Macabre Short-Stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Roald Dahl

International audience; Focusing on Edgar Allan Poe and Roald Dahl's short-stories, this paper's main framework aims at demonstrating that although it may not seem initially obvious, the works of the two authors share not only one, but many characteristics. Before writing his famous children's fiction, Roald Dahl established his reputation as a writer of deathly short stories with unexpected twists that may recall Poe's Gothic tales. Therefore Dahl, who has never been considered part of the Neo-Gothic stream, has nevertheless incorporated Neo-Gothic elements in his work. The first part of this paper will focus on the Gothic genre of the two authors (and its characteristics) as it appears to be their common playground. In the second part of this study, the theme of the tortured body will be treated and will attempt to highlight the idea that the body, in Poe's and Dahl's works, stands for an externalization of the narrators' tortured minds.