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Taphephobia in Edgar Allan Poe's collection of gothic tales: a new historicist study of 19th century america's most prevalent fear

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par Salma LAYOUNI
Université de Sousse - Master 2013
  

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4. Edgar Allan Poe's Tales: Concluding Notes:

Poe's tales present a subversion of all classical notions of beauty and aesthetics. He destroys the Romantic myth of female beauty by using it as a source of horror and builds a unique definition of aestheticism based upon grotesque, gloom, decay and horror. Poe adopts a particular descriptive style that serves his perception of the sublime. He uses narrative strategy based upon objectivity, by using a scientific, detailed analysis, and a common use of first person pronoun "T" and plural pronoun "we" to create an effect of verisimilitude , guaranteeing the sublime effect. Besides, unlike the 18thC gothic literature, Poe tries to create an illusion of reality by using real cases of premature burial, by a diary like style and notably by the remarkably exact analysis of the phenomenon.

Poe's basic feature lies in his creation of a world where medicine, history and literature are intermingled in one tale. He follows the same style of suspense in the classical gothic stories, relying on the nature of the human mind as a raw, undiscovered place, to be a source of mystery and horror. Poe uses fear as an inherent feeling in the human nature and develops it by using its extreme situations like taphephobia. Poe adopts the role of a scientist trying to examine different experiences exercised over the human mind with a preconscious belief that the real horror lies within the human psyche. Poe uses medicine as an active participator to show the horrific side of the experience of a panic attack caused by the obsessive, irrational

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fear of premature internment. He uses the scientific, factual explanation of the phenomenon in order to isolate it from its folkloric roots.

He succeeds to present a full diagnosis of taphephobia as a 19thC social illness, referring to the different mythologies that the phobia originates from within a literary fictional context. Poe's tales reflect the public trepidation that ravaged their peace of mind and how that phobia controlled their lifestyle, leading to obsessive thinking about the different solutions that may protect them from such horror. This exact reflection of the American society is related to Poe's own life which presents one of the major sources of inspiration for his choice of characters and his detailed description of the psychological agony of the victim. Poe presents more than an author of gothic literature, he is a witness of the losing confidence in the medical and scientific progress that set America at the top of the world and especially the losing faith in the Catholic canonic concepts of death and punishment that controlled the public thought during the 19th C.

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Chapter 3: Taphephobia in Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic Tales : A Reflection of 19th
Century United States' Worst Nightmares

Poe used many literary and non literary sources as a backbone of his multidimensional representation of taphephobia, conveying his aesthetic theory of sublime by entering the hidden, unconscious side of human psyche and reflecting victims' agony of being under the threat of premature internment. He fully diagnosed the human mind in an obsessive, uncontrollable state of fear, in which the human rationality is replaced by a compulsive need to reassure their survival from a premature burial. However, Poe did not restrict himself to the classical representation of a psychological phenomenon, but he rather transcends the boundaries of aestheticism and deals with taphephobia as a historical event that marked a particular age of the United States. Poe's aim from choosing taphephobia as a motif is to historicize his tales and to literalize the history through his parallel use of literary, fictional elements and historical documents as one of the constituting components of his representation of taphephobia. Thus, the boundaries between fiction and reality are vanished and the panic is further internalized.

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