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Edgar Allan Poe's Depiction of the Human Mind Edgar Allan Poe’s Depiction of the Human Mind A Psychoanalytic Reading of Poe’s Short Stories Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie vorgelegt von Hanna SEIRINGER 01211498 [email protected] am Institut für Amerikanistik – Karl-Franzens-Universität Begutachter: Stefan Brandt Table of Contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 2 Gothic Fiction: An Era of Violence, Horror and Fear ............................................................. 8 2.1 History of the Gothic Tradition ........................................................................................ 9 2.2 American Gothic ............................................................................................................ 12 2.3 Poe’s Idiosyncrasies: A Distant Reading ....................................................................... 15 3. The Relationship between Sigmund Freud and Edgar Allan Poe ........................................ 19 3.1 Parallels between Poe and Freud .................................................................................... 21 3.2 The Uncanny: An Introduction ...................................................................................... 24 4 The conflict of ‘Super-Ego’/’Ego’/ ‘Id’ in “The Fall of the House of Usher” ...................... 27 4.1 Representation of Freud’s ‘Super-Ego’/ ‘Ego’/ ‘Id’ ...................................................... 28 4.2 Figurative Tropes and Their Meanings .......................................................................... 34 4.3 Aspects of the Uncanny in “The Fall of the House of Usher” ....................................... 36 4.4 Résumé ........................................................................................................................... 42 5 ‘Transference’ and the ‘Castration Complex’ in “The Black Cat” ....................................... 43 5.1 Poe’s Unreliable Narrator ............................................................................................... 45 5.2 Fear of the Castration Complex ..................................................................................... 47 5.3 Transference: Wife or Cat? ............................................................................................ 51 5.4 Aspects of the Uncanny in “The Black Cat” .................................................................. 54 5.5 Résumé ........................................................................................................................... 55 6 ‘Thanatos’ and Conscience in “The Imp of the Perverse” .................................................... 56 6.1 The Imp of the Perverse ................................................................................................. 56 6.2 The Pleasure Principle .................................................................................................... 57 6.2 Freud’s ‘Death Drive’ .................................................................................................... 60 6.3 Sadism, Masochism and Their Relationship to the Conscience ..................................... 63 6.4 Résumé ........................................................................................................................... 68 7 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 69 Works Cited and Consulted ...................................................................................................... 74 Primary Literature: ................................................................................................................... 74 Secondary Literature: ............................................................................................................... 74 Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to express my gratitude towards Dr. M. A. Stefan Brandt, for being the mentor I had always wished for. He allowed me to explore aspects of Edgar Allan Poe’s writing that were crucial and highly interesting for my thesis. In addition, his support helped me overcome my insecurities, due to the topic’s wide range of possibilities and its complexity. His advice and patience in countless e-mails made this thesis possible, as well as his advice on secondary literature that helped me in producing an adequate thesis. Secondly, I would like to thank my family. My brother, Xaver Seiringer, who helped me in finding secondary literature, when the library of the University of Graz fell short in providing several books that were essential to my line of argument. I would also like to thank my mum and dad, Georg and Irmgard Seiringer, for telling me how proud they are of me and for always bringing me back down to earth when I was facing obstacles and spiraled into picturing the worst case scenarios. Their words of appreciation and encouragement, their trust in me and their calmness have prevented me from losing my head in the most stressful weeks in the production of this thesis. Thirdly, I would like to thank my friends for being my personal cheerleaders, who believed in me and spurred me on. Arnold Lindhuber, Jean Wruß, Lisa Ortner, Iris Humer, Victoria Reinsperger and Sarah Schneider: I will forever be grateful for your support and endeavors to understand me and for giving your all to help me keep going and conquer difficulties. Last but not least, I would like to thank Christina Glatz for proofreading my thesis in a very limited amount of time and for offering her help whenever I had questions. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart! 1 Introduction “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity” is a frequently quoted passage from one of Edgar Allan Poe’s letters to George Washington Eveleth in 1848 (The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, Poe’s letters). The question that is relevant here is how Poe expressed his interest in psychology in his works and which psychological phenomena were incorporated that collide with psychoanalysis. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Poe anticipated Freudian imagery, although Freud did not start publishing his works until roughly fifty years after Poe’s death. Furthermore, this paper will show how Poe’s writing style mirrors ideas in Freudian theories and how his short stories can be interpreted through the lens of different aspects of Freud’s psychoanalysis. The questions that these previous statements conjure, are: Why Freud? What do these theories entail? What makes psychoanalysis a valid method to interpret literature? And how can this be applied to literature that was produced before psychoanalysis was even a concept? How does Poe approach psychological elements and in what way does he incorporate them into his works? All of these questions will be answered in the course of this study. For now, I would like to make some remarks on the structure of this paper. The introduction will provide a short overview on Freudian theories. Furthermore, central research questions and a general introduction into the history of American psychology will be the focus of this chapter. At the end of the introduction, I will explain why this topic is still fascinating and why writing this paper is relevant for literary research. In a further step, the Gothic era with its characteristics and Poe’s idiosyncrasies in his adaption of Gothic writing will constitute the pillars of the second chapter. The third chapter focuses on general, analytic parallels between Freud and Poe, which serve to establish a connection between the authors and clarify the similarities in their relationship to literature. It will also provide an introduction into the uncanny. In the fourth chapter, the analysis and close reading of “The Fall of the House of Usher” is supported with certain aspects of Freudian theories. The focus lies on the representation of Freud’s tripartite model of the ‘id’, the ‘ego’ and the ‘super-ego’. Furthermore, the conflict that may arise between these three instances will be examined. The fifth chapter consists of an analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Hanna Seiringer Cat.” This story incorporates elements, which deal with the fear of castration and ‘transference’, two different theories by Freud. In the sixth and last chapter of the analysis, Poe’s “The Imp of the Perverse” will be investigated. This chapter is the closest to Freud’s studies, because it is a short study of a drive that, according to Poe’s narrator, everybody has encountered at some point in their lives. With the help of Freud’s ‘pleasure principle’ and his theory of two innate distinct drives, the true meaning of ‘the imp of the perverse’ will be defined. Furthermore, the above- mentioned tales will be closely examined for indicators of the uncanny. Last, the conclusion will sum up the main results that were gathered by means of the analysis and tie up loose ends. First, I would like to briefly introduce the concepts by Sigmund Freud, which will be used in order to analyze the texts. Freud’s idea of the psychical apparatus (“Psychical Apparatus”, Oxford Reference. A Dictionary of Psychology) promotes that three instances ‘live’ in every person’s mind. He distinguishes the conscious from the unconscious and describes the consciousness as the surface of the psyche (cf. Freud, Complete Works, 3953): “All perceptions which are received from without (sense-perception) and from within –
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