Gothic soundscapes and rhythm in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories

Abstract

Poe’s tales, though set in decaying, gloomy and silent places, are particularly sonorous. While several sound patterns are prototypical of the gothic (gusts of wind, shutting doors, absolute silence…), others denote Poe’s interest in uncanny sound perception and illusion. Acuteness of the senses is taken to an extreme, and the sounds of death take on a new dimension. Hearing the dead as well as the living, narrators are perpetually on the brink of insanity and draw their readers into a world rhythmed by sounding clocks, hissing pendulums and unstoppable heartbeats. Binary and ternary rhythms alternate, and it is ultimately in their composition that the tales show Poe’s mastery of rhythmic patterns and of their impact on the reading experience. Self-interruptions, refrains and other rhythmic strategies give the tales a dizzying quality, keeping the reader in a perpetual state of suspense.