RISE AND FALL OF
THE ARABESQUE WORLD
-AROUND "THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH"
MAMI HILD
I
"The sun-ray dropped, in Lemnos, with a spell! On th' Arabesque carvings
of a gilded hall" (Italics, mine):l This is a description of a drowsy moment
when death approaches the speaker in Edgar Allan Poe's "AI Aaraaf." "It
[tapestry] was spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures"
(Italics, mine):2 This is a depiction of the interior of a bridal chamber where a
bridegroom witnesses the death and the resurrection of his wife in "Ligeia."
As seen in these examples, Edgar Allan Poe was fond of using arabesque
interiors in his works, and in "The Philosophy of Furniture" he clearly
announced his taste for arabesque decoration by saying, "Indeed, whether on
carpets, or curtains, or tapestry, or ottoman coverings, all upholstery of this
nature should be rigidly Arabesque.,,3
On the other hand, Poe sometimes uses the term "arabesque" in a different
way as follows: "There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and
appointments,,,4 in "The Masque of the Red Death." And he wrote, "These
figures partook of the true character of the arabesque only when regarded
from a single point of view .... he saw himself surrounded by an endless
succession of the ghastly forms,,,5 in "Ligeia." Obviously in these cases the
term "arabesque" is not used for an interior decoration but used as a sort of
synonym of "grotesque." In this same manner Poe juxtaposed the term
"grotesque" and "arabesque" in the preface for Tales of the Grotesque and
[39J
40
Arabesque.
Arabesque patterns and the idea of arabesque were repeatedly.used in
Poe's works and have a significant meaning both asa major pattern of
decoration and as the "prevalenttenor,,6 of his tales. Why was he so attracted
. by the idea of arabesque, and what did he draw out. of it? Though he was
almost obsessed with the idea of arabesque, he did not use the word
"arabesque" at all in his last and major work, Eureka. Why did he abandon the
term, "arabesque," which he had held for a long time? In this paper I will
discuss these points, focusing on "The Masque of the Red Death" which
depicts Prince Prospero, who created an arabesque world of his own and
collapsed with it.
II
Red Death is described as an epidemic disease, the most hideous and fatal
amoIlg all, in "The Masque of the Red Death." Its name parallels the "Black
Death" of medieval days, but Red Death itself is imaginary. The adjective
"red" is suggestively used, indicating the (.:olor of blood, which is
indispensable for life and at the same time, in the case of this disease, the
"Avatar and seal of death.,,7 David Ketterer and Joseph Patrick Roppolo
considered Red Death as a symbol of life, .judging from the indication of the
calor of blood, and KettEirer said, "Life itself, then, is the Red Death, the one
'affliction' shared by all mankind."s When one believes in the constancy of
life and the good old course of things, like the citizens in Vondervotteimit
tiss in "The Devil of the Belfry," life cannot be threatening and death is out
of consideration. But when one realizes the transiency of life and the
existence of death, both of them become threatening.
The fear of yet unknown death and the fear of life which inevitably leads
one to death are well symbolized not only in"The Masque of the Red Death"
but also in several other works, including "The Pit and the Pendulum." The
41
prisoner in "The Pit and the Pendulum" knows that his every motion is
watch~d: nevertheless; he cannot see the tormenter from the vault where he is
imprisoned. He cannot see his surroundings well because of the darkness of
the vault, and he does not have any idea at all what sort of torture he is going
to get. Without knowing anything except that he is sentenced to death, he is
psychologically as well as physically tormented.
A fear of death and life toward death is, in other words, a fear of time,
which steadily passes toward death. In "How to Write Blackwood Articles,"
Signora Psyche Zenobia thrust her head into the opening in the dial-plate of
a gigantic clock from inside to see the outer view, and had her head cut off by
the minute-hand of the clock. After she found that she could ·not pull back her
neck from the opening, the passing time was an extreme horror for her. In
"The Pit and the Pendulum" the prisoner was tortured by a descending
pendulum, the edge of which was as keen as that of a razor. Poe expressed the
passage of time toward death effectively by depicting the descent of the
sharp pendulum, using such adverbs as "steadily," "certainly," "relentlessly,"
"unceasingly," and "inevitably."g In "The Tell-Tale Heart" the criminal was
scared by the sound of the victim's heart-beat which sounded like a watch,
and at last confessed his crime. Jean-Paul Weber pointed out that there was
an unconscious desire to make a clock run as one likes in "The Devil in the
Belfry."
In "The Masque of the Red Death" there is a depiction of a clock with a
gloomy image. The gigantic clock of ebony was set in a black chamber with
blood-colored window panes. Whenever the clock struck hours, the mas
queraders stopped dancing, musicians ceased playing, and "it was observed
that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands
overtheir brows as if in confused revery or meditation.")) The masqueraders
did not venture to step in that black chamber, scared at the muffled peal of
the dock which was solemnly emphatic. When all the masqueraders died, the
42
masked figure of Red Death "stood erect and motionless within the shadow
of the ebony clock."12 These words indicate that the symbol of the fear of life
and death centers on that time. The cause of fear symbolized by the masked
figure was, thus, the idea of life and death and the idea of time.
Some mysterious points concerning the masked figure disguised as an
incarnation of the Red Death are left without clarification. It would be an
unforgivable act to appear in disguise as the Red Death in front of the people
who escaped from the Red Death and tried to forget about its fear by
performing the masquerade. Nevertheless, strangely enough, the figure of the
Red Death did not catch the attention of other people for a long time. It was
the last day when people noticed him, and on that day all of them had to die
away. The narrator says, "He [the masked figure of the Red Death]. had come
like a thief in the night,"13 but it is not clarified when and how he came into
Prince Prospero's walled abbey which was firmly locked.
People were scared by the spectral figure of the Red Death, and the figure
walked through the seven chambers, but when they ran after him and caught
him there was no physical substance in the grave cerements and the
corpse-like mask. These mysterious points are not clarified, to make the
whole story grotesque, but if we do not read this story as realism, and if we
consider that the cause of fear in the story is not the grotesque figure nor the
epidemic disease but fears related to life, death, and time, the mysteriousness
can be well interpreted. The masked figure of the Red Death was the
incarnation of the idea of the Red Death; that means, it represented the idea
of life and death, or the idea of time which brought people toward death. As
this was an idea which everybody held instinctively, there was no need for it
to enter the abbey from outside. Though people tried to forget about it, the
idea was in everyone's mind from the beginning. As David Halliburton says,
it had oniy to be recognized to be there14 People did their best to forget life,
death and time by their orgies, but when the dark ebony clock struck twelve
43
they could not help thinking of what they tried to forget, and at that very
moment the figure of the Red Death appeared in their presence.
The mysterious setting where a character's obsessive idea was personified
and the personified figure was found by his side without coming from outside
was a favorite technique of Poe's and he used it often. In "Berenice," the
background of the mysterious woman, Berenice, was left unclarified, and
even her family name was not known. She came into the narrator's library,
but he could not notice when she came in, and only by the sound of dosing
the door did he find that she had left the room. As the narrator recognized, he
saw her
not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being; not as a thing to admire, but to analyze; not as an object of love but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation15
The wife of the narrator in "Morella" was also presented without her
background clarified. The narrator was obsessed with the idea of the relation
between identity and death: "the principium individuationis, the notion of that
identity which at death is or is not lost forever, was to me, at all times, a
consideration of intense interest.,,16 He lived with Morella only to find out
the truth concerning this issue. The narrator of "Ligeia" lived with Ligeia
and said he loved her, but he did not even know her family name and he did
not remember, or did not know, where and how he met her. He tried to find
proof of ]oseph Granvill's proposition tnat "Man doth not yield himself to
the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his
feeble will,»!? through Ligeia's death and resurrection. As Daniel Hoffman
cleverly pointed out, the name Ligeia rhymed with the key word, "idea,,,18
and Ligeia and other female figures represented ideas of the narrators.
Therefore, they lived with narrators without any process for becoming
acquainted with them. When each of the narrators came upon his idea, the
44
female figure who represented the idea came to exist with him. Likewise, in
"The Masque of the Red Death," when masqueraders remembered the idea
concerning hfe, death, and time, the masked figure of the Red Death
appeared in the hall.
III
Those who were obsessed with fear of life, death, and time took refuge in
Prince Prospero's residence. His residence was depicted as a creation of his
eccentric and august taste and also of his love of the bizarre, and one of its
clearest characteristics is that it was isolated from the outer world. His
residence was a castellated abbey, and a strong and lofty wall girdled it in.
Moreover, the iron gates were welded so that not only from outside but also
from inside nobody could open the gates. With such precautions people
inside tried to forget about the outside calamity, Red Death, and had orgies,
providing all the devices of pleasure. Among all the performances, the
masquerade was the most magnificent. Compared with the outside reality,
the inside orgies were called fancies and· the masqueraders were called
dreams. As it is indicated by these words, "fancies" and "dreams," it can be
said that Prince Prospero and his party's escape into the seclusion of the
walled abbey suggests their flight from consciousness into fancy and dream.
Besides the isolated situation, the unusual interior of the abbey, which is
called bizarre, characterizes the world of Prince Prospero and his guests.
The interior design, furniture, and ornaments were peculiar, and the Prince
was said to have a fine eye for colors and effects to create such surroundings,
but we can see the same or similar interiors in many of Poe's works, such as
Usher's room in "The Fall of the House of Usher," a room in a palace in "The
Duc de L'Omelette," a room of the strange young man in "The Assignation,"
the. bridal chamber in "Ligeia," and the ideal room discussed in "The
Philosophy of Furniture." "Ligeia" shows the prevalent tenor of Tales of the
45
Grotesque and Arabesque well. When we compare the descriptions of the
interior of Ligeia's bridal chamber and Prince Prospero's room, referring to
the idea of "Philosophy of Furniture," Poe's intentional choice of interior is
clarified.
One of the common characteristics of Poe's favorite settings was isolation
from the outside; like the narrator of "Ligeia," Prince Prospero and seveal
other characters in Poe's works lived in the same sort of building, "a
castellated abbey." Characters did not have and did not want to have
anything to do with the outside world. In other words each of the places was
an independent realm. There were windows; especially in the chambers in
"Ligeia" and "Philosophy of Furniture" there were large windows reaching
down to the floors, but the outer light did not come inside directly through
those windows. There was crimson stained-glass in the windows in the bridal
chamber in "Ligeia," Prince Prospero's black room, and the ideal room in
"Philosophy of Furniture"; and the rays of the sun and the moon, and, in
Prospero's room, the torch light, "fell with a ghastly lustre on the objects
within,"19 by passing through the blood-tinted glass. Another common point
was the use of enormous golden ornaments for the effect of beauty. and
glitter: in the room of Prince Prospero, golden ornaments were scattered to
and fro or hanging from the roof; in "Ligeia," chain, censer, and candelabra
were all gold, and carpet and curtains were a:lso rich cloth of gold; and in
"Philosophy of Furniture," a tint of gold as well as that of crimson
"determined the character of the room."20 Poe denied the much too prevalent
straight lines in "Philosophy of Furniture" and in Prospero's house
presented sharp turns of the hallway and windings of the suites. The last and
ultimate point in common is the rooms' arabesque nature. In "Philosophy of
Furniture" Poe insisted, "Indeed, whether on carpets, or curtains, or tapestry,
or ottoman coverings, all upholstery of this nature should be rigidly
Arabesque."21In "Ligeia," the arabesque figures which were regarded as "the
46
chief phantasy of all"22 were on the gold draping at irregular intervals, but
when one saw it from a certain point of view it took on the "true character of
the arabesque" and one "saw himself surrounded by an endless succession of
the ghastly forms." In Prince Prospero's rooms, arabesque figures included
the masqueraders, who were, following Prospero's order, not only grotesque
but also had several other aspects such as "glare and glitter and piquancy and
phantasm.,,24
As we can see in these examples "arabesque" was used in the three works
but in different ways. By forbidding the excessive use of straight lines and
curved lines with uniformity, the ornamental design of the furniture became
an arabesque pattern. In order to fit the request of Prince Prospero,
masqueraders had to be grotesque, glittering, piquant, and fantastic at the
same time, and as a result they were called arabesque figures. The figures of
the design on the draping in "Ligeia" seemed to be scattered at irregular
intervals but they made a picturesque scene when looked at from a certain'
angle, and it was called the true character of arabesque. Poe did not give a
clear definition of arabesque, but. all these elements depicted in the works,
together with the isolation from the outer world and the break of harmony
with nature by using crimson glass, can be considered to make a state which
Poe called arabesque. The elements looked contradictory to each other; as
the narrator of "The Masque of the Red Death" says, "There were much of the
beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible,
and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."z5 Opposing
elements existing at the same place are part of the state of arabesque.
This state of arabesque was often used in Poe's works' as a medium to
reveal a new reality. In Marginalia Poe repeatedly recommended not trying
to see the reality directly but to see it "through the veil of the soul,,,z6 or with
half-closed eyes, as naked senses "see too little-but then always they see too
much."z7 What one can see through such a veil is no longer a strict reality but
47
a fancy where, according to Poe, "the confines of the waking world blend
with those of the world of dreams."28 Poe tried to make fancy, which "exists
but for an inappreciable point of time,"29 last longer by symbols of the state of
arabesque. This arabesque state is an aspect of Poe's effort to get rid of a
division which separates opposing elements that cannot exist at the same
time in one's reasonable sense, such as reality and dream, life and death.
David Ketterer called this status "Foe's continuum reality, the new
dimension,,,3o and David Halliburton said, "The chamber is the arena in
which are staged both of the central, and finally indistinguishable, struggles:
the struggle of dream and reality, and the struggle of death and life."31
Eventually, Poe's interest was in the relation between life and death, through
the character's sense of time and also through the setting of the arabesque
state in his works.
N athaniel Hawthorne's malll interest may not have been the relation
between life and death, but like Poe, Hawthorne set up "neutral territory"
where reality and dream were mingled with each other to explore the truth in
life, centering on the issue of good and evil. Poe's arabesque setting as an
ideal state reminds us of Hawthorne's neutral territory and the tragedy of
Young Goodman Brown in the ambiguity. According to Hawthorne, familiar
things in a familiar room show completely different aspects' under the dim
light of the moon. This does not mean that darkness prevents a writer from
catching the exact shapes of them. Far from that-they then are "completely
seen."32 The difference is brought about because they are "so spiritualized,"
and become "things of intellect" by "the unusual light. ,,33 Hawthorne called
such an atmosphere under the moon "a neutral territory, somewhere between
the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may
meet."34 He suggested two other things which generated a neutral territory:
"a smouldering glow of the half-extinguished anthracite" and a reflection in a
mirror.35 The effects of the three elements combine to create a neutral
48
territory. In his romances; he made ambiguous backgrounds for tensions of
reality and dream, for the issue of good and evil. One of these examples is
"Young Goodman Brown."
Young Goodman Brown went into the forest and was shocked to think that
many pious villagers attended the witches' sabbath. He was almost
maddened with despair to see even his wife there. He was forced to be
baptized with her, but at the last moment, he found himself "amid calm night
and solitude."36 Either the nightmare world in the forest or the plain world in
the village might be reality and the other fantasy, but Hawthorne did not
clarify which was which and left those two opposed worlds in front of Young
Goodman Brown as they were. Brown was not capable of distinguishing
them, nor accepting the ambiguous state where reality and dream were
mixed, and eventually became a distrustful man who could not believe
anyone in the village and died sadly. The tragedy of Young Goodman Brown
occurred because he could not accept the ambiguous state. Though he was
shown two different realms which existed at the same time, he could live only
in one or the other of them which was to be the world of his consciousness.
Likewise, the same sort of tragedy occurred in "The Masque of the Red
Death," where Prince Prospero created an arabesque site where reality and
dream existed at the same time to escape from life, death, and time.
Prince Prospero made an arabesque world of his own and set up life and
death, and other elements which were considered as polarities, in the same
place with the help of half-closed eyes. His party were absorbed in such a
realm of fancy as the arabesque figures, by themselves making the arabesque
effect complete. They succeeded in forgetting about life, death, and passing
time, but in spite of their oblivion, the ebony clock struck hours to show that
time, which brought people into death, was passing constantly. Though
people's heart-beats were feverish compared with the gloomy muffled peal of
the clock, both sounds were equally constant and pointed toward death.
49
Prospero's world of fancy was not an ultimate shelter from fear and when
"The Masque of the Red Death" was found everyone died, including
Prospero who was the creator of that world. As David Ketterer said, the
"unearthly sovereign whose reign is over us all, whose dominions are
unlimited, and whose name is death" in The Narrative of Arthur Cordon Pym
was the same being who presides "over all" in "The Masque of the Red
Death."3? Death was depicted as conqueror over all in the poem, "The
Conqueror Worm," and Ligeia, who recited this poem of almighty death, also
recited the passage of Glanvill on the power of will which conquered death.
But when Ligeia seemed to be resurrected, the narrator stopped, and her
resurrection was not clearly described but left uncertain. In "The Pit and the
Pendulum" the prisoner was saved from fear, but the rescue came from
outside in the manner of deus ex machina. It indicated that the rescue from
fear, even if unrealistic, would never be found inside-even inside the
arabesque world. As fancy existed only for "an inappreciable point of
time,,,38 the artificial arabesque world, as a special setting with furniture and
light, was also limited and temporary.
IV
It proved impossible to escape from or go beyond life, death, and time by
creating an arabesque world. Those who feared death, life-which was
toward death-and time-which brought them to death-took refuge in an
arabesque realm; but eventually they lived a life directed toward dying, and
were brought by time to death. In the 1830s, Poe wrote a series of stories of
women, "Berenice," "Morella," and "Ligeia," searching for something
beyond life, death, and time. But in each case, the story was brought to an
end at a crucial point without clarifying if a narrator could find something or
not, and the story was successful in leaving a mysterious atmosphere. In
"The Fall of the House of Usher" written at the end of the 1830s, and in "The
50
Masque of the Red Death" in the 1840s, however, Poedid not use such
ambiguous endings but emphasized nothingness which was left at the end of
the stories: everything, including people and the house, sank into a deep and
dank tarn at the end of "The Fall of the House of Usher," and everybody died
and even the ebony clock, which symbolized passing time, stopped at the end
of "The Masque of the Red Death." Poe gave up searching for the ways to
overcome life, death, and time. He admitted that everything was finite and
came to an end of nothingness, and then, on the premise that everything
ended in nothingness, Poe tried to see beyond nothingness.
Eureka, written in 1848 as Poe's last work, was his essay on the universe; it
was not a scientific research but an essay dedicated "to the dreamers and
those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities."39 Though it was an
essay, Poe mentioned "death and 'Life Everlasting',,,40 and showed that he
was concerned about life and death by discussing the universe, in other
words, he was searching for something which came beyond nothingness in
the process of the universe. He was not satisfied with considering
nothingness as the last end for everything and said in this essay, "I myself
feel impelled to fancy ... that there does exist a limitless succession of
Universes.,,41 He combined his wish for infinity and his recognition of
nothingness, and suggested an idea that "Infinity" was, like "God" and
"spirit," "by no means the expression of an idea, but of an effort at one," and it
stood for "the possible attempt at an impossible conception."42 According to
this general idea, Poe tried to analyze the constitution of the Universe.
He set up "oneness" as orginally created matter, and interpreted the
constitution of the universe as having been effected "by forcing the originally
and therefore normally One into the abnormal condition of Many.,,43
According to Poe, this action of diffusion from Unity was inevitably
accompanied with a reaction of returning into Unity, and he said,
51
Its [Universe's) purposes are thus seen to have been comprehended in its diffusion; and with the return into Unity these purpoSes cease. The absolutely consolidated globe of globes would be objectless-therefore not for a moment could it continue to exist: 44
Again, in his essay on the universe, Poe put nothingness at the end of a
process of the universe, but this time God remained after the disappearance
of everything: "Let us. endeavour to understand that it would disappear, and
that God would remain all in alL,,45 He continued,
On the Universal agglomeration and dissolution, we can readily conceive that a new and perhaps totally different series of conditions may ensue-another creation and irradiation, returning into self-another action and. reaction of the Divine Wi1l 46
This process of creation, irradiation, subsiding into nothingness would be,
according to Poe, renewed forever "at every throb of the Heart Divine,,,47 and
he concluded that the Heart Divine meant the hearts of our own. It is ironical
that the throbs of a heart, which scared Poe as a symbol of time passing
toward death, now symbolize a diffusion and a "concentralisation" of the
universe, and also symbolize a renewal of creation.
Fancy and reality were juxtaposed,in Prince Prospero's arabesque world,
and the lines which separate one from another were extinguished there. As
David Ketterer said, the arabesque designs were "active symbols of Poe's
efforts to melt away the rigid pattern,,48 that was imposed by man's reason.
By mixing what was normally kept apart, Poe's Prince Prospero tried to rise
beyond life, death, and time. In other words, he tried to create an artificial
universe under his jurisdiction and to become God, the Creator. But
Prospero could not be a real God and the pseudo universe could not be a real
universe after all because of the Masque of the Red Death. Though the
masked figure was an embodiment of people's ideas of life and death, it is
52
questionable if Prospero's masquerade would last forever, even if people
could completely forget about time, life, and death. The arabesque world was
an attempt to catch a glimpse of the real universe.
Poe moved the setting from the castellated abbey with its concrete images
to the conceptional universe in order to discuss the issue of life, death, and
time. The constitution of the universe was not that of an arabesque state but a
limitless continuum of nothingness and creations, which came one after
another according to the Divine Will or the throbs of the Heart of God; "with
Him there being neither Past nor Future-with Him all being Now.,,49 The
main points at issue which Poe had long stuck to were whether death meant
the last stop of everything and whether Will could last after death: and he
drew one conclusion referring to the constitution of the universe. He
considered the heart throbs of God as those of our own, and saw the Divine
Will overlapped with human imagination. "Infinity" was, as Poe said, not the
expression of an idea but the possible attempt of imagination, and it was
fl uctuating "in accordance with the vacillating energies of the
imagination."5o Prospero's continuum reality based on the arabesque idea
could not be freed from the restriction of time, life, and death, but the
existence of the continuum of the universe without any restriction could be
inferred by depending on one's imagination.
In the "Preface for Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque" Poe said that terror
in his stories was "not of Germany but of the soul.,,51 As Edward H. Davidson
said, such terror of the soul might open "ways into farther and deeper
understanding."52 The terror of discovering life's transiency and the self's
helplessness could be a key to the constitution of the universe, and the
madness out of terror could be the "divinest sense."53
Notes
1 Edgar Allan Foe, "AI Aaraaf," The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Val. lll. Edited by
53
John H. Ingram (London: A. & C. Black Ltd., 1899), pp. 74-75.
2 Edgar Allan Poe, "Ligeia," Collected Works of Edgar Alf{mPoe; Tales and Sketches
1831-1842. Edited by Thomas Olive l'vlabbott (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 322. Hereafter abbreviated as CW
3 Edgar Allan Poe, "Philosophy of Furniture," CW, p. 498.
4 Edgar Allan Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death." CW p. 673.
5 Edgar Allan Poe, "Ligeia," p. 322.
6 Edgar Allan Poe, "Preface for Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," Collected
Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Tales and Sketches, 1831-1842, p. 473.
7 Edgar Allan Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death," p. 670.
8 Joseph Patrick Roppolo, "Meaning and 'The Masque of the Red Death,'" Poe: A
Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by Robert Regan (N. ].: Prentice Hall, Inc.
1967), p. 139.
9 Edgar Allan Poe, "The Pit and the Pendulum," CW, p. 692.
10 "At the very most one could perceive in this little drama an unconscious desire
to make a clock-a clock which remorselessly ticks away the minutes and chimes
the hours-run excessively fast and slow." (Jean· Paul Weber, "Edgar Poe or the
Theme of the Clock," Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, p. 81.
11 Edgar Allan Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death," pp. 672-673.
12 Ibid., p. 676.
13 Ibid., p. 676.
14 "Death, to borrow a term from Lawrence, is 'realized'; it has no need to enter the
abbey in order to be there, it has only to be recognized." (David Halliburton, Edgar
Allan Poe: A Phenomenological View [N. ].: Princeton Ulliversity Press, 1973], p.
313.)
15 Edgar Allan Poe, "Berenice," CW, p. 214.
16 Edgar Allan Poe, "Morella," CW, p. 231.
17 Edgar Allan Poe, "Ligeia," p. 310.
18 "This is the only conceivable feminine name (assuming it to be such) which
rhymes with the Great Key Word, Idea" (Daniel Hoffman, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe,
Poe, Poe [Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1972], p. 247.
19 Edgar Allan Poe, "Ligeia," p. 321.
20 Edgar Allan Poe. "Philosophy of Furniture," p. 501.
54
21 Ibid., p. 498.
22 Edgar Allan Poe, "Ligeia," p. 322.
23 Ibid., p. 322.
24 Edgar Allan Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death," p. 673.
25 Ibid, p. 673.
26 Edga:r Allan Po.e, Marginalia, The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vo!. III, Edited by
John H. Ingram (London: A. & c. Black Ltd., 1899), p. 356.
27 Ibid, p. 356.
28 Ibid., p. 380.
29 Ibid., p. 380.
30 David Ketterer, The Rationale of Deception in Poe (Louisiana States University
Press, 1979), p.39.
31 Halliburton, p. 211.
32 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, The Complete Works of Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Vo!. I, Edited by William Charrat, Roy Harvey Pearce, and Claude M.
Simpson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1965), p. 35.
33 Ibid., p. 35.
34 Ibid., p. 36.
35 Ibid., p. 36.
36 N athaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown," Mosses from an Old Manse. The
Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, V o!. X, p. 88.
37 Ketter, p. 95.
38 Edgar Allan Poe, . Marginalia, p. 380.
39 Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka, The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vo!. Ill, Edited by John
H. Ingram (London: A. & C. Black, 1910), p. 91.
40 Ibid., p. 91.
41 Ibid., p. 164.
42 Ibid, p. 103.
43 Ibid., p. 109.
·44 Ibid, pp. 190-191.
45 Ibid, pp. 190-191.
46 Ibid, p. 192.
47 Ibid., p. 192.
48 Ketterer, p. 36.
49 Edgar Allan .Foe, Eureka, p. 147.
50 Ibid., p. 107.
55
51 Edgar Allan Poe, "Preface for Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," CW, p. 473.
52 Edward H. Davidson, Poe: A Critical Study (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 134.
53 Ibid., p. 134.