3. Edgar Allan Poe's Tales: Taphephobia as a Medical
Concept:
Critics usually refer to Poe's gothic tales as exclusive examples
of a mixed literature and science. The scientific dimension of these tales lies
first in Poe's descriptive style. In his book Studies in Classic American
Literature, D. H. Lawrence refers to Poe's style as purely "mechanical"
(69) where characters are reduced to microscopic objects to be analyzed and
studied. He uses his tales as a laboratory to watch, observe, study and analyze
the human mind under pressure, agony, and constant fear. Poe's objective style
that seems to be similar to a medical report serves as a tool to create an
apparent verisimilitude, transforming the fictional stories into an authentic
reality; internalizing the horror and increasing the effect of
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the sublime. Second, Poe's scientific side lies in his overuse of
medical concepts and logical explanations of different phenomena occurred in
his tales.
Throughout the six tales under study, Poe uses his scientific
knowledge to present taphephobia as a medical and psychological phenomenon
rather than a folkloric superstitious fear of death. Poe relates taphephobia to
other medical cases like monomania, epilepsy and catalepsy. Protagonists in
"The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Premature Burial" and "Berenice" are
cataleptic characters who suffer from a physical pain and a psychological,
neurotic obsession of being all the time under the threat of being buried
alive. Poe uses medical terms to describe rigorously the cataleptic trance, in
an attempt to create an illusion of verisimilitude. "The Premature Burial" in
particular presents a good example of tales that shows Poe's scientific and
medical knowledge through his use of catalepsy and taphephobia in relation to
his philosophical contemplative question of life and death. He provides the
full diagnosis of catalepsy, focusing on the fact that it presents the
borderline between life and death:
Sometimes the patient lies, for a day only, or even for a shorter
period, in a species of exaggerated lethargy. He is senseless and externally
motionless; but the pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible; some
traces of warmth remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek;
and, upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid, unequal,
and vacillating action of the lungs. Then again the duration of the trance is
for weeks - even for months; while the closest scrutiny, and the most rigorous
medical tests, fail to establish any material distinction between the state of
the sufferer and what we conceive of absolute death. (CTP 256)
This description shows Poe's strategy to create the reality
effect through an objective style, detailed analysis of the phenomenon without
any use of fictional supernatural elements
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of the 18th C gothic. This lengthy, detailed description mirrors
a similar definition by the scientists William Tebb and Edward Vollum who
expressed in their book Premature Burial and How it may be Prevented
(1905) that catalepsy is a nervous system disease associated with rigidity
in muscles and limbs and with low pulsation which are symptoms that define
death (59). Both definitions show the fragile boundaries between death and
life, since a cataleptic person can be mistakenly considered dead and buried
alive. Besides, Poe shows his scientific knowledge through his reference to the
medical journals of the era like the German Chirurgical Journal of
Leipsic which is presented in his tale "The Premature Burial" as "a periodical
of high authority and merit, which some American bookseller would do well to
translate and re-publish" (CTP 254). Poe's use of authentic medical
journals in addition to his analytic description of catalepsy, one of the main
reasons behind the occurrence of incidents of premature burial that caused a
mass panic and obsessive fear during the 19th C, serve as a way to guarantee
the horrific effect of the tale by inspiring from the era itself and from the
society to internalize the horror. Furthermore, Poe echoes the psychological
agony of the neurotic protagonist in "The Premature Burial", describing his
"moral distress and infinitude" (CTP 257) and trying to ensure his
friends' oaths to bury him after his decomposition and trying to provide every
precaution possible to forbid his potential premature interment. Poe's
description of the narrator reflects the modern definition of taphephobia and
the essence of the phenomenon which is based essentially on the neurotic
obsession that can affect the human body leading to physical pains. In the
introduction to Enrico Morselli's "Dysmorphophobia and Taphephobia: Two
Hitherto Undescribed Forms of Insanity with Fixed Ideas", Laurence Jerome
refers to taphephobia as "a symptom of obsessive/ compulsive spectrum disorders
characterized by constant doubting and questioning, and reassurance-seeking
regarding the uncertainty surrounding death and the afterlife" (106).
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In "Berenice", Poe presented another medical concept related to
the motif of taphephobia. The narrator presents an example of a monomaniac
person who suffers from a neurotic obsession and fixation on some parts of the
human body, and in this tale on Berenice's teeth. Poe shows two medical cases
related to taphephobia; a monomaniac narrator and a cataleptic victim. He uses
the medical mistake of burying Berenice without any
scientific verifications as a way to reflect the occurrence of
these accidents and to intensify the phobia of the reader, giving a horrific
description of the victim's agony "a wild cry disturbing the silence of the
night [...] and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of
a violated grave - of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still
palpitating, still alive!" (CTP 170). Berenice, presents a
reflection of a neurotic character who becomes, due to her catalepsy, an object
of a continuous phobia of being buried alive. However, her phobia is realized
since she was actually prematurely buried, due to both the medical inability to
distinguish between life and death and of her fiancé's monomania, which
is defined by Poe as "a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in
metaphysical science termed the attentive" (166). Taphephobia in this
particular tale is internalized twice : once through the detailed description
of the premature burial, the worst nightmare of the taphephobic and second
through the possibility of being disfigured alive causing physical and mental
pains. The author introduces taphephobia throughout the tale, using hints about
the nature of the relationship between Egaeus and Berenice. It is a
relationship of a hunter and a prey; Berenice was not merely a cousin or a
beloved fiancé, but rather a target to be reached in order to realize
his mental peace or as Poe describes it "a theme of the most abstruse although
desultory speculation" (168). She was all the time under the threat of her
mysterious illness and the threat of her obsessive cousin. Berenice's death was
sudden and unlike the other tales, the author did not describe the
circumstances of neither her death nor burial. However, he provides hints,
consisting of description of a sad female voice mixed with woe
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and pain. This voice overwhelmed Egaeus' mind and rose the degree
of suspense. This suspense is over by the end of the tale when the reader
discovers how Egaeus disfigured Berenice's body in a trance and this leads the
reader to question if Egaeus himself is responsible for her premature
burial.
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