

This cat looks just like Pluto, except for the little white spot on his chest. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul. Yet, mad am I not-and very surely do I not dream. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. One night when hes out drinking, another black cat appears on the scene. The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Whereas in the original, the narrator's perception and reasoning are characterized by uncertainty, the 'same' narrator in the target text is seemingly better able to comprehend the reasons behind the otherwise inexplicable phenomena. Discover Shmoops brief summary of The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe and learn all about the plot of this spooky story. This has an effect on the macrostructural level of the narrative. Conversely,in the Slovene translation, epistemic modality markers are sometimes left out or modified. As the analysis shows, the first person narration abounds in verbal and adverbial phrases such as might have been, seemed to be, possibly, perhaps, and beyond doubt, which add to the narrator's uncertainty and are indicative of his inability to comprehend the mysterious events he witnessed during his visit to the House of Usher.

Poe further enhanced the Gothic effects on the discourse level by consistently using epistemic modality. As is common for the genre, its macabre tone is set by elements such as an eerie mansion, mysterious disease, sudden death of a protagonist, ghost-like side characters, stormy nights, and a coffin in a vaulted cellar. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is one of Edgar Allan Poe's best known Gothic short stories.
