A literary comparison of Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Black Cat' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart'

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Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Paderborn (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Proseminar American Gothic, language: English, abstract: "And much of Madness and more of Sin And Horror the Soul to the Plot." This line taken from Edgar Allan Poes poem The Conquerer Worm perfectly describes theessential elements featured in many of Poes poems and stories, on which I am about to writein particular. Madness and horror, sins and the Imp of the Perverse - The Evil, which lieswithin all of us - are popular and frequently recurring motives in Poes literary works andthereby create a mood and atmosphere quite dark and nightmarish. The reader is offered adeep glance into the abyss of the human mind and psyche.In this term paper Im going to draw a comparison between two of Poes short stories, whichboth deal with the above mentioned concepts and images and therefore, are counted to theGothic Genre - The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart. The main focus of my work willlie on the similarities of the storytelling structures and the speech Poe uses to convey thiscertain feeling of suspense, horror and thrill. I will examine which further motives and imagesPoe uses in this two stories and which function they fulfil.Im going to carry out my researches primarily with the help of the books: Poe by WalterLenning, Poe A Biography by Frank T. Zumbach, The Cambridge Companion to GothicFiction by Jerrod Hogle and The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings by EdgarAllan Poe.

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