The+Fall+of+the+House+of+Usher

= The Fall of the House of Usher =
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Trailer for Vincent Price in //The Fall of the House of Usher// (1960):
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Click here for an annotated full-text version of the story.
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What do the narrator and Usher read together (23 & 26)?
(From Wordlist on poestories.com and "The Books in the House of Usher" by Thomas Ollive Mabbott.)
 * **Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset**: Two poems by Jean Baptiste Gresset (1709-1777), best known for "Ververt" or "Vert-Vert". The poem is about a parrot, owned by a convent of nuns, that mistakenly learns swear words.
 * **Belphegor of Machiavelli**: Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote Belphegor, a satire on marriage in which a demon comes to earth to prove that women damn men to hell.
 * **Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg**: Emmanual Swedenborg was Swedish mystic and philosopher. He published works the mystery of soul-body interaction during the early 1740s.
 * ** Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg **: Baron Ludwig Holberg (1684-1754) wrote a story about a voyage to the land of death and back.
 * **Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indagine, and of De la Chambre**: Chiromancy is the art of Palm Reading.
 * Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck: Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) was a German writer who was part of the Romantic movement of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Read More >
 * **The City of the Sun of Campanella**: The //Civitas Solis// (1623) by the Italian poet and philosopher Tommaso Campanella, is mentioned by Bielfeld, Book II, chapter vi, sec­tion 45. It recounts a visit to the people who inhabit a Utopia in the Sun. Campanella held that the world and all its parts have a spiritual nature. (Mabbott)
 * **//Directorium Inquisitorum// by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne**: A manual on how to torture Catholic heretics, published in Barcelona in 1503. Read More >
 * **Passages in Pomponius Mela**: Mela is the Latin geographer of the first century A.D., are marvelously appropriate to Usher's moods -- and I believe they were known to Poe. (The African tribe called Satyrs have nothing of man save the form. The appearance of the Aegipans is that of the mythological creatures they are named for. As far as one can see stretch the fields of the Pans and Satyrs. The reason for belief in them is that, although there is no sign of human care among them, no houses of inhabitants, no paths -- solitude immeasurable by day, and a greater silence -- yet by night many fires blaze, and as it were indicate widely scattered encampments, drums and cymbals are sounded, and there are heard flutes, sounding music more than human.) (Mabbott)
 * **Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae** (Vigils for the dead according to the use of the church at Mainz): Most curious of all the books is the //Vigiliae//. The title was apparently recorded by no bibliographer, and it was assumed that Poe had made it up on the analogy, of similar things known to bibliographers. But the fact that so many of the books on the list were real, coupled with a very similar title for Cologne (Copinger 6225) led me to get in touch with the German Commission preparing the //Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke.// They informed me that while they had found no earlier bibliographical descriptions of them, no less than three different editions (represented by five copies in the State Libraries of Darmstadt and Wolfenbüttel, and the Town Libran at Mainz ) were now recorded of the book apparently referred to by Poe -- the Mainz services for the dead. Dr. Adolf Schmidt kindly furnished me with descriptions of the two items most like Poe's -- printed probably at Basel around 1500 in quarto and with Gothic type! While the title reads VIGILIAE MORTUORUM MAIORES &c MINORES SECUNDUM CHORUM ECCLESIAE MAGUNTINENSIS, the text begins “Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum chorum ecclesiae Maguntinae" as Poe writes. Both Volumes are printed in black and red, with music and text, and consist of 52 leaves. Their makeup and pagination differ, however. How did Poe learn of the book? I cannot say. Perhaps through a bookseller's catalogue -- or even a collector, though I doubt any American owned a copy in that day. But, however it was, Poe described an incunable correctly, seventy years before the //Gesamtkatalog// -- and he is among the bibliographers, as Saul is among the prophets. (Mabbott)
 * **Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning**: Created by Poe. This is the only fictitious text in the list.