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
Historical revision of the Inquisition former was a theologian, close relative of an inquisitor and ferocious enemy of the Spanish Inquisition in its campaign to destroy Protestantism. The latter was a student of the Bible from childhood, later translating the Bible into Spanish. Montanus' text was "brief, intelligently designed, and written in a lively and engaging style." It was simultaneously accurate about Inquisitional practices (perhaps published for the first time) and misleading. "Taking some of the most extreme of Inquisitional practices as the norm, Montanus portray[ed] every victim of the Inquisition as innocent, every Inquisition official as venal and deceitful, [and] every step in its