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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Letting The Cat Out Of The Wall: Irrepressible Perversity In Poe, Kelly Gallagher
Letting The Cat Out Of The Wall: Irrepressible Perversity In Poe, Kelly Gallagher
The Criterion
This paper examines several short stories by Edgar Allan Poe that feature the motif of immurement, the practice of imprisoning a victim within walls. Poe uses immurement in “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” to suggest psychological suppression as the narrators physically hide their victims while simultaneously hiding their own self-destructive natures, which he refers to as “perversity.” His stories “The Imp of the Perverse” and “The Cask of Amontillado” convey that attempting to suppress one’s capacity for self-destruction only guarantees self-destruction. Poe’s motif of immurement demonstrates how human beings tend to ignore their inherent perversity, but his stories …
The Art Of Death: Murder According To Poe, Hitchcock, And De Quincey, Jeanine Bee
The Art Of Death: Murder According To Poe, Hitchcock, And De Quincey, Jeanine Bee
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
This paper examines the works of both Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock in light of Thomas De Quincey’s series of essays entitled “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” In his essays, De Quincey presents murder as an art form that can be criticized and appreciated just as any other fine art. While De Quincey’s essays faced some negative reaction when they were originally published, both Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock seem to have found something worthwhile in De Quincey’s ideas about the art of murder; Poe and Hitchcock both present murder as an art form …
"Ushering" In The Fulfillment Of Prophecy, Alison M. Pulliam
"Ushering" In The Fulfillment Of Prophecy, Alison M. Pulliam
Aidenn: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal of American Literature
During the 19th century, a phenomenon known as “Holy Land mania” was sweeping the United States. Americans were intrigued by the state of the Holy Land and whether or not this state matched the images described in biblical prophecy (Robey 62). Interest in Israel’s condition invaded many aspects of American life, including literature. Looking through the lens of historical criticism, it is easy to see how authors of this time period fed on the “Holy Land mania” to include references to prophecy and the Middle East in their writings. In particular, critic Molly K. Robey accurately points out in …
Understanding Death In Brown And Poe: Backgrounds And Continuities, Anthony Cunder
Understanding Death In Brown And Poe: Backgrounds And Continuities, Anthony Cunder
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
Missing Persons: Cherokee's Parrot And Chatterton's Poet , Leonard R. Koos
Missing Persons: Cherokee's Parrot And Chatterton's Poet , Leonard R. Koos
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This essay explores the problematic nature of selfhood in the detective genre as established by Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) and most recently reformulated in two metaphysical detective novels, Jean Echenoz's Cherokee (1983) and Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton (1987). Poe's detective Auguste Dupin is described as having a "Bi-Part Soul," which permits him to vacate himself in order to construct the narrative solution to a crime. This duality, in the postmodern detective novel, is transformed into an irrevocable dislocation of the subject. Cherokee's onomastic devalorization of the story's characters and simulation of the human subject in the …