Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Natural Law And Radical Autonomy In Antebellum American Literature, Andrew Urban

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the tension and conflict between conceptions of the natural law and the ideal of radical autonomy in the work of the antebellum American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. This tension and conflict was brought to the fore by the modernization of American society in the antebellum period. Modernization is here understood as the social process through which increasing recognition is given to individual autonomy, elevating the individual self, as the creator of meaning and value, above the standard provided by nature, including human nature, according to which one ought to live. This …

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 …

Scenes Of Subversion: How Monstrous Subjectivities Affect Futurity In Gothic Horror, Salvatore S. Dibono

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen begins his conclusory section of his influential essay “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” stating, “Monsters are our children. They can be pushed to the farthest margins of geography and discourse, hidden away at the edges of the world and in the forbidden recesses of our mind, but they always return” (52). Yet, Lee Edelman in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive makes a statement which complicates the idea of the monster being “our child” when discussing that the normative (conservative) movement will “recurrently frame their political struggle…as a ‘fight for our children—for our daughters and our …

Edgar Allan Poe: Addressing The Haunting Legacy Of American Exceptionalism, Kaitlyn Quinn

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The term “American exceptionalism” is synonymous with the American identity, yet it can prove to be a dangerous association. Donald E. Pease in “American Exceptionalism” states, “Despite [John] Winthrop’s ‘A Model of Christian Charity’ (1630) fostering a tendency to view America in religious terms…American exceptionalism was more decisively shaped by the ideals of the European Enlightenment” (Pease). Puritan leader John Winthrop first introduced “American exceptionalism” in his sermon “A Model of Christian Charity.” Winthrop proclaimed, “For wee must consider that wee shall be as a city upon a hill” (Winthrop 2). Certainly, Winthrop’s words resonated with the Puritans as they …

Poe Teaching Readers To Solve It Themselves, Grace Cosby

Student Works

Edgar Allan Poe wrote many stories that featured different types of unreliable narrators. These narrators were essential to Poe’s goal of teaching his audience to take more active roles in the stories. Insanity, ulterior motives, and lack of knowledge all contribute to making a narrator unreliable. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Tell Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are all short stories in which Poe implemented a different unreliable narrator to show readers how to pay more attention to a story. With little guidance from Poe or the narrator, readers must put together what is true and …

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

Aidenn: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal of American Literature

During the 19^th 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 …

Edgar Allan Poe And Science: Unraveling The Plot Of The Universe, Murray S. Ellison

Theses and Dissertations

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) lived at the perfect time to write about several of the most dramatic technological developments ever recorded in history. Up until the nineteenth century, professional scientists were almost the exclusive agents for writing about science. However, during this period, non-professional writers also emerged as important conveyors of popular science news to the public. Though Poe was a lay writer, his popular writing conveyed several of the most important new discoveries of the Industrial Age. He also projected his views about how nineteenth-century technologies might impact civilizations of the future. Poe’s writing offers a key example of …

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.

Monster Quest: Background Myth And Contemporary Context Of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Conqueror Worm", Farrah Senn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Poe's short story "Ligeia" and its companion poem "The Conqueror Worm" have garnered little critical attention, though he believed them to be his best works. Considering the archetypal image of the worm, contemporary references, and Poe's other uses of the symbol, an analysis of the poem and its context within the short story reveals the identity of the "hero" described in the final verse. This paper explores the archetypal nature of the worm by looking at snake myths from across the globe and applying Platonic/Jungian ideas to the image and its function in the poem. This work also discusses the …

Building A Collaborative Online Literary Experience, Joe Essid, Fran Wilde

English Faculty Publications

Key Takeaways

-Educators and students collaborated in constructing an immersive literary experience at the University of Richmond and then reenacted the narrative as a team.

-Considerable planning goes into such simulations to make them effective collaboration spaces.

-In creating a simulation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, a team of distributed groups negotiated different approaches to believably embody Poe's characters and period.

-Despite limitations in the software and the planning process during and after a beta test, students experienced Poe's story in a new and rewarding way.

Effective virtual simulations can embed participants in imaginary …

The Man In The Text: Desire, Masculinity, And The Development Of Poe's Detective Fiction, Peter J. Goodwin

Peter J Goodwin

This article finds the kernel of Poe's detective fiction in his investigations into the construction of "gentlemanliness" that he began at Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. As precursors to Poe's tales of ratiocination, "The Man That Was Used Up" and "The Man of the Crowd" train the reader not to expect a satisfying conclusion to the mystery surrounding masculinity that the author has woven. In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the homoerotic desire to apprehend an integral masculine subject ends in frustration bordering on the absurd. In thus undermining the American ideal of masculinity as unified, integral, impenetrable, and fraternal, Poe …

Reader Response And The Interpretation Of "Hop-Frog," "How To Write A Blackwood Article," And "The Tell-Tale Heart", Brian Yothers

Brian Yothers

This essay discusses ways in which reader response can enrich the teaching of Poe's short fiction.

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 …