LAUGH BUT SMILE NO MORE: IDEOLOGY AND HISTORY IN THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

American literature as well as the history of world literature. The story focuses on a short trip of the narrator to the family mansion of Roderick Usher who mysteriously invited him to vist Usher and his sister, Lady Usher. Upon Lady Usher’s death, the house literally falls apart and the narrator hardly manages to escape to tell the story to the rest of us. The House of Usher story is not significant for horror elements and its gothic atmosphere but beyond that it has been regarded as a cornerstone in the history of literature as it reflects radical historical and social transformation in the 19th century America, it successfully portrays the dilemmas of the enlightenment intellectuals after the fall of aristocracy, and it highlights the disillusionment of modern industrilization. In this respect, this article will seek to investigate the story that presents a world of anxiety, ambiguity, and collapse with a new historicist approach which enables a historical and ideological analysis of gothic genre, and the House of Usher story in particular