In his Preface to The Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque Poe, while discussing the character and style of these tales, says: “I am led to think it is this prevalence of the ‘Arabesque’ in my serious tales, which has induced one or two critics to tax me, in all friendliness, with what they have been pleased to term ‘Germanism’ and gloom. The charge is in bad taste, and the grounds of accusation have not been sufficiently considered. Let us admit for a moment that the ‘phantasy-pieces’ now given are ‘Germanic’ or what not…. But the truth is that, with a single exception, there is no one of these stories in which the scholar should recognize the distinctive features of that species of pseudo-horror which we are taught to call Germanic, for no better reason than that some of the secondary names of German literature have become identified with its folly. If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul.” In this passage, though himself possessed with almost a monomania for discovering ‘plagiarism’ in other writers, (nowadays we should rather speak of 'influences'), Poe practically denies similar charges brought against him. And, in this denial, he takes occasion to lunge a side thrust at Hoffmann in his reference to 'phantasypieces' and ‘some secondary names of German literature‘—as will be seen later.
The Portrayal of the Grotesque in Stoddard’s and Quantin’s Illustrated Editions of Edgar Allan Poe (1884).
