The Pit and the Pendulum 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 as sound, emphasizing its reality, unlike many of Poe's stories which are
Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition itself seemed to calm the waters and most criticisms was focussed towards the past. During the severe unrest of the 19th century, it was turned by the king not against foreign powers but against Spanish liberals. Some examples of these Spanish Liberal contributions to the black legend would be Goya's engravings, José del Olmo’s narrative accounts, Francisco Rizi(Italian but Spanish sympathiser) engravings. A number of books appeared between 1559 and 1562 that presented the Inquisition as a threat to the liberties enjoyed by Europeans. These writings reasoned that those countries that accepted the Catholic religion not only lost their religious