poe (1949) assumed a hypothetical
histrionics – a real one for Fagin – as the key element in his short stories.
I have difficulty in accepting such a histrionic aspect in Poe’s life and
short stories and I understand that the above quotation from Freud can
enlighten us when we compare it to the confession of the narrator in
“Berenice”, who states in the first lines in the story: ‘The realities of the
world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of
the land of dreams became, in turn, not the material of my every-day
existence, but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself ’
(643).
Also in “Ligeia” we find a paragraph that, as if it were a puzzle, perfectly
fits with our hypothesis:
There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalities of the science of

mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact – never, I believe, noticed in schools- that
in our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves
upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember (656,
italics in the original).
I would say that the figure of John Allan, “un hombre seco y duro, a quien
los años, los reveses y finalmente una gran fortuna volvieron más y más y
tiránico” (10) [a dry and hard man, whom the years, the problems, and
eventually, his wealth, made more and more tyrannical; translation mine],
in Cortázar’s words, had a decisive influence in Poe’s narrative. Cortázar
himself points out that one of the two “capital influences” in Poe’s child-
hood was “la importancia psicológica y afectiva que tiene para un niño
saber que carece de padres y que vive de la caridad ajena” (8) [the psycho-
logical and affective importance for a boy of learning that he lacks parents
and lives on strangers’ charity; translation mine]. It is doubtless that the
absence of the paternal or the maternal figure in the growing-up process
of a child is decisive. However, in Poe’s case, that absence is not as deter-
minant as the complex relationship he had with his protector John Allan.
In one of the letters Poe sent to Allan in regards to the already mentioned
departure from home in 1827, we read:
[…] I have heard you say (when you little thought I was listening and therefore must
have said it in earnest) that you had no affection for me- You have moreover ordered
me to quit your house, and are continually upbraiding me with eating the bread of
idleness (in Galloway 28).
The letters ends with a laconic farewell, “I am gone”. Anyway, it is not

often in literary history that a sudden decision has had such an importance
for in 1827 Poe publishes anonymously his collection of poems Tamerlane
and Other Poems 5 which was ignored. The second fall-out between protégé
and protector in 1831 was almost final, for they hardly had any contact
since then until Allan’s death in 1834. In the meantime, Poe travelled to
Richmond, where Allan lived, twice. The second time was when his old
protector’s health worsened and Poe tried to straighten things out. Their
meeting was disastrous and ended up with Poe being expelled from the
house where he had lived for many years. Allan died not long after this and
Poe inherited nothing.
As far as I know, Poe’s biographers have not paid a close attention to

Poe and John Allan’s relationship but it was during this time, the first half
of the 1830s, when Poe’s literary career took off. Until the 1830s, Poe’s
life had been greatly influenced by his relationship with John Allan. It
was only after John Allan’s death that Poe definitely decided to be a writer.
Since then, all his life was devoted to literature. Can we understand that
literature might have had an important cathartic element, directly related
to his particular relationship with John Allan? Can we understand Poe’s
literary production without taking into account such a powerful relation-
ship? Should not John Allan’s influence be paid a greater critical study?
Such a relationship is vital for a better understanding of Poe’s life and
literary production. In 1833, just a year before John Allan’s death, “M.S.
Found in a Bottle” was awarded the “Baltimore Saturday Visitor” prize. It
was also when he started a relationship with his cousin Virginia, daughter
of his aunt Maria Clemm, who had sheltered him. When they got married
on 22 September 1835, Poe was 26 whereas his cousin Virginia was only
13 (then the usual age for North American girls to get married was 20).
The wedding was secret. Another event in Poe’s life that could be described
as “bizarre”.
This and other thoughts were in my mind when Mrs. M. came back
from her walk; I couldn’t say how long I had been lost in my musings but
the bottle was almost empty.
“Who are these?” Mrs M asked me when she read the names of Maria
Clemm Poe and Virginia Clemm Poe in the small monolith.
“His aunt-mother-in-law and his wife-cousin” I answered as I tried
to stand up.
“How curious! Poe was born on the same day as my father-in-law,
20 January,” she said smiling when she read the date.
“The date is wrong; he was born on 19 January,” I whispered in her
ear when I stood up and she hugged me.
“You taste of whisky.”
“You are wrong again, darling, it’s bourbon.”
Hugging, we went across the churchyard gate. I thought, like Hans
Pfaall, that I could be about to have an “Unparalleled Adventure”. In the
clouds, flying back to Spain, I remembered the memories in that small
cemetery and the “Unparalleled Adventure”, although, maybe, as it hap-

pened to Hans Pfaall,
I was vain enough, or perhaps reasonable enough, to doubt whether those crude ideas
which arising in ill-regulated minds, have all the appearance, may not often in effect
possess all the force, the reality, and other inherent properties, of instinct or intuition
(7–8).
References
Allen, Harvey. “Introduction”. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan
Poe. New York: The Modern Library, 1938.
Cortazar, Julio. Edgar Allan Poe. Cuentos 1. Madrid: Alianza Editorial,
1980.
Freud, Sigmund. Obras Completas, VII. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1974.
Galloway, David. “Introduction”. Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of
Usher and other writings. London: Penguin Books, 1988.
Seelye, John. “Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque”.
Landmarks of the American Writing. Ed. Hennig Cohen. Washington:
Voice of America Forum Series, 1969: 113–124.
Steinbeck, John. Tortilla Flat. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987.
Notes
1 The other three sides naming the cousin-wife of the author, Virginia Clemm Poe; her
mother, Maria Poe Clemm, and the author himself, Edgar Allan Poe.
2 Ingram himself published between 1874–1875 a four volume edition of Poe’s work
in which included almost one hundred pages of bibliography.
3 It had been founded the previous year, 1825, by U.S. President and writer of the
Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson. The spirit of the university tried to
be liberal. This liberalism, in its first years, meant lack of discipline, where parties,
gambling, and women were the most popular “subjects”.
4 There is been a lot of speculation about Poe’s gambling. There is no certainty that,
except for this year, Poe was a gambler. This is an added element to the black legend
of Poe as a drunken, drug addict, (certain) and gambler (uncertain).
5 The first edition of this volume is considered to be the most valuable in North
American literature. The first edition of The Prose Romances of Edgar Allan Poe, sold
in 1843 for 12.50 cents, now reaches $500,000.
PART FIVE
CHRONOLOGY
Chronology
Yr. Poe’s life Events Yr.
Born in Boston
1809
1809
to David and Charles
Elizabeth Poe, Darwin’s birth.
actors.
Edgar’s mother,
Elizabeth A. Poe
1810
Elizabeth Poe dies 1810

in Richmond.
Edgar is taken
1811
under John and Independence

1811
Frances Allan’s of Venezuela.

care, although
is not officially
adopted.
Frances Allan
1812
1812
1813
1813
140 Ángel Galdón-Rodríguez

Russia invaded
by Napoleon.
1814
1814
Stephenson’s
locomotive.
John Allan takes Battle of

his family to Waterloo.
1815
1815
Great Britain in
order to expand Conference in
his businesses. Vienna.
John Allan
Starts attending to
1816
1816
Independence
a boarding School
of Argentina.
in London.
1817
1817
Manor House
School in Stoke
1818
1818
Newington
becomes his new
boarding school.
1819
1819
Allan’s family First wave

1820
1820
moves back to of liberal

North America revolutions in
(Richmond). Europe.
Chronology 141

Independence
1822 1821
1821 1822
of Peru and
Mexico.
Independence
1823
1823
of Central
America
Provinces.
Trade Unions
1824
1824
created in
Great Britain.
Independence
of last
Portuguese
and Spanish
1825
1825
Colonies
in America
(except Puerto
Rico and
Cuba).
Starts studying at
1826
1826
University of
Virginia.
Village Design of
University of Virginia
Not having
support for his
studies and First
1827
1827
working for no photograph by

salary for John N. Niepce.
Allan, leaves the
Allan’s household.

Joins the army
and is sent to
Fort Moultrie, in
South Caroline.
1828
1828
Expelled from the
army after hiring
a substitute.
1829
1829
Moves to Maria
Clemm’s house,
his aunt and
Virginia’s Clemm
mother. Maria Clemm
Second wave
of liberal
revolutions in
Europe:
Belgium,
France and
Poland.
1830
1830
Enrols West
Independence
Point Academy.
of Belgium and
West Point
Greece.
First passenger
railway line
between
Liverpool and
Manchester.
Chronology 143

After neglecting
his duties, is
expelled from
West Point.
1831
1831
Returns to Maria
Clemm’s home.
Starts sending
works to
magazines.
John Allan
1832
1832
excludes him
from his heritage.
Gets an award at
Baltimore Saturday
Slavery
1833
1833
Visitor contest
abolished in
with his tale
Great Britain.
“MS. Found in a
Bottle”.
John Allan dies.

John Pendleton
Kennedy Zollverein
1834
1834
introduces him to union founded

Thomas White, by German
editor of The States.
Southern Literary
Messenger.
Thomas White

“Berenice”,
“Morella”, “Hans
Pfaall” and “King
Pest” are
1835
1835
published in The
Southern Literary
Messenger.
Is hired by the
magazine.
Marries Virginia
Clemm, his aunt
1836
1836
Maria Clemm’s
daughter, who
was only thirteen.
Because of his
addition to
alcohol, must
Victoria I
leave The
1837
1837
starts her reign
Southern Literary
in Great
Messenger.
Britain.
Moves to New
York, working for
several magazines.
Moves now to
Philadelphia.
“Ligeia” is
1838
1838
published in
American Monthly
Magazine. Ends Basement of one of Poe’s
up losing his job houses in Philadelphia
again.
Chronology 145
Edgar A. Poe and

William Burton
found the Burton’s
1839
1839
Gentleman’s
Magazine,
publishing works
as “The Fall of the
House of Usher”.
William Burton
After accusing
Henry
Longfellow of
plagiarism, breaks
his relationships
with Burton and
Livingstone
1840
1840
abandons the
explores central
Burton’s
Africa.
Gentleman’s
Magazine.
Founds The Penn
Magazine,
unsuccessfully due
to lack of support.
Works as an
editor for George
R. Graham
(owner of
Graham’s
1841
1841
Magazine),
publishing “The
Murders in the
Rue Morgue” and
“A Descent into
George Graham
the Maelström”.

“The Masque of
the Red Death”,
“The Oval
Portrait”, “The
Mystery of Marie
Rogêt” and “The
Pit and the
Pendulum” are
published by
Graham’s Maga- France starts
1842
1842
zine before his the conquer
departure as of Algeria.
editor.
Tuberculosis
attacks Virginia.
Falls into a deeper Charles Dickens
alcoholism and
financial resources
decline.
Meets Charles
Dickens.
“The Tell-Tale
Heart” appears
in The Pioneer
and “The Gold
1843
1843
Bug” wins a $100

award from The
Philadelphia
Dollar
Newspaper.
Chronology 147

Stops working
for the Graham’s
Magazine.
He and the
Clemms move to
New York.
While
1844
1844
collaborating for
several magazines,
“A Premature
Burial”, “The
Angel of the
Odd” and “The
Purloined Letter”
are published.
“The Raven”
appears in the
The United
1845
1845
Evening Mirror in
States annex
New York, mak-
Texas.
ing him a well
known writer. Raven
Moves with
Virginia and
Maria to
1846
1846
Fordham.
“The Cask of
Amontillado” is
published.
Virginia dies
1847
1847
eventually, driving
him into a deeper
depression.
Virginia after her death

Third wave
After initializing of liberal
a relationship revolutions in
with Sarah Helen Europe.
Whitman, she War in Italy.
1848
1848
breaks it due to Gold fever in
his addiction to California.
alcohol. Communist
Works as a Manifesto by
lecturer. Edgar A. Poe in 1848 Marx and
Engels.
Taken almost Stone at the

insane to original
1849
1849
Washington placement
College Hospital, for Poe’s grave
dies on the Independence
7th of October. Stone at the original of Hungary.
placement for Poe’s grave
References
I am very much indebted to Dr. Margarita Rigal for the bibliographical

recommendations and her assistance in the completion of this chronology.
Ackroyd, Peter. Poe: A Life Cut Short. London: Chatto & Windus, 2008.
Allen, Hervey. Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe, 2 vols. New York:
George H. Doran, 1926.
Case, Keshia A. & Semtner, Christopher P. Edgar Allan Poe in Richmond.
Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2009.
Hutchisson, James M. Poe. Mississippi: The University Press of Mississippi,
2005.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. London: John Murray
Publishers, 1992.
Peeples, Scott. Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers,
1998.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. London:
D. Appleton-Century Company, 1942.
Rigal-Aragón, Margarita. Aspectos estructurales y temáticos recurrentes en la
narrativa breve de Edgar Allan Poe. Cuenca: Servicio de Publicaciones
de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 1998.
——. “La enigmática muerte de un ‘escritor maldito’: Diversas facetas
del tema de la muerte en sus relatos”. Barcarola, número 68–69.
Albacete: Gráficas Campollano, 2006.
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar Allan Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remem-
brance. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1992.
Thomas, Dwight and David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life
of Edgar Allan Poe 1809–1849. Boston: G. K. Hall and Co, 1987.
Notes on Contributors
ÁNGEL GALDÓN-RODRÍGUEZ is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Foreign Languages

at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), under the tutorship of Dr. Margarita
Rigal. He centres his research in the influence of Literature on mass culture.
FERNANDO GALVÁN is Full Professor of English at the University of Alcalá de Henares (Spain).
Among many other merits, he is president of ESSE (European Society for the Study
of English), and former president of AEDEAN (Asociación Española de Estudios
Anglo-Norteamericanos). He is the author of more than thirty books, and more
than a hundred essays and articles dealing with English authors and Literary Criti-
cism, published in scholarly journals, such as Atlantis, Anglo-American Studies, Revista
Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, Epos, BELLS, Doris Lessing Newsletter, European Journal of
English Studies, PMLA, The European English Messenger, REAL, Barcarola, etc.
BEATRIZ GONZÁLEZ-MORENO is Associate Professor at the University of Castilla-La
Mancha in Spain, where she teaches English Literature. Her main field of research
is the analysis of the aesthetic categories in the Romantic period, focusing on the
relevance of the sublime in relation to traditional beauty. On that subject, she has
published a book, exploring the categories of the beautiful and the sublime in the
English Romanticism and the aesthetic experience in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
(Lo sublime, lo gótico y lo romántico: la experiencia estética en el romanticismo inglés,
2007). She is also the author of a number of articles published in scholarly journals
on the issue of gender and the sublime, focusing on female characters which defy
traditional aesthetics and categorization.
EDUARDO DE GREGORIO-GODEO teaches British Culture, Discourse Analysis and EFL at
the University of Castilla-La Mancha. His research focuses on the instrumentality of
discourse analysis for cultural studies, with a special focus on gender identities. He
has published articles in Spanish (e.g. Miscelánea 34; Revista Alicantina de Estudios
Ingleses 19) and international journals (e.g. Image & Narrative 11; Mélanges CRAPEL
28); and book chapters in Rodopi (Literature and Ethnicity in the Cultural Border-
lands, 2002) or Cambridge Scholars Press (Borders and Borderlands in Contemporary
Culture, 2006; Culture and Power: The Plots of History, 2008).
JOSÉ ANTONIO GURPEGUI is Associate Professor of American Literature at the Universidad
de Alcalá and the Director of the Instituto Franklin de Investigación en Estudios
Norteamericanos (Spain). He has published extensively on American and Chicano
literature. He edited The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (Espasa Calpe), and is the
author of John Steinbeck: Escribir en el Edén (Palas Atenea) and Narrativa chicana:
Nuevas propuestas analíticas (Universidad de Alcalá Press). He was Visiting Scholar at
Harvard University (1994 –1996) and is a regular contributor of the literary supple-
ment of El Mundo newspaper, “El Cultural.”
152 Notes on Contributors
SONYA ISAAK studied English and French literature and linguistics at the University of
Heidelberg in Germany. She has taught French, German and English language and
literature at schools and Universities including Fordham University, Pace University
and Manhattanville College in New York. She is currently teaching and working on
a dissertation on the aesthetics of Poe and Baudelaire at the University of Heidelberg.
Recently, she has held papers on Poe and Baudelaire in France, Spain and Russia.
RICARDO MARÍN-RUIZ is Assistant Professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha,
Spain, where he gives classes of English Language Applied to Engineering in its
Engineering School. Along with this topic, his research is focused on the field of
Comparative Literature, an area in which he has especially worked on the relation-
ships between the English, the American, and the Spanish Literatures. He is the
author of a number of articles and chapters published in scholarly journals and
books dealing with those aspects.
ÁNGEL MATEOS-APARICIO is Associate Professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha
(Ciudad Real, Spain). His dissertation has been recently published in book form
with the title Visiones sombrías de un país inexplorado: Ciencia-ficción y humanismo
en la narrativa norteamericana y británica de posguerra: W. Golding, K. Vonnegut,
R. Bradbury y J.G. Ballard. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2008. His main research
interests focus on the intersection of science fiction and mainstream postmodern lit-
erature in postmodern culture. Among his recent publications: “Trespassers of Body
Boundaries: The Cyborg and the Construction of a Hybrid Postgendered Posthu-
man Identity”, included in Ana Manzanas Calvo (ed) Border Transits: Literature and
Culture across the Line (New York and Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007).
MARGARITA RIGAL-ARAGÓN is Associate Professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha
in Spain, where she teaches English Language, together with English and North
American Literature, in its “Facultad de Humanidades”, Albacete. Her main field of
research is the American Renaissance, focusing on Edgar Allan Poe’s works. On that
subject, she has published a book, entitled Aspectos estructurales y temáticos recurrentes
en la narrativa breve de Edgar Allan Poe. She is also the author of a number of articles
and chapters published in scholarly journals and books focusing on Poe’s works, life
and reception, the Victorian Age, and the detective genre.
SANTIAGO RODRÍGUEZ is Associate Professor at the University of Valladolid (Spain). He
teaches American and Postcolonial Literatures. His research focuses on the reception
of literature written in English in Spain (Edgar Allan Poe, T.S. Eliot, P.B. Shelley),
American short fiction (E.A. Poe, N. Hawthorne, H. Melville, R. Carver, R. Ford, S.
Dybek, among others) and cultural issues in Postcolonial Literatures (both in English
and in Spanish). He has published Presencia de Edgar Allan Poe en la literatura española
(1999), En torno a los márgenes: Ensayos de literatura poscolonial (2008) and has edited
and anthology of grotesque short fiction (2007).

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González Moreno & Rigal Aragón (eds) A Descent into Edgar Allan Poe and His Works: The

Beatriz González Moreno is Associate Professor at the University of

Margarita Rigal Aragón is Associate Professor at the University of Castilla-

Beatriz González Moreno is Associate Professor at the University of

Margarita Rigal Aragón is Associate Professor at the University of Castilla-

A Descent into Edgar Allan Poe

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

1. Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849–Anniversaries, etc. 2. Poe, Edgar Allan,

Cover Illustration: © Ethan Finkelstein, from istockphoto.com

© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2010

All rights reserved.

PART ONE PARALLEL LIVES: READING POE

PART TWO POE’S LEGACIES:

Ángel Mateos-Aparicio Martín-Albo

PART THREE POE, AESTHETICS AND THE

Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan

PART FOUR EPILOGUE

José Antonio Gurpegui

PART FIVE CHRONOLOGY

Ángel Galdón-Rodríguez 139

Notes on Contributors 151

We would like to highly acknowledge the generous contribution of the

1. Dupin and Sherlock Holmes as Book Reviewers, p. 69.

2. Elizabeth Poe, p. 142.

3. Frances Allan, p. 142.

4. John Allan, p. 143.

5. Village Design of University of Virginia, p. 144.

6. Maria Clemm, p. 145.

7. West Point, p. 145.

8. Thomas White, p. 146.

9. Basement in one of Poe’s houses in Philadelphia, p. 147.

10. William Burton, p. 148.

11. George Graham, p. 148.

12. Charles Dickens, p. 149.

13. Raven, p. 150.

14. Virginia Poe, p. 151.

15. Edgar A. Poe in 1848, p. 151.

16. Stone at the original placement for Poe’s grave, p. 151.

followers, providing the Poe Studies Association” (PSA), founded in 1972,

similarities observed concerning narrative patterns and the construction of

Poe’s life by his tomb. In addition, an illustrated chronology, prepared by

Beatriz González and Margarita Rigal

poems written by Poe during this period.2 In contrast, Dickens’s knowledge

by Poe in immediate reprints in American magazines, and, as we shall see,

Arabesque. Dickens’s answer to Poe, dated 6 March 1842 at the “United

Faithfully Yours always

appointments in Philadelphia during the three days he stayed in town.

In fact, Poe’s tales had been published in England in 1845, in an edition

The Old Curiosity Shop, published in England as part of the periodical

been reprinted in the United States, on 1 May 1841, in the Philadelphia

Another small biographical detail could be added in this respect. When

Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.

——. “Poe and Dickens”. The Dickensian 47 (1951): 207–210.

In a letter to Mrs. Clemm in which he fears losing Virginia, he expresses

“[…] on all literary topics there is in society a seemingly wonderful coincidence of

Baudelaire went even further. Frequenting the greatest artists, musicians

person narrator-protagonist bears witness to the outsider’s strange behavior,

Benjamin, Walter. “The Paris of the Second Empire”. Charles Baudelaire: A

2 See Georges Poulet and Peter Wetherhill.

RICARDO MARÍN - RUIZ

importance they have in their respective literary contexts. On the one

Hard lives and creative imaginations: