弗洛伊德人格理论视角下解读爱伦•坡的心理小说(2)
毕业论文关键词：爱伦•坡、人格理论、心理小说
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements.i
Abstractii
摘要.iii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Allan Poe’s Literary Reputation 2
1.2 Previous Studies on Allan Poe and His Literary Works 2
1.3 The Purpose of the Study 3
2 Theoretical Basis 4
2.1 Freud’s Personality Theory 4
2.2 The Significant Influence of Personality Theory over the Literary Criticism 5
3 A Personality Theory Analysis of Poe’s Three Psychological Tales 6
3.1 Id in William Wilson, The Black Cat, Tell-Tale Heart 6
3.2 Superego in William Wilson, The Black Cat, Tell-Tale Heart 7
3.3 The War between Id and Superego 7
4 The Lost Superego in Poe’s Three Psychological Tales 9
4.1 The Lost Superego and the Fall of the Heroes 9
4.2 Factors Leading to the Lost of Superego 10
4.3 An Enlightening Theme Revealed in the Tales 11
5 Main Causes of Poe’s Writing Strategy in Psychological Tales 13
5.1 Poe’s Miserable Life 13
5.2 Poe’s Psyche 14
5.3 Social Factors 14
6 Conclusion 16
Bibliography17
1 Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe was known as the American novelist, literary critic and poet by the early 1800s. He only lived for 40 years, but he created a lot of types of short stories, some of which are hard to be classified sometimes. Psychological stories make people think more about themselves and surroundings. Devoting himself to the psychological stories makes him hard to be replaced in the American literature. He was dubbed as "one of America’s greatest writers-the finest of fine artist, as George Bernard Shaw put in.”(Bloom, 2003)
1.1 Allan Poe’s Literary Reputation
Poe’s study has been covered many phases by using different theories both in width and depth. He indicates that the western Poe’s study could be pided into three levels, which are from personality, from text, and from abstract structure. Before, western people hold different points of Poe’s works. Through Poe’s short life, the majority of his works were unacknowledged. Criticisms tended to be negative and rejected apart from a small number of poetry in his home country. Walt Whitman viewed that Poe’s verses like electric lights were brilliant and dazzling without heat for his works carried no sigh of moral principle.(Net 2) His life style and heart-thrilling themes bring him the title of drunkard and madman. On the contrary, in England, especially France, Poe and his works as a symbol of resistance to modernization were strongly admired and attracted widespread attention from the literary world. Poe’s works were like the precious flower in the garden of the world literature, unique and unparalleled. However, when it comes back to the 18th century’s American literature, he was not popular at all although it was at the period of great prosperity. His works were in compatible with the flourishing society then because of the decadent emotion in his works and were always excluded in the mainstream literature. Even many famous writers and critics thought low of his creation. On one hand, the literature theory he created and his works did not meet the mainstream aesthetic; on the other hand, as a literary critic, Allan Poe once criticized too many contemporary writers sharply, which brought about hatred against him. It is not until the first half of the twentieth century that he has been given an extensive attention to his works. The booming of philosophical ideas changed men’s view on evaluation of literary works. Morality and reason were no longer the criterion of creation. Criticisms on Poe and his works turned objective. Poe paved the way to the Romanticism. Traditional logic is not his type. He likes or tends to express darkness which sometimes is beyond our mind in life. No wonder he was also received the name of "mad artist”