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Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment Advance Access originally published online on October 21, 2009
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 2009 16(4):685-695; doi:10.1093/isle/isp090
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© The Author(s) 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

"Deep Into That Darkness Peering": An Essay on Gothic Nature

Tom J. Hillard

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

When the anxious narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" first hears the gentle "rapping at my chamber door" that disturbs his reading of "many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore," he imagines its source to be some human "visitor" that has come knocking (58). Cast into a state of apprehension by thoughts of his recently deceased beloved Lenore, he "open[s] wide the door" to find only "Darkness there, and nothing more" (Poe 58). In a powerful moment pregnant with anticipation and dread, he stands there, "Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, / Doubting," all the while staring into the blackness of the open doorway. Suddenly uncertain of what lurks within that darkness, Poe's narrator admits that he is "dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before" (58). We never quite learn what these dreams are, but his phrasing suggests that what . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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