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.