Killing The Aristocrats: The Edgar Allan Poe Review

Annotated Bibliography
Bennett, Zachary Z. E. “Killing the Aristocrats: The Mask, the Cask, and Poe's Ethics of S & M.” The Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 12, no. 1, 2011, pp. 42–58.
In this article, Bennett, contributor to The Edgar Allan Poe Review, publishes scholarly essays geared towards scholars, students, and writers to provide an exchange of information on Poe’s life, work, and continuing influence. This article was produced to delve deeper into the traditions found in the American Gothic writing style and how Poe’s writings influenced the fundamentals found within the genre. The article highlights the didactic nature of the narrative, “by showing readers what is abnormal and wrong, it implicitly tells them what is normal and right”

There are some connections made between Poe’s Dark Romantic style and views expressed by the Transcendentalist essayists made within “Art and Nature in the ‘The Masque of the Red Death”, “His burning thirst for supernal beauty, a passion approaching even to madness, is related to the “immortal essence of a man’s nature”” (Vanderbilt 380). This expressed the connection between Poe and his belief of immortality in the essence of man could reflect vague links to the Transcendentalist views. The chamber colors are a recurrent topic within the article, at times linking possible explanations to Shakespeare’s seven stages of

This resource has the potential to be of assistance in ascertaining possible reasons behind the color scheme seen within “The Masque of the Red Death”. There are possible conclusions that can be extrapolated based on Poe’s internal beliefs that can be applied to the true design behind the different colors established in the narrative. Zimmerman proposes several different views on the meanings of the colors from the correlation between the colors and the stages of life, to the colors signifying a parallel to people’s place within