SOURCE: “Teaching ‘Usher’ and Genre: Poe and the Introductory Literature Class,” in Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Vol. 19, No. 1, Spring, 1986, pp. 29-42.

In the following essay, Howes explores “The Fall of the House of Usher” as it relates to the concept of genre, focusing on the way the tale goes beyond the limitations imposed by stylistic conventions.

Every work of art should contain within itself all that is required for its own comprehension.¹

In any introductory literature class, the teacher has traditionally faced two challenges: engaging the students with the specific text, and also suggesting that the poem, story, or novel has qualities found in many other works. Meeting the first challenge will raise the students' interest in the text at hand. Meeting the second will make the students more sensitive to literature in general. Our textbooks show how encoded these two goals have become in...