ABSTRACT
In Edgar Allan Poe, the typical medium of disclosure is a narrator in a state of intense or exalted emotion: near death, contemplating murder or undergoing a compulsion to confess it, possessed by what, in The Premature Burial, Poe called 'the grim legion of sepulchral terrors'. To describe as 'a brilliant intellectual analysis' of the Reformation a view which Professor Trevor-Roper has called the 'old cliches, the effronteries of Cobbett and Chesterton', is a trifle extravagant. Cooper's views on this matter are undoubtedly displeasing to the liberal mind but that is not a reason for denying their existence. They are of particular interest here because, as has been remarked, it is at this point only that the romantic plot of The Pioneers has even the slightest bearing on the main theme.
