Abstract

More than any other geographical imaginary, gothic Europe looms large in American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s short fiction. Although Poe (1809–1849) never set foot in continental Europe, several of his most prominent stories take place in European cities and landscapes. Clearly linked in gothic themes and motifs to the works of Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Matthew Lewis, Poe’s imaginary Europe is steeped in centuries-long traditions of dark exoticism and sophisticated grotesqueries ranging from madness and addiction (“The Fall of the House of Usher”), murderous family feuds (“Metzengerstein”), and death and decadence (“Ligeia”). When seen as a counter-image to antebellum USA and the pronounced anti-European strain in American letters of that time, Poe’s gothic Europe harbors combustible energies rooted in multicultural histories. Where other American writers celebrated the newness and democratic foundation of their nation, Poe explored imaginary, multilingual Europe as a place where esoteric knowledge and aristocratic power produce madness, morbid melancholy, and hereditary ill-health. This paper focuses on the way Poe positions Europe epistemologically on a history-saturated knowledge/power continuum that challenges the anti-historical nature-veneration of American literary nationalism.