Episode 129: Luminous Miasma: On Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2022

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Edgar Allan Poe can be lauded as a major inspiration for many innovative artists, genres, and movements, from horror fiction to the music of Maurice Ravel. He has also been a major inspiration for Weird Studies, particularly his short story "The Fall of the House of Usher." In this episode, JF and Phil try to pinpoint just what it is about this tale that is so compelling, discovering in the process that whatever it is cannot be pinpointed. Instead, the haunting mood of the story emerges from the peculiar arrangement of all its parts, becoming something entirely new. Click here for more information on the Supernormal Festival, Aug 12-14, in Oxfordshire, England. Listen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel Support us on Patreon Find us on Discord Get the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau! Get your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop References Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” Edgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death Klangfarbenmelodie, musical technique Edgar Allan Poe, "The Poetic Principle" Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy Lovecraft without adjectives Weird Studies, Development of Circle vs. Spiral: Wheel of fortune, Blade Runner, The Star, Birhane Matei Calinescu, The Five Faces of Modernity Weird Studies, Episode 101 on ‘In Praise of Shadows’ Phanes, deity James Herbert, The Dark Joseph Adamson, “Frye and Poe” Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, French anthropologist James Machin, Weird Fiction in Britain Edgar Allan Poe, “Eureka” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:20.3	For more episodes or to support the podcast, go to weirdstudies.com. Welcome to Weird Studies. This is Meredith Michael. Imagine a world where representations of objects
0:57.4	affect the existence of those objects, where the scent of a rose preconditions the existence of the
1:05.2	rose itself, where the identity of a person or place arises from its aesthetic qualities,
1:12.6	where fiction and real life play out in strange parallels.
1:17.6	A world where the connection between an object and its linguistic signifier go far beyond mere arbitrary social convention. Here, Shakespeare's adage about the name of the
1:30.8	rose does not hold. Not only is the name of the rose absolutely essential, but it is also no simple
1:38.2	accident that its name shares the sound of the past tense verb, arose. Puns are serious business.
1:47.0	This is the world of Edgar Allan Poe's short story,
1:51.0	The Fall of the House of Usher.
1:53.0	The phrase, the House of Usher, would seem to refer to two separate entities,
1:59.0	the family line of Usherher and the dwelling owned and occupied
2:03.6	by the family. Yet we come to find out that these two are so intertwined as to have one identity,
2:11.6	one subjectivity, one fate. The house itself almost seems to have arisen from a bizarre, luminous miasma
2:20.7	seeping out of a swampy, dark pond. In the discussion that follows, Phil and J.F. take a journey
2:28.7	into this shadowy house of usher. Indeed, the story itself is more like a place that can be visited rather than a
2:36.5	narrative recounting events according to causal logic. I mean, the ending is given away by the title.
2:44.6	What matters most in this story is its singular mood, conjured through Poe's labyrinthine sentences and purple prose, prose that
2:54.1	seems to want to infect its readers with the need to use more adjectives in their own speech.
3:01.3	While we're on the subject of journeys, Phil and J.F. are going to be traveling in the UK for much of the
3:07.1	month of August, which means the show will be on hiatus.
	...

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