SOURCE: “Poe and the Picturesque: Theory and Practice,” in University of Mississippi Studies in English, Vol. 3, 1982, pp. 25-39.

In the following essay, Ljungquist discusses Poe's pictorial technique and the role of neoclassical and Romantic aesthetic theories in the context of “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

I

Critical studies demonstrate the role neoclassical and Romantic aesthetic theories have played in enhancing Poe's pictorial techniques. The primacy of the concept of beauty receives detailed acknowledgement,¹ and more recent analyses stress the importance of the aesthetic of the sublime for evoking terrifying but delightful effects.² Another aesthetic category that deserves greater attention is the picturesque.³ The sublime, the picturesque, and the beautiful constituted for Poe an approved triad that allowed him to develop subtle effects from the accepted aesthetic theories of his time. Although Poe generally exploited the sublime to describe scenes of vastness and grandeur, the picturesque was...