Poe’s Gothic Stereography:Spectator, Surface, Periphery

This essay begins by positing a model, derived from the basic architectural design of Medieval Gothic cathedrals, which balances the inner vertical axis (high vaulted ceilings and towers) against the outer horizontal axis (incongruous supports and decorations, surrounding and concealing the sacred vertical). If the horizontal gives the vertical an illusory sense of rising, the vertical can also be collapsed down onto the horizontal, a movement that may be seen as a “projection” of the 3-dimensional figure onto the 2-dimensional surface. This stereographic model, in which rising (or reverse-projection) and collapse can be taken as virtually reversible or “Gestalt-switched” modes, is then used as a framework for interpreting Poe’s lesser-known essay-story “The Domain of Arnheim,” his Gothic horror tale “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and his two detective stories, “The Purloined Letter” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” If in “Arnheim” and “Usher” we are dealing with the problematic “structure” of a three-dimensional figure and an external observer’s perception of this structure as a form of rising and/or collapse, in the detective stories we are beginning with the abstracted (and indefinitely extended) horizontal surface itself, which may represent to the observer pure logical self-evidence (“Purloined Letter”) and/or the possibility of a partiallyconcealed periphery (“Rue Morgue”).