beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Still reading Poe? He's pretty pervie all around, but he's also drawing from the same tradition of the novel that Austen parodied in Northanger Abbey and which I doubt anyone but lit majord have read in the past generation. There's tropes he uses which once there's any easily accessible visual medium (TV, film, horror comics) could be cranked down for sublety: an allusion to Snow White's step-mother or the bride of Frankenstein can be substituted for a more monstrous explicit description to communicate weirdness/threat. And of course some of what modern eyes perceive as cinematic cliches have their roots in Poe's descriptions; most early horror films take their production design from The Fall of the House of Usher.

Julia, OK, one of my random brain dumps, sorry