Illness Narratives In Edgar Allan Poe's Short Stories

As an eternal theme,illness is as old as the history of life.In the early stage of human cognition,illness was deemed as the decree of God which reflected human's fear,and it existed as the punishment and dissatisfaction God bore to people.With the development of society and knowledge,the mystique of illness weakened.People felt less fearful to illness,and illness could be explained from a much scientific and reasonable way.Illness was endowed with kinds of cultural connotation and metaphorical meaning in the process of fighting with it.Meanwhile,the fear of illness surpassed its physiological attributes and turned into a collective unconsciousness.Then,illness in literature was no longer just a physiological disease,it interacted closely with society,material and cultural evolution and subsequently it turned into the carrier of intellectual progress which embodied the social environment of the writers.Living in the 19 th century in which illness such as tuberculosis and cholera outbroke occasionally,Edgar Allan Poe wrote a great sum of short stories about illness.The concern and depiction of illness showed the exquisite insight of Poe,and it became a unique perspective in analyzing Poe's aesthetics.Tuberculosis raged in western countries and took thousands of lives since the 18 th century,however,Romantic writers of the 19 th century connected this disease with passion and romance,and regarded the symptoms it brought as the burning of enthusiasm.As a consequence,the death of tuberculosis was romanticized aesthetically.As an important writer of Romanticism,Allan Poe was affected unavoidably,and Tuberculosis entered into Allan Poe's illness narratives and connected with Poe's aesthetic views.Although it hadn't been elaborated concretely like the poetic aesthetics,Poe's aesthetics of short story cannot be stripped from the texts,especially from those of illness narratives.By analyzing the ill characters in the short stories,the aesthetic views of “Real”,“Moral” and“Death of beauty” were founded.These views are linked closely to Poe's personal experience.Poe stated that short story is the most important form in expressing “Real”.After suffering from the pain of losing the female relatives,Poe emphasized the illness,death and resurrection of delicate beautiful women in “Ligeia”,“Berenice” and “Morella”.These works echoes the aesthetic views of “Death of beauty” of the poetry.Meanwhile,the theme of death and madness are inseparable in Poe's illness narratives.Death is usually presented in three types in these works – death of horror,death of revenge anddeath of romance and transcendence.In addition to the writing style,the psychological disorder Poe suffered from influenced his works inevitably,and madness narrative covers a large proportion of Poe's illness narratives.Poe successfully created the image of madmen in works as“The Cask of Amontillado”,“The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by using the first person narration.In these works,the characters' inner anxiety,paranoia and struggle were depicted,people's solitude and alienation under the influence of Industrial Revolution were expressed.Poe's short stories focus on the expression of literary effects instead of moral sermon,and the aesthetic thinkings which surpassed the contemporary have meaningful cultural connotations.At the same time,Poe's works are characterized by the 19 th century developing American symptoms,they embody the humanistic care and concern to the society.This thesis is composed of four parts.In the first chapter,the relationship between illness and literature will be discussed,as well as the effects and significance of illness as the narrative drive.Chapter Two mainly discusses Poe's aesthetic views toward illness and death.The author puts emphasis on the fictional aesthetics by analyzing his illness narratives.The connotation is excavated deeply in Chapter Three.In Chapter Four,an important part of Poe's illness narratives– madness will be presented.Finally,Poe's aesthetic ideas and contemplation of human society through illness narratives will be presented in the conclusion part.