Comparing Gothic Romanticism in The Fall of the House of...

Gothic Romanticism in The Fall of the House of Usher and Ligeia The Gothic style found in the majority of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories is obvious to the average reader. The grotesque, the desolate, the horrible, the mysterious, the ghostly, and, ultimately, the intense fear are all the primary aspects of the stories which are emphasized. But few writers remain uninfluenced from their contemporaries and Poe is no exception. He is clearly a product of his time, which in terms of literature, is called the Romantic era. Poe combines these two threads in almost all of his stories. For this reason critics often call Poe’s style â€Å"Gothic Romanticism.† The two stories â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† and â€Å"Ligeia†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦show more content†¦The narrator describes the Usher house as being in â€Å"singularly dreary tract of country† (Poe, â€Å"Usher†). Also, the narrator only reveals that he was â€Å"in a distant part of the country† when the letter reached him (Poe,  "Usher†). Not only is the location of the story not given in great detail, the year in which the story took place is not even mentioned. In addition to this, the narrator reveals that â€Å"many years had elapsed since our last meeting† thus removing any accurate conjectures towards the age of Roderick or the narrator. Similarly in â€Å"Ligeia,† the setting remains vague. In the first sentence of the story the narrator claims that he cannot remember â€Å"how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia.† He only â€Å"believes† that he met her in a â€Å"city near the Rhine† (Poe, â€Å"Ligeia†). Furthermore, when the narrator explains that he moved after Ligeia’s death. He reveals that he purchased an abbey that he purposefully does not name (â€Å"I shall not name it†), and only reveals that his unnamed abbey was â€Å"in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England† (Poe, â€Å"Ligeia†). These vague descriptions are important in their contribution to the Gothic effect because they allowed Poe to distance the reader from his/her common everyday world. The reader could be then thrust into the supernatural with much more ease, than if the supernatural events of his story took place in common