“Poe and Gothic Creativity”

Abstract

In “Poe and Gothic Creativity,” Maria Antónia Lima explores the dark side of Poe’s creativity, and his addiction to a very demanding and almost demonic artistic process, which developed his impulse towards a “perverse art.” It , leads into a reflection upon the duplicity and ambivalence of Poe’s art determined by his concept of the “Imp of Perverse” and by a certain creative nihilism expressed in “Eureka,” which considered destruction as the origin of creation. The influence of Poe’s creative anxiety in contemporary gothic creativity is here underlined through several references to New Gothic Art, where the presence of an unresolved crisis in the creation process makes the psychopathology of contemporary culture visible.