Edgar Alan Poe is regarded as one of the biggest American writers of the 19^th century.  His work is focusing on gothic tradition, the supernatural and death.  This research paper aims to answer the following question: how E.A. Poe composes and constructs his writings.

Poe had the gift of constructing a believable plot out of the most improbable material.  The result of this composure- poem, narration, has come from the combination of his imagination and meticulously planned technique.

From the research, analysis and documentation of the elements of space that we encountered in his work, combined with the study of the texts that are relevant to his work, it is evident that Poe constructs this space, having first calculated its needs with remarkable precision

They have limited space.  Sometimes it is just a room, other times it is part of a gothic castle or a part of nature that is cut off its natural element.  Poe’s preferred environments are gothic castles of the romantic renaissance, with a strong feel of ruin.  The rooms are filled with objects and furniture, that are weighted down and dishevelled, like the castle itself.  They are being described with painstaking precision.  These details are maybe some of the most important clues that lead to the resolvement of the plot and the discovery of the Truth in his stories.

The atmosphere of horror and melancholy is an element that garbs Poe’s castles.  The means that he uses in order to succeed in this are storms, vengeful nature, the night- with midnight being the ultimate limit, the character’s shrieks, the sounds that are generated by his spaces, as well as various object.

An interchangeable game between light and shadow is completing this composition. Space, faces and objects are interlinked as they distort and disperse in the intense shadows.  These elements are crucial to Poe’s aim, which is the creation of an atmosphere filled with horror.

The heros’ physical appearance is treated as the space that surrounds it.  Poe describes them in fine detail, giving emphasis to some parts that are going to be integral to the plot.  Physical appearance and space are not two separate elements, but a unity which interchanges according to the plot and topic at hand.  The reader is lead to understand that a person functions within a space the same way as objects do.

Poe’s heroes are solitary figures, that chose to live in closed spaces, abandoned in thoughts that regard matters of existence/ substinence, whilst often being in a state between life and death.

Objects and persons make up a unified and irreplaceable complex within the space they occupy.

This research concludes that E.A. Poe utilises primarily the same tools- thematic and technical- in order to produce different spaces- differing in composition from story to story, which gives these spaces a unified “architectural” feel.

 These conclusions may be utilised as ‘bridges’, in order to detect the relationship between “the methodology of his work with the way an architect instigates and composes”, a subject that nevertheless is a new research concept.