The Pit and the Pendulum and you find an appeal to the nerves by tawdry physical affrightments." The Pit and the Pendulum "The Pit and the Pendulum" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in 1842 in the literary annual "The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1843". The story is about the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, though Poe skews historical facts. The narrator of the story describes his experience of being tortured. The story is especially effective at inspiring fear in the reader because of its heavy focus on the senses, such
Spanish Inquisition with merely cultural ones, with no significant racial element. Challenging some of the claims of revisionist historians is Toby Green in "Inquisition, the Reign of Fear", who calls the claim by revisionists that torture was only rarely applied by inquisitors, a "worrying error of fact". Historian Thomas F. Madden has written about popular myths of the Inquisition. The literature of the 18th century approaches the theme of the Inquisition from a critical point of view. In "Candide" by Voltaire, the Inquisition appears as the epitome of intolerance and arbitrary justice in Europe. During the Romantic Period, the Gothic novel, which