Beyond Empiricism and Transcendentalism in the House of UsherWhen Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Fall of the House of Usher," two factors greatly influenced his writing . An early influence was John Locke's idea of ​​empiricism, which was the idea that all knowledge was acquired through experiences, exclusively through the senses. A second vital influence was transcendentalism, which was a reaction to empiricism. While John Locke believed that reality or truth consisted of the material world and the senses, the transcendentalists believed that reality and truth existed in the spiritual or ideal world. They believed that the external world depended solely on consciousness. Beverly Voloshin suggests that "Poe presents transcendental projects that threaten to proceed downward rather than upward" (19). Here it becomes obvious that there is a strong connection between John Locke's empiricism and the resulting ideas of Transcendence, and the powerful effect they had on Poe and other emerging Romantic writers of that time. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe establishes a new type of literature, which emphasizes aspects of empiricism as well as the idea of ​​transcendence. Poe uses this unique literature to present the Usher mansion and its intriguing and tormented inhabitants. Locke wrote the "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," published in 1690, which is credited with opening the period of the Enlightenment in Europe. His strongest connection to Poe was that he had a “late popularity in New England” (Voloshin 18). With this popularity in New England, many writers of the time expressed their approval of empiricism or took an opposing position in their literature. Locke believed that... the middle of the paper... was upwards. “The tales have a paradoxical structure in which transcendence is figured as an outward or downward movement, since the method of moving beyond the universe of Lockean empiricism is to pass through it” (Voloshin 19). Poe brings this out with the narrator's "depression" and the "unredeemed desolation of thought." The language used in "The Fall of the House of Usher" presents a connection between the mental and physical worlds, which then correlates with the debate between transcendentalists and empiricism presented almost two centuries earlier. Works Cited Koster, Donald N. Transcendentalism in America. Boston: Twayne, 1975. Sahakian, Mabel Lewis, and William S. John Locke. Boston: Twayne, 1975. Voloshin, Beverly. "Downward Transcendence: An Essay on 'Usher' and 'Ligeia'". Modern linguistic studies 18 (1988): 18-29.