The original essays in this set illuminate the influences that shaped Poe, contextualize his work, and assess his enduring impact on American and European poetry and fiction. A sketch of the historical and cultural forces surrounding Poe illuminates their influence on his aesthetic; a reception history examines Poe's enduring contributions to the short-story genre, the French Symbolist movement, and modernist aesthetics; a comparison of Poe's and Baudelaire's works reveals how the two authors exploited the duplicitous possibilities within the writer-reader relationship; and a critical reading of "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Black Cat," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "Ligeia," and "Berenice" seeks to expose the stories' unifying aesthetic principles.