With his masterly art of depicting bizarre and mysterious atmosphere, Edgar Allan Poe is considered the most distinctive personage of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his short stories flooded with mystery and the macabre, Poe is recognized as one of the foremost masters of horror that United States has ever produced. One of the key components to his horror stories is the motif of madness which pervades almost all of his tales. There are many possible reasons why Poe so often employs the motif of madness. The aim of this essay is to discuss several possibilities why the motif of madness is frequently used in the short fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.
In the essay "The Philosophy of Composition" Poe argues that work of literary art should attain unity of effect, which he view as a point of the greatest importance. Furthermore, in his review of Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales, he defends short story as preferable to the novel and states that the ideal short story should be short enough to be read at one sitting in order to preserve this unity of effect or rather impression. "Without unity of impression, the deepest effects cannot be brought about."1 Therefore, "the writer of a prose narrative [] should preconceive a single effect and then invent and combine events for this 'pre-established design.'"2 On that account in Poe's short stories every aspect of the tale contributes to its overall tone, including the motif of madness. From this point of view Poe uses madness as a tool to bring about certain effect, atmosphere and emotions. Madness usually represents something unknown, mysterious however different from mere supernatural occurrences. It is used to expand the atmosphere of inexplicability. .
The motif of madness is in some Poe's stories used as a driving force which leads the protagonist to commit a frightful act. In "Berenice" Egaeus' madness is the stimulus why he violates the grave of his lover and rips her teeth while she is still alive.
