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"READING ENCRYPTED BUT PERSISTENT": THE GOTHIC OF READING AND POE'S "THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER".

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From: Studies in American Fiction
Date: 19990322
Author:Hustis, Harriet

This article examines Edgar Allan Poe's use of trickery and ciphers in his short story "The Fall of the House of Usher." The slow critical acceptance of Poe's work, issues of reliability and puzzles in his writing, and the use of gothic conventions to parody literary criticism are discussed.

Trickery, hoaxes, hieroglyphs, and ciphers: few writers have foregrounded such mechanisms of duplicity in their fiction as did Edgar Allan Poe. This is perhaps why the status of Poe's texts within the American literary canon has been so fiercely contested and debated. As many critics have noted, it ...

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