2. Edgar Allan Poe's Tales: An Encyclopedic World of
Literature:
As has been mentioned in the first chapter, studying a literary
text from a new historicist perspective necessitates a study of the different
literary and non literary sources that inspire the author, following the new
historicist belief in the dialogic aspect of literature and other discourses
(historical, cultural, religious, medical...). Poe's presentation of
taphephobia as a recurrent motif in six tales shows his artistic abilities to
strike out the phenomenon from its folkloric roots and to locate it in
literary, medical and historical contexts. He highlights taphephobia using the
technique of intertextuality at three levels: First, at the level of the choice
of the motif itself. Second, at the level of epigraphs, chosen carefully to
convey his aim and finally, at the level of characters' names and
description.
2.1. The Choice of Taphephobia:
Poe was faithful to his reputation as an unconventional gothic
author when he chose taphephobia as a recurrent motif. He does not use
exaggerated supernatural elements to intensify the horror; he rather uses a
common, psychological phenomenon, known by Americans of the 19th C. He takes
advantage of people's fears and nightmares to internalize
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the horror of his tales. He simply mirrors what happened during
his era. But, instead of using concrete, physical elements as a source of
horror, he utilizes an abstract element, an idea, a fear, an obsession, a
phobia. He uses the psychological horror that originates and effects the human
mind . Taphephobia presents an example of obsessions that can lead to
tragedies. This is what happens in the six tales under study. These tales share
the analytic description of an obsessed character who is either the victim or
the cause of premature burial.
In "The Fall of the House of Usher", "Ligeia", "Berenice" ,
"Morella" and "The Cask of Amontillado", Poe tries to show the common
sufferings experienced by characters focusing mainly on the psychological and
mental pain more than the physical pain. He shows how the boundaries between
life and death are fragile and even invisible. Despite the different
presentations of the motif, all tales share the same descriptive style that
serves to highlight the phenomenon. There is a common focus on exaggerated
emotions of sadness, pain, agony, and panic, in an attempt to intensify the
horror and to guarantee the effect of the sublime. The descriptive style in
these tales consists of presenting a minute description of the grotesque scenes
of the characters' minds, overwhelmed by the obsessive fear of premature
burial. This description provides the reader with a clear image of the
characters' mindset, deprived of any reason or logic and totally blinded by the
horror they lived within. Poe did not present taphephobia as an isolated motif
that realizes solely the sublime effect. However, he uses the different
components of a narrative in order to realize that effect and to emphasize the
motif. Setting, characters and the unified, plausible plot present secret tools
used by Poe to highlight taphephobia. He fuses the picturesque description of
the human mind under a constant fear or threat along with the use of symbols (
e.g. the setting in "The Fall of the House of Usher") and highly hyperbolic
presentation of emotions to create a non classical, grotesque version of the
sublime.
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In "The Premature Burial", Poe widens his scope and extends his
presentation of taphephobia as a psychological horror that invades the human
mind. He chooses to start with facts rather than fiction by using real life
stories of people who were mistakenly buried alive. He lists a number of real
cases of premature internment around the globe, as a way to transcend the
aesthetic adaptation of the motif, by showing its historical and social
validity. Poe uses the plural pronoun "we", involving the reader into a
developing experience of horror and distress. The reader's emotions and
reactions during the reading process present a natural response to a literary
adaptation of a familiar phenomenon and to the author's use of anonymous
narrator, using instead the plural pronoun "we" which drives the reader to
identify himself with the narrator, facing as well the fictional realization of
his worst nightmare. The detailed description of the narrator's phobia and
daily precautions, notably his safety coffin prepared exclusively for him,
drives the reader to reach catharsis, identifying himself with the narrator,
living the same agony and experiencing the same fear. However, by the end of
the story, Poe chooses satire as the adopted strategy. He uses an unexpectable
ending, showing that the whole experience of premature burial, which was
described throughout the tale, was just an illusion, originated from an
obsessed, neurotic mind since the narrator was laying in a narrow, coffin-like
ship berth. With this ending, the reader experiences the same relief as the
narrator. Thus, "The Premature Burial" presents an example of tales that
transcends the boundaries between fiction and reality, showing taphephobia as a
common wide spread phenomenon. This unique style of detailed, analytic
description of the mental anguish rather than the cause behind this trepidation
is claimed, by critics, to be inspired from a Victorian landmark in the history
of British literature in general and Gothicism in particular which is
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Poe's fascination with this magazine
lies in the fact that he found in it the basic principles of what is called
"psychological horror" since its stories are about contemporary societal
issues, portraying in detailed description the inner agony of
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neurotic characters. Michael Allen describes in his book Poe
and the British Magazine Tradition (1969) that the "Blackwood's
pattern" presents the major factor behind Poe's own, unique style of gothic
stories. He states that it "incorporated the curious and esoteric learning
which was the feature of the more respectable older miscellanies like the
Gentleman's; but it fused these elements into a more relaxed,
personal, and intimate ethos which permitted the inclusion of more blatant
sensationalism, literary gossip, and fiction for the less erudite reader"
(23).
Poe's choice of taphephobia as a literary motif presents a
redefinition of the aesthetic taste of the elite and a revolution against the
artistic and literary norms of the era. This spirit is actually inspired from
previous authors like John Galt (1779- 1839) whose story "The Buried Alive"
(1821) presents an example of Blackwood's stories and Poe's major
source of inspiration to tackle the motif of taphephobia. This story shares the
same plot as Poe's "The Premature Burial" dealing with, as Andrew Mangham
expressed in his essay "Buried Alive: Gothic Awakening of Taphephobia", "a
conflict between wakefulness of the mind and slumbers of the body" (13). Galt's
story shares the same gloomy description of a neurotic human mind that suffers
from a constant threat of being prematurely buried. Poe was inspired to show
how ugliness is the source of aesthetic beauty and to highlight another
function of literature that records the history of a particular society.
Besides, Poe records one of the characteristics of 19th C America which is the
rise of the industry of safety coffins through a detailed description of these
coffins in one of his tales "The Premature Burial", stating that
There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and
light, and convenient receptacles for food and water, within immediate reach of
the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly and softly padded,
and was provided with a lid, fashioned upon the principle of the vault-door,
with the addition of springs so contrived that the feeblest movement of the
body would
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be sufficient to set it at liberty. Besides all this, there was
suspended from the roof of the tomb, a large bell, the rope of which, it was
designed, should extend through a hole in the coffin, and so be fastened to one
of the hands of the corpse. (CTP 259)
This detailed description echoes one of the famous notes, that
accompanies Seba Smith's poem "The Life-Preserving Coffin". In his article
entitled "A Source of Poe's 'The Premature Burial'", W.T. Bandy studies
extensively "the numerous verbal parallels" between Poe's description of the
several precautions held by the taphephobic protagonist and the note that
describes in details the safety coffin, one of the most common precautions in
19th C (American Literature 168). Poe's unusual mélange between
science and literature, with a detailed medical diagnosis within a literary,
fictional context of short story is one of the key characteristics behind the
success of his tales. But this aspect is adapted out of Poe's fascination with
the Blackwood's style and content and notably Samuel Warren's
"Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician" (1832 -1837) and Daniel Keyte
Sandford's "A Night in the Catacombs" (1818).
In "The Cask of Amontillado", Poe reflects the psychological
phenomenon and internalizes the reader's horror by presenting a different form
of terrifying act of premature burial. Poe chooses to show one of the common
practices in antiquity which has political and religious connotations. He deals
with the immurement of Fortunato by Montresor in a context of revenge. However,
Poe uses the same technique that creates the effect of verisimilitude like in
"The Premature Burial". The tale starts with a narrator speaking to an unknown
receiver, a style similar to a personal diary or a confession. Then, the
suspense grows as the relationship between the narrator and Fortunato is
revealed. The journey into the catacombs presents the peak of suspense since
the narrator starts to give hints about its aim and its relation with the
nature of the setting and the end of Fortunato. The setting is used once again
as a major
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component of the sublime and as a hint about the nature of
revenge. The setting is the catacombs of the Montresors, a place characterized
by darkness, gloom and death. It is a place that denotes vaults and grave.
Poe's description of the setting is detailed enough to enable the reader to
create a portrait of the setting, similar to a narrow and suffocating grave and
an image of the whole journey. He focuses on the physical aspects that stress
the dark aspect of the setting, reminding the reader of the bloody and painful
aspect of the tragedy and emphasizing the suffocating nature of the phobia.
This is further conveyed through his use of the lexical items that denote death
like "human remains" and " bones". But, Poe's description of the gloomy place
is mixed with a satirical tone, particularly when he refers to its elegance and
sophistication, claiming that the place is "in the fashion of the great
catacombs of Paris" (CTP 188). In addition, Poe presents the walling
up process, describing in parallel the agony of the victim Fortunato and the
growing malaise of Montresor as he is subconsciously affected by the horror of
his deeds. Montresor's claim that catacombs present a source of unbearable
malaise, with a stifling sensation may be explained as a result of executing a
premature burial, sharing same feelings as a claustrophobic, and in deeper
extent, a taphephobic. This double version of description serves as a tool to
intensify the suspense, creating a growing tenseness as the wall grows brick by
brick.
While some critics relied on psychoanalysis to decode the
symbolism of the immurement, stating that Montresor buried his reflected self
since there is an identification at the level of characters' names and nature,
other critics find out that the type of punishment used can have a religious
dimension, since it may presents a holy war between Catholicism and the
Masonic, anti religious groups. The choice of immurement serves the illusion
that its events happened in the Middle Ages and this particular characteristic
is not solely of Poe. It is shared by other 19th C authors. Poe's presentation
of taphephobia reflects his remarkable fascination with Sir Walter Scott since
he shares the same plot of his epic poem Marmion
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(1808) which deals with the punishment of Constance who was
walled alive in the convent of St Hilda. Besides, Poe's choice of taphephobia
as a recurrent motif in his tales can be traced back to his inspiration with
Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), Edward Bulwer
Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and Wilkie Collins'
Jezabel's Daughter (1880). Furthermore, an attentive reader of "The
Cask of Amontillado" would notice its striking resemblance with Joel. T.
Headley's "A Man Built in the Wall" (1844). Poe recreates the same plot as well
as same characters and the general gothic atmosphere of walling up an enemy
alive in a church in Italy.
As has been mentioned, one of the reasons behind Poe's uniqueness
in gothic literature lies in his wide knowledge of world literature. In
addition to his inspiration from other canonic literature, there are many
authors whose names are related directly or indirectly to Poe's works. One of
these artists is the French Realist author Honoré De Balzac (1799-1850).
The plot of Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" shares the same plot of Balzac's
novel La Grande Bretêche (1831). Both works share the story of
revenge and both authors choose the immurement as the appropriate way to create
the gothic and mysterious atmosphere of the story. Poe and Balzac choose to
show one aspect of 19th C society and this highlights the idea that the terror,
originated from the act of premature burial presents an omnipresent obsession
of the 19th C American and western people, producing a mass horror and panic,
under the name of taphephobia. Poe's fascination with Balzac's writing style is
recorded in many biographies and by many critics. In his book Influences
Françaises dans L'oeuvre d'Edgar Poe5 (1929),
Régis Messac states that many of Poe's protagonists, motifs and themes
are clearly inspired from Balzac's works, showing some examples of parallelism
between Poe's gothic works and Balzac's writings (51). Furthermore, Poe's
strategy to internalize the horror through the multiple representation of the
terror, manifested in premature burial, echoes some
5 It is translated as French Influences in the work of
Edgar Poe
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similar stories in non-English literature, notably Greek and
Arabic literature. Premature internment as a form of punishment that
characterizes Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" mirrors a familiar plot in two
famous Greek tragedies which are Prometheus Bound and Sophocles'
Antigone which present premature internment as a punishment for both
Prometheus and Antigone, adding a cathartic effect on the readers.
In addition, Poe shows throughout his tales different forms of
the direct cause of taphephobia, premature burial, to guarantee the horrific
effect on readers by reflecting their worst nightmares, creating an illusion of
reality or what is called verisimilitude. The detailed portrayal of
premature burial presents a way adapted by Poe to concretize the reader's
obsession, trying to picturize the public phobia with the description of the
character's experience. He reflects not only the Western literature but also
the Eastern one through One Thousand and One Nights, which is a
collection of folkloric tales, and notably "The Adventures of Sinbad the
Sailor" in which the protagonist is buried alive along with his dead wife as a
part of the village's traditions of death. The inspiration with the Eastern
literature emphasizes the global nature of the phenomenon, which serves to show
that taphephobia was not only present in the minds of 19th C Americans but also
presents the phobia of the antiquity and can be the phobia of the future
generation.
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