Allan Poe’s Inheritance And Development Of Gothic Fiction-An Analysis Of Allan Poe’s Horror Fiction

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most controversial writers in the history of American literature. His psycho-thriller and unique aesthetic theories of horror fiction have a profound influence on the works of contemporary writers and artists.Through the exploration of the aesthetic effect of Poe’s horror stories, we can find that Poe’s stories were deeply influenced by the Gothic fiction of 19 th century.The shadow of Gothic Fiction can be found in different aspects of his works.However, the uniqueness of Poe lies in the fact that he is not confined to the original framework of Gothic fiction. Instead, he adds various elements to his literary creation, including symbolism and psychological description, which has greatly broadened the field of Gothic fiction.Through the analysis of Poe’s horror stories of different periods, my thesis is aimed at an approach to Poe’s inheritance and development in terms of the Gothic Fiction and trying to find the influence of Poe’s “unity of effect” on his horror fiction and the aesthetic effects Poe tried to achieve in his works.In the first chapter, I will briefly introduce Edgar Allan Poe and his works, as well as overseas and domestic research on Poe and his works.In Chapter II, firstly I will introduce Gothic literature and then analyze the major Gothic elements found in Poe’s works, including Gothic themes in his stories,the gloomy setting, the time when his stories happen and the Gothic characters in his stories, which prove that Poe was deeply influenced by traditional Gothic literature.In Chapter III, I will explore Poe’s development in terms of Gothic Fiction from three aspects: Poe’s terror of the soul, the first-person point of view adopted in his Gothic stories and his employment of symbolism in the stories.Chapter IV mainly deals with Poe’s “unity of effect” and the sublime, which help us better appreciate the unique effects of his horror fiction. Poe applied the“unity of effect” to almost all of his short stories, successfully creating the terroreffect and arousing great shock in the reader’s mind. In addition, we can find the variation of Burke’s sublime in his fiction, which elevated the sublime to a higher level.Chapter V is the conclusion of the thesis, in which I draw the conclusion that Poe has made important innovation in the art of horror. His inheritance and development in terms of Gothic Fiction exerted a profound influence on literature and even on the art world beyond literature.