In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a new literary genre emerged, the Gothic story. In the United States, the most prominent exponent of Gothic fiction was Edgar Allen Poe, whose "horror" tales evoke the dark side that many of us believe is at least half-hidden just beneath the surface of most people's lives. more conventional. In this article, we will discuss the Gothic in light of two of Poe's stories, "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher", and compare Poe's story with a somewhat dark tale by Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The black veil of the minister. » We will also analyze why Poe's stories are Gothic and Hawthorne's are not. Critic Mark Edmunson calls Gothic literature "the art of haunting," adding that "the Gothic shows that life, even in its most ostensibly innocent aspects, is possessed, that the present is a slave to the past." All are guilty; everyone, in time, will pay the price. And the Gothic should also possess the reader; scare him so he can't think of anything else. He must read it – or see it – over and over again to achieve some peace. Edmunson quotes Chris Baldick, author of a book on the Frankenstein myth, that Gothic literature "should combine a frightening sense of legacy in time with a claustrophobic sense of confinement in space, with these two dimensions reinforcing each other." each other to produce an impression of a nauseating descent into space.” disintegration” (Edmunson, p. 48). In short, the Gothic imagination is at odds with America's powerful optimism. A nation of ideals, America has also, unsurprisingly, been a nation of disillusionment, and we often find a kind of sympathy. resonance in dark and ungodly tales. And the first prominent American representative of the Gothic was Edgar Allen Poe. So what characterizes a Gothic... middle of paper... debts to the classical Gothic tradition. According to Edmunson, this is largely because at the end of this century we are once again both cynical and uncertain: "For we now find ourselves in a culture where the Gothic idiom has escaped from fiction and began to shape and regulate our perception of reality. , immersing us in a world in which serial killers, bizarre attackers and the like make up reality. They represent – ​​for a growing number of us – what there is” (Edmunson, p. 48). In its strange language of archetype and symbol, the Gothic horror tale can represent today's reality. Works Cited Edmunson, Mark. “American Gothic,” Vol. 3, Civilization, 01/05/1996, pp 48. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches. Library of America edition, NY, 1982. Poe, Edgar Allen. Selected Writings of Edgar Allen Poe. Riverside Editions, Cambridge, Mass... 1956.