| Edgar Allan Poe(1809—1849) is a short story writer, critic and poet of the 19th century America. He has experienced miseries and plights through his short life, however, his distinguished literary talent and his unique literary principles make him one of the most influential writers in the world literary history. The scholars of different times adopt various literary theories to interpret Poe's works. However, there are not many researchers who have studied Poe's works from the formal perspective. Therefore, this thesis analyzes and interprets Edgar Allan Poe's short stories by dint of several formal concepts, namely, musicality, defamiliarisation and irony, with the purpose to dig out the formal beauty of Poe's short stories.The introduction includes a survey of relevant scholarship on Poe and his works. The writing purpose, innovative points and framework of the whole thesis are also presented in this part. Chapter 2 is composed of a brief introduction to Poe's life, his literary position in the world, his contribution to the literati and a summary of his literary principles. Chapter 3 analyzes some of Poe's short stories in three musical aspects, namely, the phonetic device, the rhyme and the rhythm, in order to excavate the musicality of Poe's short stories. Chapter 4 excavates the technique of defamiliarisation in Poe's short stories from the aspects of perception, expression and parody with the purpose to explore how Poe makes use of these methods to supply the readers with a renewed literary experience. Chapter 5 explores how Edgar Allan Poe adopts irony in his short stories to create the confrontation of the explicit text meaning and his implicit writing intention, so as to achieve his particular literary purposes and offer the readers special reading experiences. The conclusion presents a general review of the main points of the whole thesis and reaffirms the literary contribution of Edgar Allan Poe to the world literature, especially in terms of the form of the short stories. |
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