TRANSPARENT WINDOWS (via ZOOM)
You're cordially invited to the WORKSHOP to be held on FRIDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2026 @ 18:30-20:00.
Workshop Title: Edgar Allan Poe's Electrical, Metrical Explosion: 'The Fall of the House of Usher'
Speaker: Serena Blount
(Assistant Professor, University of Alabama, US)
(event organized in the context of the UA & AUTh Bilateral Agreement Collaboration)
Language of the event: English
REGISTRATION FORM
To register, please CLICK HERE and fill in your information.
Certificates of attendance will be provided upon request. See the registration form.
ABSTRACT
This workshop presentation will situate 'The Fall of the House of Usher' within the broader canon of Poe's own writing to provide a general overview of his literary preoccupations. The presentation will highlight Poe's thoughts on prosody and meter, showing how he allegorizes those in 'Fall of the House of Usher.' This presentation will also demonstrate how Poe's understanding of metrics combines with his other interests—the incognito narrator, his thoughts on allegory, his ideas on atoms and least units, and his ideas about cliche and convention. Together, these present a capacious view of Poe's capacities...'The Fall of the House of Usher' is, in many ways, a fitting access point for grasping Poe's ideas about literary composition and literary language. That fitness lies in the fact that 'The Fall of the House of Usher' is a popular story...we will gain some appreciation for how and why Poe combines popular appeal with his more elevated ideas about literary language and aesthetics. The workshop will conclude with an activity that challenges students to read the prose of Usher's narrator with an eye toward metricality.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Dr. Serena Blount is an Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of Alabama, where she also serves as Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies and as Internship Coordinator in the Department of English. Her studies have focused primarily upon the careers of William Faulkner and Edgar Allan Poe. Dr. Blount co-directs the study abroad program UA in Greece: Working Across Cultures, Thessaloniki, and she will return to Aristotle University in May with a group of student interns from the University of Alabama.
