I need a Good definition of Gothic that would pertain to Poe's tale, The Fall of the House of Usher. I'm am already aware that gothic is a sense of events that lead up to mystery or horror or terror.

thanks

-- Anonymous, December 02, 2001

Answers

Certainly all the elements are there. The aged, decrepit house with its deaying, half-mad inhabitants, the crypts for his cataleptic sister, Roderick Usher even reads a poem and tells a tale that mirrors his own fall in the mmedieval Gothic style. The best Gothic literature is not relaint on supernatural devices to explain its mystery. In this story the supernatural element of the natural events is the spiritual tie between Usher and his doomed house, his sister, his failing mind, the environment. The horror is the totality of the Fall in bringing down all these elements together in one final catastrophe that fulfills the mystery that led up inexorably and prophetically to this climax.

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2001