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2.3 Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic Style
Early writers in the United States, who were influenced by the early English Gothic literature, were William Dunlap (1766-1837), Charles B. Brown (1771-1810), and Sally Wood, Isaac Mitchell and Edgar Allen Poe. Among them, Allan Poe’s achievements have the most significant impact. His Gothic artist made him very posted in the development of the Gothic literature. Looking at Allan Poe’s novels, we will find Allan Poe created a large number of well-known Gothic novel by virtue of his superior wisdom and heritage of early Gothic literature including, Metzengerstein, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Masque of the Red Death, Ligeia, Hop-Frog and so on. Allan Poe had clearly explained the basic principles of his own literature in The Review of Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales”: A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents—he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. (Poe, 1842:2) As we all know, most of the early English Gothic novels took medieval castles, abbeys, ruins, or wilderness as the background, and took the persecution, murder caused by lust or property disputes as a story, the novels give us a horrible, weird and whacky impression. In fact, seeing through his elaborate description of Gothic atmosphere, we find that early English Gothic tradition has a huge impact on Allan Poe’s creation. The use of Gothic architecture to create a horror, mystery, dark, desolate and dark Gothic atmosphere is not only one important feature of Allan Poe’s fiction-writing, but also the essence of his unique aesthetic creation.
3 Edgar Allan Poe’s Architectural Images
Henry James, a famous modern novelist, once said, “the structure of the novel is like a house, it is spacious square tall buildings, or roughly look less grand mansion but it requires of having “consciousness of artists.” (Henry James, 1926:1) James believes that the novelist should be like an architect, “he works like an architect, superimposing bricks into order carefully. Compared with the James novel structure, Edgar Allan Poe’s novel is some of the well-built building. Houses in Poe’s novel not only play as backgrounds or furnishings, but also are important tools of complex symbolism and constructs of the fiction. Edgar Allan Poe’s delivered his famous “The Philosophy of Furniture” article. As Baudelaire said, “Poe can be regarded a proficient master architect”. (Zhu, 2005:4) Many architectural concepts of Poe’s were reflected in his Gothic horror and humor satirical novel, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher，The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.
It is evident that Poe’s Gothic architecture derives, however remotely, from the haunted castle which was the conventional stage-setting for the terror school of the eighteenth century English novelists. In describing the chateau in The Oval Portrait, he makes specific reference to Mrs. Radcliffe. He had no technical knowledge of architecture, and no interest in it as an art. There is no sense of structure in any of his descriptions. He did not go back to the middle ages for the scenes of his stories; nor would the medieval builders have recognized their work from his allusions to it. The important thing from his point of view was not that his descriptions should be architecturally correct, but that they should be effective in producing the desired associations in the reader’s mind. To this end he stressed the details of buildings which had most significance for his purpose, whether or not they were important architecturally. There is a notable absence of concrete description.