What exactly is Poe’s philosophy of composition as detailed in his eponymously titled essay? How do we see ideas about the “unity of effect” at work in poems like “The Raven” and in stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart”? 

There is an element of meta-fiction to Poe’s fiction. In other words, stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher” are as much about the events in the story as they are about the craft of fiction itself. (Think of the scene where the narrator reads fiction to Usher as the storm rages outside before the Usher manor collapses.) How does “The Fall of the House of Usher” entertain ideas/arguments/questions about fiction itself? You may also think of these questions in relation to David Reynold’s discussion about Poe’s adaptation of popular sensationalist fiction. 

How does color function in “The Masque of the Red Death”? How does it signify?

A broader question to think about might be: How do the emotions and affect function in the works of Poe that we have read? How does feeling, emotion, embodiment, and perception stand in relation to rationality, reason, concepts, and representations?