IN:\u00a0<\/strong>Partit\u00fara Irodalomtudom\u00e1nyi foly\u00f3irat, Volume: X\u00a0, Issue 1, 2015, p. 3-18., ISSN 1336-7307<\/p>\n DOI:\u00a0<\/strong>10.17846\/PA.2015.10.1.3-18<\/p>\n Abstract:<\/strong><\/p>\n Ever since the middle of the 19th century, the metropolis has been an inexhaustible source of inspiration for gothic and horror stories. The present essay is devoted to an analysis of two of these stories: Edgar Allan Poe\u2019s \u201cThe Man of the Crowd\u201d and Clive Barker\u2019s \u201cThe Midnight Meat Train\u201d thus the trajectory of the paper ranges from the first example of urban horror to a near-contemporary vision of the gothic within the metropolis, to conclude with an examination of Ry\u0217hei Kitamura\u2019s The Midnight Meat Train, an adaptation based on Barker\u2019s tale. Poe\u2019s \u201cThe Man of the Crowd\u201d shows us the irrational forces at work within the city of London, which converge around the mysterious figure of the man of the crowd. While doing so Poe appropriates the genre of the city sketch, but severs its ties with social commitments, and becomes the \u201cfather\u201d of urban horror. Barker\u2019s New York is no less a pastiche of other representations of the metropolis than Poe\u2019s London, and his textual appropriation seems to encompass the whole tradition of horror stories depicting the gothic city, Lacanian psychoanalysis, or even the critique of patriarchy, which mixture results in a carnivalesque celebration of violence. Although Kitamura\u2019s film mutes the semi-serious Oedipal drama involved in \u201cThe Midnight Meat Train,\u201d the movie lays bare the ideologies and ambiguities involved in the relationship between the flaneur-photographer, his themes, and his audience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n