Consider the speaker/narrators of "The Raven," "Ulalume, "Ligeia," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "William Wilson". What do they have in common? (Certainly they are made, but I am interested in their perception of reality as madmen.)

-- Anonymous, March 06, 2004

Answers

they all were not named. so i think it is poe.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2004

Madness is not imortant, indeed it is anelement of revelation and experience for the Romantic. The narrators are key in all these works and the horrors they become emotionally entwined with possess them utterly. They can be seen as variations of that single theme. Duality and dialogue with a twin horror or opposing relationship create an inner vortex of locked spin to that emotional crescendo.

I think you can go through and identify the narrator's their interaction with the story or the "other" and get something like that. And it goes the limit of death and beyond, but ends unresolved and hopeless. It takes an atypical happy ending like "The Pit and the Pendulum" to get another perspective, or the lack of an involved doppleganager narrator as in "The Masque of the Red Death".

-- Anonymous, March 11, 2004