“I smiled – for what had I to fear?” A Study of Edgar Allan Poe’s Sublime.

Abstract

Abstract: This essay explores the aesthetics of the sublime in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories in order to clarify how Poe’s sublime is moving away from the Romantic conception of the sublime. Through Poe’s imaginative writing – his way of presenting impressive, yet disturbing, portraits of the human experience of horror – his work deals not only with aspects of the sublime but is also largely influenced by elements of the uncanny. In order to make the sublime experience possible it seems that Poe, through his usage of the uncanny, illustrates an environment that allows for his sublime to be experienced. However, while the uncanny seems to drive Poe´s narrative over the edge, it is the perversity of the narrators that allows for the sublime experience. This takes the subjective sublime of Romantic author´s such as Wordsworth and Kant even further, as the sublime experience is dependent upon certain traits of an individual.