Critical Readings

The panel discusses the first half of Melville's unfinished masterpiece, Billy Budd, with close attention to the allegorical narrative framework and the characterisation of the childlike Billy Budd and his antithesis, the naturally depraved John Claggart.
Continue reading

The panel closes out OctPOEber 2026 with another C. Auguste Dupin story, examining its gothic roots, considering the views of both Lacan and Derrida, and questioning how it fits alongside Rue Morgue within the then-novel idea of 'detective fiction'.
Continue reading

The panel discusses Poe's first C. Auguste Dupin story, and examines it as the first detective novel, with special attention to its literary context and the influence that it has had on later authors, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to J.K. Rowling.
Continue reading

The panel discusses Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Ashes, with special attention given to the floridity of its descriptions and the duplication of language and imagery, and to the nature of the malady that afflicts the twin siblings of Usher.
Continue reading

The panel reads The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe, with attention to its structure of vengeance, its gothic genre features, the presence of literal echoes and narrative recurrence, and particularly the reliability—and sanity—of the narrator.
Continue reading