Abstract
By analyzing seven of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales, I ask whether the dreadful feeling evoked in the reader by these texts can be traced back to the madness of their narrators. The analyses are thematic and operate on the level of narration. Whereas critics previously have concerned themselves with Poe’s work critically, often applying psychoanalytic or feminist theory, I aim to refrain from such theoretical frameworks and rather immerse myself, post-critically, in the mentally unstable world of Poe’s narrators. To what degree does the reader, in their interpretation of literary madness, succumb to the very madness they identify? Can literary madness thus be defined as infectious? The tales I analyse are “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), “Ligeia” (1838), “Morella” (1835), “Eleonora” (1842), “Berenice” (1835), “The Black Cat” (1843) and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843).