Barnabás KanikFive Stories by Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) pioneered many of the most enduring forms of American popular culture, including the detective novel and the Gothic tale or sensational. I will compare and contrast five of Poe's short stories: The Gold-Bug, The Purloined Letter, "Thou Art the Man," The Barrel of Amontillado, and The Pit and the Pendulum. The genre, purpose and role of the narrator and the parallels between all the stories will be examined. The five stories can be divided into two groups based on genre: crime fiction and gothic horror. The crime novels are The Golden Beetle, The Purloined Letter and “You Are the Man”; while the gothic horrors are The Cask of Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum. Poe gave life to the detective novels we know today, yet, before his works, in literature there were detectives, but no investigations (there were detectives of crime in Lytton's and also Godwin's works, but not in the sense of Poe's detective). Poe, instead of calling his writings detective novels, uses the term “tales of reason.” According to the classic rules of the detective novel, three essential elements are necessary for success: the mystery, the detective and the solution/revelation. All three of these can be found in his works. The Golden Scarab lacks the criminal element, but it can still be called a detective novel because of the way it finds the pirates' treasure, as if solving a puzzle. Poe says that detecting a crime is similar to a puzzle, because there is only one correct and perfect solution, which resembles a cryptogram. A cryptogram loses its interest when it has been solved. The detective characters are a picture of Poe himself and all of them amidst paper...... and other treasures, or escaping from an immense pendulum with the help of hungry mice. The other similarity I noticed is Poe's writing style. He withholds information throughout the stories, we do not know who the letter was stolen from or why Montresor swore revenge on Fortunato, nor why the prisoner's name was sentenced to death by the Inquisition. Edgar Allan Poe broke many new paths in literature for subsequent generations, without him we probably wouldn't have crime novels and gothic tales in the same form we have them today.Bibliography:1. Bollobás Enikő. AZ AMERIKAI IRODALOM TÖRTÉNETE 20052. Buranelli, Vincent. Edgar Allan Poe 19613. Lauter, Paul. The Heath Anthology of American Literature Fifth Edition Volume B Early 19th Century: 1800-1865 20064. Symons, Julian. THE HEART TOLD The life and works of Edgar Allan Poe 1978