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In "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) we have an early exposition, and one of the best, of this psychic drama, a summary of Poes ideas and method of investigating the self in disintegration. ... It was, to go even further, extended through and animating all matter, a theory confirmed by the books which Poe, and Usher, had read: Swendenborgs Heaven and Hell, Campanellas City of the Sun, and Robert Fluds Chiromancy, to name only a few listed in the narrative, all of which consider the material world as manifestation of the spiritual. ... The House is the total human being, its three parts functioning as one; the outside construction of the house is like the body; the dark tarn is a mirror or the mind which can "image. ... until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn" is the fatal dislocation or fracture, which, as the story develops, destroys the whole psychic being of which the house is the outward manifestation.
Approximate Word count = 708 Approximate Pages = 2.8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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