Damsels in Distress: Edgar Allan Poe’s Dark Ladies and Their Greek Counterparts

Growing interest in Edgar Allan Poe’s international connections raises the question of Poe’s presence in Greek literature. This essay intervenes in discussions regarding Poe’s reception in Greece through a comparison of Poe’s work with a number of short stories by Nikolaos Episkopopoulos (Νικόλαος Επισκοπόπουλος, 1874–1944). It focuses on Poe’s “Berenice” (1835), “Morella” (1835), “Ligeia” (1838), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), together with Episkopopoulos’s “Ut Dièse Mineur” (C Sharp Minor, 1893) and “Maura” (Μαύρα) (1893), exploring the way both writers portray female characters. This comparative analysis of Poe’s and Episkopopoulos’s fictional works notes the influence of Poe on Episkopopoulos while at the same time emphasizing Episkopopoulos’s artistry in modulating Poe’s techniques for new purposes. While Episkopopoulos was inspired by Poe’s doomed heroines, he portrayed female characters who take on an agency that makes them even more terrifying. Applying Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday’s transitivity framework, the paper reveals how the grammar of Episkopopoulos’s prose posits the male narrator as the passive party in the male female relationship.