The Fall of the House of Usher | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 25 pages of analysis & critique of The Fall of the House of Usher.
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The Fall of the House of Usher | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 25 pages of analysis & critique of The Fall of the House of Usher.
This section contains 7,356 words
(approx. 25 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Louise J. Kaplan

SOURCE: "The Perverse Strategy in 'The Fall of the House of Usher'," in New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, edited by Kenneth Silverman, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 45-64.

Kaplan is an American psychoanalyst. In the following essay, she presents a psychoanalytic interpretation of "The Fall of the House of Usher."

Edgar Allan Poe was a dissembler, a hoaxter, a liar, an impostor, and plagiarizer. He was secretive about his true identity and frequently masqueraded under one of several aliases. Deception and mystification were Poe's stock-intrade. Nevertheless, about some things we take him at his word. He truly was, as he boasted, a master of perversion, that most deceptive of mental strategies. We have only to recall his persistent and active pursuit of mental and physical self-destruction—the drinking, his habits of provocative and violent argumentation, the alienation of his guardian and other authority figures who might otherwise have...

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This section contains 7,356 words
(approx. 25 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Louise J. Kaplan
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Critical Essay by Louise J. Kaplan from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.