On The Alienation Of Allan Poe's Horror Novels

As an American romantic writer in the nineteenth century,Edgar Allan Poe has formed a unique style of creation on the basis of inheriting the Gothic tradition.Generally,the content of his novels focus on the gloomy faces hidden behind the positive and optimistic appearances.While revealing the dark side of the humanity,Poe's novels show the writer's thinking about the human existence and the nature of human.Also,Poe pays much attention to exploring the inner world of the narrator and characters,touching the loneliness and alienation caused by the times,and integrating his reflections into literary creation.Although his creative ideas were not recognized by the contemporaries,Allan Poe had a profound influence on the European and American modernists in the twentieth century over time.The farsighted modern consciousness and concerns for the destiny of mankind make Allan Poe's novels extraordinary and attract long-standing studies.By applying Erich Fromm's alienation theory,this thesis analyzes Allen Poe's horror novels.The introduction mainly gives a general review of the research status of Allan Poe at home and abroad,introduces the origin and development of the concept of alienation,and then points out the necessity of studying Poe's novels from the perspective of alienation.The main part of this thesis is divided into three chapters.First,it integrates the relevant viewpoints of alienation theory and specifically analyzes three kinds of human alienations in Poe's horror novels,including the alienation of oneself,of others and of society.In the second chapter,Allan Poe's alienated world described in his horror novels is analyzed from the perspective of time and space,narrative point of view and narrative objects.The last chapter explains the causes of alienation theme on the basis of Poe's life experience and social background.Furthermore,through a detailed interpretation of alienation ideas in horror novels,Poe's attitude toward alienated characters is explored.The purpose is to have a comprehensive and profound understanding of the theme of alienation in Allan Poe's novels.