3.1. Edgar Allan Poe: An Artist with Scientific
Mind:
As a contemporary of the 19th C, Poe witnesses the illnesses of
the American society and studies in depth its interests, concerns and fears. He
reflects, in details, their morbid fears and worst nightmares, with further
medical explanations. Critics usually refers to Poe as an author who relies on
his real life experiences and his society to create his gothic writings. Among
these critics, Marie Bonaparte states in her book The Life and Works of
Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho-Analytic Interpretation (1933) that relying on
Freud's theory, that considers literature as a physical manifestation of the
author's psychology, dreams and fears, Poe cannot be an exception and that he,
as well, mirrors his own psychology and the psychology of his society in his
gothic works especially when he dealt with themes of death and premature burial
(639).
Reading his biography, we can easily understand the personality
of Poe as a traumatic author par excellence. Almost all fears and phobias
presented in his writings are originated from his real life. Taphephobia in
particular presents one example of the phobias that overwhelmed Poe's
contemporaries. Despite the fact that there are no records that dealt with
Poe's personal taphephobia, his relation with this phenomenon can be understood
at three levels: at the level of his fear of death in general and its relation
to his biography, at the level of his interests with the study of the human
soul and at the level of his social context.
Death presents an omnipresent element in Poe's life. He was
haunted by death from his early childhood till his adulthood. Starting with the
death of his mother Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins and his young bride Virginia
Clemm, Poe becomes obsessively afraid of death, felt
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that he is cursed by being deprived of his beloveds. This idea is
illustrated in his writings in which there is a common theme of the death of
beautiful women through different forms and in which there is a detailed
portrayal of the psychological torments of characters. Besides, the choice of
women as victims of the horror of premature burial mirrors Poe's psychological
pain vis à vis the death of his mother and bride, imagining them as
prematurely dead, kidnapped by the angel of death.
Furthermore, Poe's choice of taphephobia seems to be out of
personal interest since, as Frances Winwar asserts in her book The Haunted
Palace: A Life of Edgar Allan Poe (1959), his fascination with the human
soul and with eternity is behind his growing interest to study the boundaries
between life and death and the secrets of the afterlife (323). Thus,
taphephobia presents for him, a perfect opportunity to be up to date by
studying a recent social phenomenon and to analyze scientifically the
borderline of death and life that taphephobia stands for.
However, the choice of taphephobia transcends the personal life
of the author to reach his society and era. The depiction of taphephobia
presents a reflection of the American society during Poe's life. It is the
general atmosphere controlled by a morbid fear and a mass panic leading people
to change their lifestyles and creating new ways to protect themselves from the
possibility of being prematurely immured. The irrational behavior held by the
narrator to protect himself, depicted by Poe in his tale "The Premature
Burial", is a detailed life-like presentation of the appalling horror
experienced by the 19thC Americans .
Poe highlights taphephobia by dealing with its primary cause
which is the occurrence of premature burials. He creates a mixture of facts and
phantasy by using an analytic,
scientific description with fictional characters, setting and
events. He attempts to record a medical and historical event like taphephobia
and to internalize further the mass horror by using samples of the American
people, concretizing their psychological agony and their
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constant fear. Poe succeeds to make his tales transcend the
literary sphere and to reach documentation. He uses medical explanation of the
phenomenon, using medical journals, books and treatises as references. He
succeeds to be both an artist and a scientist, trying, as D. H. Lawrence
asserts in chapter 6 of his book Studies in Classical American Literature
(1923), to " reduc[e] his own self as a scientist reduces a salt in a
crucible" (48). Poe's study of taphephobia, using a particular descriptive
style transcends its gothic, literary aspect and becomes a written documentary
about a historical landmark of the 19th C United States.
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