Abstract

The Cask of Amontillado, one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most important short stories, is characterized by the unique employment of Gothic features. The story is narrated by Montresor the murderer about the crime he committed to Fortunato the victim 50 years ago. This paper begins with a brief introduction to the author, his Gothic techniques, and this story, then makes an analysis of the Gothic elements manipulated in this story in three aspects: setting, characters and narrative techniques, and thereby highlights the Gothic theme of the story—terror, distortion and death.

Key words:  Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado, Gothic features
 
摘 要

爱伦•坡的《阿芒提拉多的酒桶》是一部充满哥特色彩的短篇小说。该小说采用谋杀者蒙特利瑟自述的形式，讲述50年前他对弗图纳多的谋杀案，呈现了一副阴森酒窖下性格扭曲的蒙特利瑟活埋弗图纳多的恐怖画面。本文从场景、人物刻画和叙事特征三个方面分析了哥特技巧在小说中的应用，从而强调故事的哥特主题——恐怖、扭曲和死亡。

关键词：埃德加•爱伦•坡；《阿芒提拉多的酒桶》；哥特技巧

1. Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic. Born as Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts, Poe was orphaned young when his father abandoned the family and his mother died in 1811. His career as a writer began with the publication of Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), an anonymous collection of poems. “He is one of the few writers in literature to excel in more than one genre—poetry, fiction, and criticism.”(Joshi xi) Poe is especially famous for his Gothic short stories and poems. The representative works of his short stories are: The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Fall of the House of Usher, etc.
The Cask of Amontillado was written in 1846 as a successful short story in Edgar Allan Poe’s later writing period. The story is told in the first person point of view. Montresor the narrator is confessing his crime to a silent audience, describing vividly the whole process of the murder committed by himself 50 years ago.
Poe’s choice of writing Gothic stories largely comes from his aesthetics of writing. In The Philosophy of Composition, he points out that beauty reaches its highest level when united with sadness and melancholy. He praises the horror and fear in literary writing, and considers these elements to be an important part of human emotion. It is admitted that Edgar Allan Poe is a master of Gothic stories. In his forty years of life Poe wrote a remarkably large body of work. Best known for his short stories of mystery , Poe is one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is regarded as “the father of detective stories”. His exquisitely carved short stories makes him a model of the horror tale; “few have raised terror, fear and the macabre to such artistic heights”.