American terror: the feeling of thinking in Edwards, Poe, and Melville

If America is a nation founded upon Enlightenment ideals, then why are so many of its most celebrated pieces of literature so dark? 'American Terror' returns to the question of American literature's distinctive tone of terror through a close study of three authors - Jonathan Edwards, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville - who not only wrote works of terror, but who defended, theorised, and championed it.