Comparing Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher and Taylor’s Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher and Peter Taylor’s Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time

Various authors develop their stories using gothic themes and characterizations of this type to lay the foundation for their desired reader response. Although Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Peter Taylor’s “Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time” are two completely different narratives, both of these stories share a commonality of gothic text representations. The stories take slightly different paths, with Poe’s signifying traditional gothic literature and Taylor approaching his story in a more contemporary manner.

Gothic texts are typically characterized by a horrifying and haunting mood, in a world of isolation and despair. Most stories also include some type of supernatural events and/or superstitious aspects. Specifically, vampires, villains, heroes and heroines, and mysterious architecture are standard in a gothic text. Depending upon the author, a gothic text can also take on violent and grotesque attributes. As an overall outlook, “gothic literature is an outlet for the ancient fears of humanity in an age of reason” (Sacred-Texts). Following closely to this type of literature, Edgar Allan Poe uses a gloomy setting, isolation, and supernatural occurrences throughout “The Fall of the House of Usher”.

From the onset of the story, it is apparent that Poe is employing a gothic theme upon his work. The narrator’s portrayal of the home of his longtime friend, Roderick Usher was as follows, “I looked upon the scene before me – upon the bleak walls – upon the vacant eye-like windows – upon a few rank sedges – and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees” (Poe, 75). T...

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... Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”, they both can be classified collectively under gothic literature. In other words, although these stories exhibit two completely different plots, it has been found that they have matching frameworks.

Works Cited

Bronzino, Agnolo. Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time. 27 Mar. 2003 arthp/bio/b/bronzino/biograph.html>. Oates, Joyce Carol. “Realism of Distance, Realism of Immediacy [Review of The

Collected Stories]. Critical Essays on Peter Taylor. Ed. Hubert H. McAlexander. New York: G. K. Hall & Company, 1993.

Sacred-Texts: Gothic. 3 Apr 2003 .

Taylor, Peter. “Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time”. The Literature of the American South: A

Norton Anthology. Ed. William L. Andrews. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.

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Marlow Engl. 12 Sect. 24