Hoffmann and Poe
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In response to accusations that the horror in his stories was derived from German literary sources, Edgar Allan Poe claimed in the Preface for the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840 that "if in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul." There are several indications, though, that Poe could have had access to German literature and to E. T. A. Hoffmann's writings through Gillies's translation of The Devil's Elixirs, through Carlyle's publication of the German Romance, through Sir Walter Scott's essay on Hoffmann's use of the supernatural, or through readings of his own in English translation. As the editor of several prominent journals such as the Southern Literary Messenger, Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, Graham's Magazine, the Mirror, and the Broadway Journal, Poe was well acquainted with publications by European writers and even accused other American authors of plagiarizing their ideas. Some critics, however, have noted the similarities between "William Wilson" and "The Devil's Elixirs". Scholarship on the doppelganger trope in these works is inconclusive.
