literary comparison of Edgar Allan Poes The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Paderborn (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Proseminar American Gothic, language: English, comment: Sprachliche und inhaltliche Analyse der Kurzgeschichten 'The Black Cat' und 'The Tell-Tale Heart' von Edgar Allan Poe mit anschließender Gegenüberstellung und Vergleich. , abstract: "And much of Madness and more of Sin And Horror the Soul to the Plot." This line taken from Edgar Allan Poe s poem The Conquerer Worm perfectly describes theessential elements featured in many of Poe s poems and stories, on which I am about to writein particular. Madness and horror, sins and the Imp of the Perverse - The Evil, which lieswithin all of us - are popular and frequently recurring motives in Poe s literary works andthereby create a mood and atmosphere quite dark and nightmarish. The reader is offered adeep glance into the abyss of the human mind and psyche.In this term paper I m going to draw a comparison between two of Poe s short stories, whichboth deal with the above mentioned concepts and images and therefore, are counted to theGothic Genre - The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart. The main focus of my work willlie on the similarities of the storytelling structures and the speech Poe uses to convey thiscertain feeling of suspense, horror and thrill. I will examine which further motives and imagesPoe uses in this two stories and which function they fulfil.I m going to carry out my researches primarily with the help of the books: Poe by WalterLenning, Poe A Biography by Frank T. Zumbach, The Cambridge Companion to GothicFiction by Jerrod Hogle and The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings by EdgarAllan Poe.