Edgar Allen Poe was an English short story writer whose work reflected the traditional Gothic conventions of the time which subverted the ambivalence of the grotesque and the arabesque. Through the thematic conventions of the Gothic genre, literary devices and its own author, the texts of Edgar Allan Poe are considered sublime examples of Gothic fiction. The Gothic genre present in Poe's work, such as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, and The Raven, elicits the pervasive nature of the dark side of individualism and the encroachment of madness that results from it. Gothic tales are dominated by fear and terror and explore themes of death and decay. Gothic crosses boundaries into the realm of the unknown, arousing extreme emotions through the catalyst of dissociation and subversion of presence. Gothic literature uses themes of the supernatural to create a moody setting and an atmosphere of fear. The gothic dimensions of Poe's fictional world offered him a means of exploring the human mind in extreme situations, and thus arriving at an essential truth. The Gothic theme of the importance of the intuitive and the emotional and the rejection of the rational and the intellectual is prevalent in The Raven, The Black Cat, and The Tell-Tale Heart. Added to this is the convention of transgressive and invasive madness, omnipresent in Gothic literature. In The Tell-Tale Heart, a sort of psychological split is achieved by the narrator: an identification with the old man at the moment of disturbing him in the middle of the night, and a psychopathic detachment, evidenced by a feeling of triumph and exaltation. which precedes the murder in the extract “..a noise so strange that it excited me to uncontrollable terror”. Hysteria is relevant in Gothic texts, a... middle of paper ...... matic Gothic convention of decadence. Regarding the Gothic conventions present in The Raven, The Black Cat, and The Tell-Tale Heart, the texts of Edgar Allan Poe are considered examples of Gothic literature. Through the use of literary techniques and devices, Poe effectively conveyed the thematic concerns of Gothicism. Poe's texts explore the inept fear of the unknown, the degradation of an individual's character, and the psychotic relationship between madness and the expression and instigation of emotions. The Gothic conventions of his work complement each other and work together to express Gothic-related themes, as the ambient setting is achieved using the Gothic conventions of supernatural motifs and reference to darkness. By creating a pastiche of forms and conventions, the works of Edgar Allan Poe are considered sublime paradigms of Gothic fiction..