The pariah in Edgar Allan Poe's stories : a new perspective of the modern city

Abstract

In this work I will study a particular urban subject present in every society, I will investigate the urban subject of the criminal illustrated in an Edgar Allan Poe’s selection of seven tales. In this case I have decided to rename the criminal as “pariah”. I use this term because I consider that it fits perfectly when defining a person that is “undesirable” and “rejected” by society. The choice of this term is also supported by David Reynolds’s work Beneath the American Renaissance in which he refers to the “asocial” subjects of the urban city as a “pariah”. I have lent this term because I consider that it is suitable to describe the subject being studied. It is also relevant to add that Charles Baudelaire refers to Poe as a “—drunkard pauper, oppressed pariah” (58). The use of the term pariah to refer to Edgar Allan Poe’s protagonists is just a coincidence with Baudelaire’s use of the term.