USE OF ICT IN TEACHING E. A. POE’S WRITINGS —TYPOLOGY OF THE CHARACTERS

8/23/2019 USE OF ICT IN TEACHING E. A. POES WRITINGS TYPOLOGY OF THE CHARACTERS

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UNIVERSITATEA LUCIAN BLAGA DIN SIBIUFACULTATEA DE LITERE I ARTE

DEPARTAMENTUL DE STUDII ANGLO-AMERICANE IGERMANISTICE

DEPARTAMENTUL DE DREPT PRIVAT ITIINELE EDUCAIEI

LUCRARE METODICO-TIINIFIC

PENTRU OBINEREA GRADULUI DIDACTICI

CONDUCTOR TIINIFIC:Conf. univ. dr. DAN-ERBAN SAVA

CANDIDAT:

DIANA

TINCU


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SIBIU 2012

UNIVERSITATEA LUCIAN BLAGA DIN SIBIUFACULTATEA DE LITERE I ARTE

DEPARTAMENTUL DE STUDII ANGLO-AMERICANE IGERMANISTICE

DEPARTAMENTUL DE DREPT PRIVAT ITIINELE EDUCAIEI

INTEGRAREA TEHNOLOGIEI COMPUTERIZATE

IN PREDAREA OPERELOR LUI E.A.POETIPOLOGIA PERSONAJELOR

CONDUCTOR TIINIFIC:Conf. univ. dr. DAN-ERBAN SAVA


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CANDIDAT:

DIANA

TINCU

SIBIU 2012

LUCIAN BLAGA UNIVERSITY OF SIBIUFACULTY OF LETTERS AND ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF ANGLO-AMERICAN AND

GERMAN STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF PRIVATE LAW AND

EDUCATION SCIENCE

USE OF ICT IN TEACHING E. A. POES WRITINGS TYPOLOGY OF THE CHARACTERS

SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR:

Assoc. Prof. DAN-ERBAN SAVA, Ph.D.


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CANDIDATE:

DIANA TINCU

SIBIU 2012

Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................1

1. The Characters .............................................................................................4

1.1. The Women .........................................................................................4

1.2. The Men .............................................................................................7

1.3. Women and Men .................................................................................9

2. Feelings of the Characters ..........................................................................12

2.1. Love ..................................................................................................12

2.1.1. Preliminaries ..................................................................................12

2.1.2. Absolute Love with Poe .................................................................16

2.1.3. Loss of love ....................................................................................19

2.2. Hate ...................................................................................................26

2.3. Fear ...................................................................................................29

3. Pathology of Characters .............................................................................35

3.1. Madness ............................................................................................35

3.2. Perverseness ......................................................................................40


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4. Technology and Foreign Language Learning ............................................45

4.1. The Importance of Learning Foreign Languages in School .............45

4.2. The Study of the English Language in High School ........................46

4.3. Student-centered Learning ................................................................51

4.4. Computer Aided Learning ................................................................54

4.5. Educational Softwares ......................................................................57

4.5.1. AEL Lessons ..................................................................................58

4.5.2. e-Learning ......................................................................................59

4.5.3. Intel@TeachIntelligent Learning Program ................................61

4.5.4. The Optimized educational process to gain competences in the

cognitive societythe Multitouch project ..............................................64

4.5.5. Advance Use of Information and Communication Technology

(ICT)Edu Integrator ............................................................................ 66

5. Implementation of Educational Platforms .................................................68

5.1. Preliminaries .....................................................................................68

5.2. Applied Intel@Teach platform .........................................................69

5.2.1. Learning Unit Template ................................................................ 69

5.2.2. Evaluation Test ............................................................................. 77

5.2.3. Test Analysis ................................................................................. 79

5.3. Applied Multitouch Project ..............................................................81

5.3.1. Survival of the Inner ManCourse Outline ................................ 82

5.3.2. Detailed presentation of the theme ............................................. 86

5.3.3. Annual study plan, 1 class/week, 36 weeks.................................. 93

5.4.Applied EduIntegrator program...99

5.4.1. Lesson Plan...99

5.4.2.Content ........................................................................................ 104

5.5. Project development and evaluation ...............................................113


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5.5.1. Evaluation test ............................................................................. 116

5.5.2.Analysis of the evaluation test .................................................... 119

6.Conclusion ................................................................................................123

7.Annexes: ...................................................................................................126

8.Works cited..143

9. Selected Bibiography..146

Introduction

Considering my interest in the mystery of the human psychic and my passion

for psychology, I have found it normal to choose to discuss this topic.

Secondly, I have noticed that my students, too, developed a special interest

for this kind of writings. At the same time, I have realized that, in a society

based on knowledge like ours, the use of ICT in the English classes is more

than necessary. Integrating computers in our teaching process really helps

students, captures their attention, encourages them to learn in an active way

and connects them to everyday life.

Students must identify problems, find solutions and compare them

with other situations they meet all the time in reality. The new man must

be able to deal with all types of challenges in his life and that is why

education also understands to prepare them for the real life.

I have particularly chosen E.A.Poes works because most of his

approaches are psycho-analytical and the impact of his writings is obvious.


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Nevertheless, literature and psychology meet on a common ground, i.e. the

human being!

Starting from here, I will discuss Poes human beings and I will

offer an exploration of their minds and conduct. Equally, I will offer a closer

look at the Poesque world. When we look at it, terror and mystery are the

most distinctive features. Everything or, almost everything, in us tends to

unveil the mystery. However, the only impediment is the fact that this is not

possible every time. Poes no mans land is a space of darkness, vacuum

and reverie, where life and death are united forever.

Nevertheless, it could not exist without its creator. Hence, the theory

that the Poes gloomy figure permanently invades his creations. It has many

times been said that he incessantly used the same masculine character-his

own personality- that is obsessively seen under the melancholic,

neurasthenic, hallucinatory and mad or half-mad image of his heroes

(Buranelli 16).

Poe has been variously pictured as sado-masochist, dipsomaniac, drug

addict, maniac depressive, sex pervert and egomaniac. There can be little

doubt that he was a disturbed, tormented man, like so many of his characters,

often driven to the perilous brink of madness. If his fiction were merely the

product of disinterested fancy, his tales could hardly produce their brooding,

sinister intensity. And yet, Poes own mental state-while it may account for

the tone and the themes to which he repeatedly returned-is an important

aspect to discuss. Many of the recurrent motifs, dramatic conflicts and

themes of his works arose from intimate circumstances of his life.

The creator is always brought into discussion. His interior nature is

what distinguishes him from others. Since the very beginning of literature, he

has appeared as an eccentric person who has a certain degree of deviance


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from the life and behavior of the rest of the society. The modern world also

kept this vision that equates genius and pathology. The creator is neurotic, a

sick person who transforms his own disease into literary material. This idea

has been developed by Freud, in whose view the creator avoids a collapse,

but rejects any possible cure at the same time. Thus, the artist is a dreamer

who has no touch with reality, but is still admitted by it when his freedom of

reverie becomes literary work (Wellek and Warren117-118).The characters

in fiction result from the disintegration of the narratorial I into a multitude

of selves, but which still preserve a connection and act as a mirror: the more

one looks at it, the more faces of the same person emerge.

Further, I will present a new approach to the teaching process:

integrating ICT. The use of computers in class represents a different

approach to the teaching process. It favors the access to information in real

time and to communication, increases students motivation and allows them

to take advantage of other peoples experience and knowledge to build their

own system of values and attitudes.

I intend to offer a new perspective in teaching E.A.Poes characters by

applying the Intel@Teach project in my classes, when students were

introduced into interdisciplinarity (literature, psychology, history, sociology,

technology, etc.). This teaching method understands responsibility and

ability to adapt to new situations and helps create communicative

competences, creativity and intellectual curiosity. Also, it capitalizes

information and media abilities, critical and systematic thinking.

Due to the successful application of the Intel@Teach Project, I have

decided to continue and develop it. Thus, two new projects appeared, i.e. the

Multitouch Project and Advanced ICT, in other words the use of the

EduIntegrator Program. They are actually an extension of the first project


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(which allows application in individual learning units) and gave me the

opportunity to create a customized optional course, totally relying on

interactive learning. Educational research suggests that students have a better

understanding of what they learn when they are actively involved in the

teaching activities rather than memorizing information.

Bearing this in mind, I have integrated interactive methods in my

classes and the results I obtained made me think that this is a very good

approach and convinced me to continue applying it in school.

1. The Characters1.1. The Women

The tales have a wide range of characters, both men and women, but what is

interesting s that, either presented separately or together, they link to each

other in different relationships, and eventually for a union; for each of them

is constructed somehow flatly, being endowed with a dominant feature and

tend to lose their own individuation and particularity. That is why, though

categorized, characters get together and put forth the great power of

Oneness, so much sought and desired by Poe himself.

Speaking of categorized characters, I will present them in this chapter,

divided into women and men, and then highlight their relationships, which

often have a morbid, over strung, never-shattering intensity (Hansson

213).

The feminine presence in literature has been much discussed, and no

matter how much has been said, one thing is for sure, i.e. the subject is far

from being exhausted and always throws a veil of mystery .Poes female


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characters are in fact several images of one and the same model: the beloved

wife, seen as an ideal beautiful maiden, doomed to die at an early age.

Even their physical appearance announces their weak constitution and

eventually their end. Let us start with Ligeia: her beauty has the radiance of

an opium dream, her hair is black as a crow, her skin has the whiteness of

ivory, her profile is like those of Hebrew medallions (Hansson 214). Her

voice is pure music, but he miracle of all miracles are her eyes full of light,

because in them resides the secret of beauty and the knowledge of the world.

Ligeias successor, Lady Rowena, is angelic, too, but she is the opposite of

the former; she is fair-haired and blue-eyed. Still, she preserves the same

pallor and smoothness of the skin. And so is the woman in The Oval

Portrait, a younggirl just ripening into womanhood [] she was a maiden

of rarest beauty and not more lovely than full of glee (Poe, Tales, 40).

Berenice is agile, graceful and overflowing with energy at the beginning of

the story and extremely beautiful:

The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid: and the once jetty

hair fell partially over it and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerableringlets, now of a vivid yellow and jarring discordantly, in the fantastic character,

with the reigning melancholy (Poe, ibid. 52).

Poes maidens are extremely beautiful, even angelic, either fair-haired

(Rowena, Berenice) or dark-haired (Morella, Ligeia, lady Madeleine). All of

them, though differing in this aspect, still share a lot of common traits. As I

have mentioned before, they are several mirrors of the same figure. They

have the same pallor of the skin, the same attributes and the same destiny,

i.e. death resulting from a rapid fatal disease (Annabel Lee, the woman in

The Raven).


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And, strangely, they have the same symptoms of the disease and act

similarly, namely they grow pale, the light of their eyes ceases slowly

acquiring a harsh and weird look, only the music of their voice remains

unchanged. For instance, Berenice is marked by a number of maladies,

including a species of epilepsy, which also effects an alteration of her moral

condition. The same happens to Ligeia, Morella, Madeleine, i.e. they fall into

cataleptic trances and, thought dead, are buried prematurely. The only one in

the series who does not die of epilepsy is the woman in The Oval Portrait,

who exchanges her own life with that of another image of herself.

A very important feature of Poes feminine characters is their

tenderness, expressed by the mild appearance and also by the lack of

capacity to do harm. Moreover, they become the protectors of animals, like

the narrators wife inBlack Cat, who commits the supreme sacrifice to save

the pets life.

One can say that these women are auctioned against by two forces:

men and death. In the case of Berenice, Ligeia, Rowena, Morella or

Madeleine, men have a good influence on them, in the sense that they offer

their love and tenderness to them up to the very end. But taking into

consideration the women shown in The Oval Portrait orBlack Cat, the

masculine force actually destroys them. It is true that it is mild at the

beginning of the tales, but it soon turns into a malign agent and causes their

end. Death is always the final point to arrive for women in these pieces of

writing, coming either naturally, as a result of illness, or provoked in a very

conscious way.

Although victimized and suffering a lot, the earthly life of these serene

creatures brings light and sweetness, sometimes alleviation. Their presence is

desired, for only they are capable of resembling angels; they are endowed


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with painful beauty, with all the greatest attributes of Good. It has been said

that Poe applies to woman, as well as to art, bacons words that in all beauty

there is an element of strangeness. And what appears in nearly all Poes

women is sorrow and a mysterious expression of the eyes (Hansson 213).

They are ethereal, they vanish imperceptibly, clothed in a thick veil of

mystery; they regain an enigma even for those who are madly in love with

them, just like Ligeia: I never knew her maiden name, as the narrator

confesses. (Poe, Tales75). These women come from nowhere and go

quickly towards the no mans land, leaving behind a tearful and painful

memory that sends a shudder of dread, as though we saw the universe

extending before us beyond measure, without end, like a single expanse of

sunlight and out over this expanse there suddenly fell a shadow so

inexpressibly, unembraceably great nothing in heaven or earth can cast such

a shadow, save for one thing: Death (Hansson 217).

1.2. The Men

Unlike women, men are not, or very little shaped physically. The angelic

features, the sweetness, serenity and tenderness are reserved exclusively to

female characters. The masculine features are only to be grasped by the

reader; however, the accent falls on their moral and mental features.

Still, we have a physical portrait, like that of Roderick Usher, perhaps

the only angelic man shown in the tales:

A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond

comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful

curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual insimilar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of

a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these

features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up

altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mereexaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression


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they want to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The

now ghastly pallor of the skin and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all

things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to growall unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about

the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any

idea of simple humanity. (Poe, Tales15-16).

This is the mark of his superfluous essence and the frailty of features

announces his ulterior madness, the common point of all men in these tales.

It is true that, in some cases, men have a sweet good nature, but they

eventually become diabolic. These feeble and, why not, handsome creatures

are all touched from the very beginning by a severe disease (like the women)

and transfigured so much that they become unrecognizable. This is what

happens to Roderick Usher, or to the narrator in all the short stories.

The demoniacal type of men, as I called it, displays certain degrees of

cruelty; firstly, the male ego, who does not allow to be insulted, thus

beginning the transformation of the person into a bad character. Then, the

perverseness they can display is to be noted. But the worst of all is the

authorial I, the narrator, charging himself with the most abominable deeds,finally turning a normal person into a demon (Black Cat, Tell-Tale Heart).

However, some secondary male characters, like Prince Prospero from

Red Death are victims punished for their pride: seen as such, men resemble

women, with the distinction that women are victims, without having done

any harm; in fact, women are martyred.

What is interesting about all of Poes male characters is their

erudition, inclination for enclosed spaces, darkness and lethargy. They all

have the air ofennuybeginning with the feeble Roderick and ending with

the rational keen observer in ratiocination tales. It is precisely this romantic

appearance and mentality that gives way to their abnormal behavior.


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1.3. Women and Men

Returning to the presentation of the characters, one might say that, either

presented alone or together, there is a special bond between men and women,

mirrored in different relationships. The way they interrelate is surrounded by

mystery and a certain degree of incomprehensibility, inherited from the

essence of their characters. Having in view the way they get together and the

nature of their relationships, I have regrouped them according to two aspects:

the theme of the double and the married couple.

Starting with the doppelgngertheme, I have chosen to discuss them

according to the three types: female, male and ultimately, a mixed one, all of

them being well known. Each of these connections fails to any attempt of

logical explanation and is to be taken as a supernatural event, meant not as

much to spread horror, but rather to keep the veil of the enigma alive; there

is always something new to see or interpret and in no time can it be fully

unveiled.


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The female doppelgnger appears only after death. Ligeia and

Rowena emerge from one another, and so are Morella and her daughter.

There is something extremely interesting how everything changes: Ligeia

and Rowena are physically opposites, but they come back to life with each of

their features, their musical voice, too. They seem to defy death and life even

more. It is that previously mentioned angelic strangeness that offers them

this possibility.

Unlike the former, the male doppelgnger appears only during

lifetime; when life ends, the doppelgngerdisappears, too. The case of the

narrator doubled by W. Wilson is fascinating. The latter follows the former,

like a shadow and even scolds him. In fact, W. Wilson is the narrator's own

conscience. One is good, the other is evil, and when the evil force tries to

murder the good force, he actually murders himself. The good force must

always prevail and, if that is not possible, the good force is dissolved along

with the evil force, annihilating it.

The case of the mixed doppelgnger is represented by the twins

Roderick and Madeleine Usher. They seem to be connected by a very special

bond: when one of them is suffering, the other one is suffering, too. They are

both transfigured by the wings of death and even if Madeleine dies first,

Rodericks soul dies along with her. Madeleines premature burial is very

soon followed by the final collapse of both her brother and her home. The

twins present the same symptoms during their illness, i.e. both their physical

appearance and their mental state. This phenomenon also takes place during

their lifetime; and when death comes forth to set them apart, the remaining

mournful brother soon dies, too, in order to continue the special bond that he

has with his sister.


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Another way of getting men and women together is imagined in the

sacred marriage; this is not the case of a long happy marriage, but that of a

sad one. There is not lack of love, but the contrary. Yet, darkness and sorrow

are omniscient, turning upside down even the youngest and merriest soul. It

is a lethargic connection, which is sometimes malicious and dangerous, and,

like all the connections between Poes characters, it is veiled by mystery.

The male part of this marriage is always the narrator (only in

Berenice does he bear a name) bound to one of these wonderful creatures

doomed to die prematurely. The end is every time the same, i.e. the wife dies

and the husband is left alone with his sorrow and grief (Annabel Lee, The

Raven, Ligeia etc). A special case is that of the narrator in Black Cat, where

he consciously causes the death of his wife and the tale shows no sign of

remorse on his behalf. A common trait of these ties is the extreme youth of

the wives, who are, in some cases, relatives of their husbands (like Egaeus

and Berenice who, in fact, are cousins).

What is special about Poes most memorable characters is that they

withdraw from life in its conventional aspects, into heavily draped rooms

with artificial lighting and there they cultivate a life of their own, so distinct

and cut apart from the world that they lose all touch with reality. In this

condition they can develop an acuteness of sense (at times called

synaesthesia) and an almost mystical perception in keeping with Poes own

aesthetic principles.


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2. Feelings of the Characters

2.1. Love

2.1.1. Preliminaries

Whenever trying to speak about this topic, one is in the impossibility of

uttering words, although it is something we all know. Yet, it invades our

souls and makes us dream. We feel it within ourselves, so fragile and so

powerful at the same time. Love gives dimension to our souls and makes

conspicuous the ones of our beloved. And yet, this is unutterable for most of

us. Perhaps, this might be the reason for which there has been said so little

about love and about feelings in general.

However, the things expressing love are to be appreciated, especially

for the authors great effort to give shape to this delicate feeling, and also for

their beauty and truth. But this pain is worth it, because nada es ms frtil

en nuestra vida ntima que el sentimiento de amor, de modo que se convierte

en el smbolo de toda la fecundacin(Ortega y Gasset 10).1

We cry so much when hearing sensitive love songs, we remain

impressed by different paintings or sculptures; moreover, the graceful

movements of the body when dancing give life to both ecstasy and agony.

1nothing is more fertile in our intimate life than the feeling of love, so that it becomes

the symbol of any fecundation(my translation)


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And both literary and scientific studies try to reflect real life and feelings

faithfully, with all their strengths and weaknesses. It is this very capacity of

uttering the unutterable, i.e. the power of words that give greatness and

supremacy to feelings.

But what do we feel when falling in love? How can we recognize its

symptoms? Ortega y Gasset tried to answer these questions:

Para amar algo o alguien simplemente significa ser feliz y hacer realidad, almismo tiempo el hecho de que nuestra felicidad proviene de este objeto o persona

(...) cuando en realidad caen en el amor que dejamos nuestra propia paz y

descanso y que casi emigrar hacia el objeto [amamos]. Y este estado perpetuo de

la inmigracin es el amor (...). Nos encanta continuamente (...) el amor es unfluido, una corriente de materia psquica, un fluido que fluye continuamente de un

manantial (11-13)2

So, from the point of view of immigration, it would mean the transfer

of our initial peace and tranquility towards the target of our love. The

centre of equilibrium being moved from one person to another, it is but

normal that we absolutely and continually need the presence of the otherit

is actually a transfer of souls, it is a passage into the other, a true alchemy of

the souls. Hence, the words that lovers exchange along with their promises.

This is the greatness of love and we feel it so profoundly that the only object

worthy to be offered is our own being. And never is this stronger than in the

moment we take this decision of totally devoting ourselves to the great act of

love:

Ce n'est que depuis que je suis dans l'amour que j'ai grandeur spirituelle (...).

Avant de tomber dans l'amour, je l'habitude d'tre un homme mdiocre, surtout

2To love something or somebody would simply mean to be happy and to realize at the

same time the fact that our happiness comes from this object or person () when weactually fall in love we leave our own peace and rest and we virtually immigrate towards

the object [we love]. And this perpetual state of immigration is love (). We love

continually () love is a fluid, a stream of psychic matter, a fluid which continually

flows from a spring (my translation)


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parce que j'ai t tent de penser moi comme tant un grand homme, parce qu'il

y avait un certain effort dans ce sens (Stendhal 93)3.

What is to be understood from this is that love needs no effort: you

never fight to fall in love. It comes naturally and you only see the results:Para amar un objeto significa asumir la tarea de hacer que exista, no admitir, en lo

que dependa de vosotros, la posible existencia de un universo del que precisa queel objeto no se encuentra. Es de hacer notar que esto es lo mismo con dar

incesantemente la vida a ella, en lo que depende de nosotros. El amor significa la

preservacin dinamismo, la creacin y deliberada del objeto amado (Ortega yGasset, 16).

4

Continuing the series of arguments and debates on love, one can get

deeper and deeper into this problem and develop theories. That is probably

how Stendhal, trying to understand the phenomenon, reached the conclusion

that there are four types of love: lamour-got, lamour-passion, lamour-

vanit andlamour-physique.

Lamour-got, often contains more softness than true love, because it

always has a lot of sprit (Stendhal 117 )

Lamour-physique is well known to everybody; no matter how cold

and unhappy ones nature could be, this kind of love begins at sixteen years

of age (118)

Lamour-vanit originates in vanity, as its very name shows it. You

fall in love because the object of your passion is extremely beautiful,

fashionable, intelligent, much admired in the society, or even desired by the

3It is only since I have been in love that I have spiritual greatness (). Before falling in

love, I used to be a mediocre man, especially because I was tempted to think of myself asbeing a great man, because there was a certain effort in this sense (my translation).4To love an object means taking the task to make it exist, not to admit, as far as it

depends on you, the possible existence of a universe from which that precise object is

missing. It is to be noticed that this is the same thing with giving incessantly life to it, as

far as it depends on us. Love means dynamism, creation and deliberate preservationofthe beloved object.


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others: vanity, more or less flattered, more or less provoked, gives birth to

amorous enthusiasm. Sometimes, physical love gets under discussion, but

not always; most often physical pleasure does not even exist (119)

However, the only legitimate kind of love for Stendhal is lamour-

passion; only passion is to be noted and granted. This coincides with a

certain degree of violence of the feeling. It tends to destroy any obstacle,

fight any battle and almost all the time it has a thunder-like force.

Of course it is only theory. These four types of love cannot exist

separately; they combine and give unique results. Hence, the great diversity

of feelings, of persons and of love stories.

It is true that sometimes they resemble, yet there is something that

differentiates them. And it is also true that these types of love do not

combine entirely to dissolution, i.e. there will always be one form

dominating the others. In this way, their product will have a very personal

and interesting mark.

What is interesting to be noticed is the feeling that love and happiness

are somehow connected, and most of us connect them, too. It seems natural

to us to mix them and have the perfect recipe for a perfect life. But

happiness is not something which can be easily discovered, it is to be

haunted:

Tout commence par une sensation (...). Il est une proie, il est la fois le don de la

chance et la rcompense d'un acte de courage. Dans ce cas, la course pour le

bonheur peut conduire la ralisation d'un certain nombre de moments parfaits,dont le contenu est assez sensible reprendre et justifier sa vie(Richard14-15)

5.

5Everything begins with a sensation (). It is a prey, it is both the gift of a chance and

the reward of an act of courage. In this case, the race for happiness may lead to the

realization of a number of perfect moments, whose sensitive content is enough to resumeand justify ones life (my translation).


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Briefly, this is what happens within ones soul when falling in love. It

fills the heart with happiness, hope, desires; it gives the dimension of the

perfect unity and the feeling of greatness which designates ones entire

existence. The general aim of a human being is to find this state of ultimate

union of the souls and maintain it as much as possible. And the only way to

obtain it is the long difficult path of love.

2.1.2. Absolute Love with Poe

This is the path that Poe chose, too, and it is even more complex, because it

is branded by the sense of pain and, with no exception, followed by the

shadow of death. This kind of love, that he presents, is endlessly multiplying

itself and adding more torments to the same topic, i.e. there is always an

exhausting search for perfection, which gets lost whenever one gets close to

it. His characters, men and women irrespectively, seem to be doomed not to

reach fulfillment in love. Except for a few moments of happiness and

tranquility, they are in quest for the Ideal, never finding their peace.With him, love is romantic, and beauty is the leading concept that

generates it. Much discussed in the Philosophy of Composition and Poetic

Principle, this concept has almighty powers. The entire universe is

compressed within it and fighting to obtain it means fighting to reach the

Ideal, the Oneness. Beauty is the excitement and the elevation of the soul,

it is

the desire of the moon for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before

us, but a wild effort to reach Beauty above. Inspired from an ecstatic prescience of

the glories beyond the grave, we struggle by multiform combinations among thethings and thoughts of Time to attain a portrait of that Loveliness whose every

element, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone (Ciocoi-Pop 90).


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First of all, there is the feminine beauty (both physical and moral)

which is the most important, and this is accomplished by all the women in

Poes writings. Whether their names are Lenore, Annabel, Madeleine, or

Ligeia etc., they are all an illuminating presence, a breath of freshness.

Beauty is subjectively perceived, meaning that any individual has his own

perception of it, which may be generalized, or seen in little details, like the

colour of the eyes, the softness of the skin, the delicate smile etc. The

Poesque woman will be a pale fragile human being, full of sadness and

passion.

What especially awakes love is the extreme intelligence, embodied n

the Unique Woman. She is said to have been chosen to symbolize the

Oneness because her name rhymes with the word idea, the basic principle

with Poe. Ligeia! Ligeia! My beautiful one! Whose harshest idea/ will to

melody run! (Poetic principle and Jennedy in Silverman 115).

And, indeed, she is the only woman endowed with such acuity of

senses, with such intelligence and erudition. Together with her gigantic

volition, it confers her power to dominate: I was sufficiently aware of her

infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her

guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation [].

Without Ligeia I was but a child groping benighted (Poe, Tales...120)

Now we have the possibility to see her in the position of beloved wife

and comprehensive mother, explaining everything to her child-like

husband. In this way, she accomplishes two functions at he same time and is

ready to offer both her maternal love and marital love to the male.

In a Freudian interpretation of her marital status, Ligeia appears as a

profound feminine character and with reversed functions. In the dual image

of the mother-wife, she has accepted her feminity; but because of her


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determination and power to master things, she acquires the features of a

male.

But what is her secret? Where does it hide? In her black, morbidly

large gazelle eyes (Hansson 215). Their flashes throw not only light, but

also ideas. In them resides the knowledge of the world and they are those

who show and give the male all her love and passion. It is by their powers

that this radiant girl can place the other women in a slumber so deep that

only she can break t hold, as Poe writes: she has bound many eyes /in a

dreamy sleep (Al Araaf)

As mentioned above, Ligeia is accompanied by other images of the

unique woman, such as Lenore, Annabel, Berenice etc., because she means

perfection. A man is to find everything

in the beauty of a womanin the grace of her stepsin the luster of her eye-in

the melody of her voice-in the soft laughter-n her sigh-in the harmony of the

rustling of her robes. He deeply feels it in her winning endearments-in her burningenthusiasm-in her gentle charities-in her meek and devotional endurances-but

above all-ah, far above all-he kneels to it-he worships it in the faith, in the purity,

in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty of her love (Poetic Principle, my

emphasis).

This recognition of her capacity to love and, especially her merit to be loved,

demonstrates the great intensity of her feelings.

But she is not the only one to abandon herself in the labyrinth of love-

there is also the male, who worships her. He, too, feels everything so

profoundly, is bound to the ideal he has been searching for and is seized by

hermelancholy and sadness, as well: I recognize a man in love when I see

he is sad (Stendhal, 313).

In spite of their extreme youth, the two lovers reach the point of

perfection, which can only cause envy:

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;But we loved with a love that was more than love-


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I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

Coveted her and me. The angels, not half so happy in heaven,Went envying her and me- (Annabel Lee)

2.1.3. Loss of love

Yet, all perfection has to go beyond this human existence; this ideal love

cannot last. It is too great to be fulfilled on Earth and Death must appear to

take one of the lovers away, and the woman is the chosen one. Man is left

alone, like Orpheus, to continue her fight and prove he deserves to take his

beloved wife back.

Easily slipping into the field of mysticism, the author saw death not as

the end of life, but a continuation of it. They endlessly result from one

another, as in a circle and absolute love that connects them.

Life and death are presented as two faces of the same event and are

even symbolized by colors: white (light corresponding to life and day) and

black (absolute lack of light, corresponding to the night of death, very much

used by Poe). These colors get together and mix themselves. Thus, the white

of the day turns into grey and black towards the coming of the romantic

night of death.

Getting to this problem of death, one may raise the question: Why

exactly is the woman to die? First of all, for the sake of aesthetics, because

the death of a beautiful woman is the only theme capable to move asensitive soul to tears (Philosophy of Composition, Works, 309)

Another answer may be provided by the theory of spirits (see

Popescu-Blceti, 25-29). The Woman is the first to leave this circle of life

because her moral strength is greater than that of her partner and her spirit is


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more elevated. Her death is the second step in the great process of initiation

in the mysteries of the universe, which is similar to the Christian salvation of

the soul. By this act, her intention is to become the master of these

phenomena, together with her partner; she steps into this second side of life

in order to prepare, somehow soften his arrival and serve him as a guide.

This may be the hidden meaning of Ligeias death, but her fight to

resist it shall not be interpreted as fear to die, or as a change of her mind. It is

simply a demand to postpone it, because her discipline-husband is not ready

yet. He has not acquired enough knowledge to understand the whole process

and assume this hard task. Her premature departure leaves him confused,

depressed and in awful pains. This is also the case of the narrator in The

Raven and Annabel Lee.

But these torments are necessary. The salvation is only possible

through expiation of pain, as act of supreme love, associated with the desire

to commit the absolute personal sacrifice. In this way, love becomes the sole

path to regain the Oneness, the final way to know the Absolute. It has no

limits; it supposes the adoration of the beloved up to her complete

dissolution into the lovers own self.

It is in the heart of the lover where this separation of them takes place

and hence, the loss of the perfect union. Because of that, Love represents the

only way back to it. The role played by the heart in the language of love is

well known. Being more than the centre of simple emotions, it is considered

to be the space where the human existence is transferred, leaving that of the

head. Thus, the heart becomes the centre of light, it is the gate through

which we get to our Father (Rougemont 167).

As for suffering, it appears out of a great passion, which gives birth to

the desire of transcendence by means of personal sacrifice. Here, the young


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poet is seized by the strong desire to meet the maiden/whom the angels

name Lenore with the help of the black raven (symbolizing his wish to

die). According toPhilosophy of Composition, this combination of love and

supreme pain the one to resist in time and also confers beauty. Besides, true

immortal value is born out of pan and then mixed up with pleasure of love, it

is even desired.

Because of his purification achieved through incessant torments, the

author is rewarded with reincarnation of Ligeia and Morella. There is a

certain similitude between the two of them, i.e. they are black-haired and

black-eyed (which seems to be the favorite model of a woman with Poe) and

also they both defy death by their return. The former begins to live again in

the moment of her successors death, while the latter chooses to embody in

the person of her daughter.

But, as Dr. Popescu-Balcesti puts it, reincarnation does not have the

singular meaning of gaining the lost reunion of the souls. It also means the

purification of ones soul and, in this way, helps the other (72-76).

Hence, its double functionsa necessary step to acquire absolute love

and the power to attain transcendence by means of purification of the spirits,

firstly, that of the most evolved one and then, with its help, of the other one.

However, this is the only case when this after death reunion takes place. It

probably appears because it speaks about ideals and also reiterates its myth.

Starting from the broken unity, the search is initiated, but it will not be

found any more. From now on, perfection is destroyed and the following

events are nothing but pitiful attempts to reestablish it. And it means an

endless search for happiness: bonheur, cela ressemble Euridice: vous perdez

une fois que vous essayez de la saisir, il [...]. Tout le bonheur que vous

essayez de sentir et de contrler, au lieu d'tre saisi par elle comme cadeau


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immdiatement se transforme en une absence insupportable (Rougemont

319).6

This is definitely the womans absence and the awful pain the male

has to live with. His first reaction is to remember her every day, mourn for

her and even try to talk to her, though being very much aware that she is

dead. Such an attempt is presented in The Raven.

But this is an act of magic, which cannot be executed any time and

anywhere. It needs specific moments and places. First of all, the space

remains unchanged, i.e the same house, the same room shared by the spouses

before death did them apart. And the chosen moment is the night. That is

why the Poesque atmosphere is heavy, obscure, dark and gloomy: there is a

permanent need to talk to the dead spirits, to confess. Night means peace; it

erases the torments of the day, finally bringing the soul into a state of

melancholy, which is

une nuit de l'me. Autant que l'ombre, il tire lentement le contour, confond les

certitudes, mais son action confuse exerce dsormais lui-mme en particulier surles sentiments. Il est comme le crpuscule du cur, o toutes les temptes

s'installer: il facilement, perturbe voluptueusement cette substance des tatspsychologiques, les mlange et combine leur contenu, l'obtention de nouveauxrsultats variables (Rougemont 56).

7

It is now the moment to sob and cry for Ligeia, Morella, Madeleine,

Annabel or Lenore and dedicate the moving pieces of writing to their

memory, expressed in the most tragical way, i.e. throughout music, because

6happiness resembles Euridice: you lose once you try to seize it []. Any happiness you

try to feel and control-instead ofbeing seizedby it as giftimmediately turns into anunbearable absence.7a night of the soul. As much as the shadow, it slowly draws the outline, confuses the

certainties, but its confusing action now exerts itself especially on feelings. It is like the

twilight of the heart, where all the tempests settle down: it easily, voluptuously disturbs

this substance of the psychological states, mixes them up and combines their content,

obtaining new changeable results (my translation).


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la mmoire ne peut exprimer les dialectes transcendantales, il irrmdiable et

contre pointant caractristique de la passion de la Nuit--dire son appel pour la

Journe encore natre. Mme la dfinition de la musique occidentale dit que c'estl'harmonie des contraires tourmenter. Il s'agit d'une expression de la dualit

douloureuse, qui s'installe en permanence sur le domaine de la vie, mais meurt

dans la grce lumineuse au-del des limites de la mort physique [...] et elle seule,tre la fois sa mre et sa fille, peut parler de la tragdie , comme il le mrite(Rougemont 265, and Buranelli 91).

8

That is why music has a preference with Poe. It alleviates the soul and

elevates it. His music creates a strong impression by its power of suggestion

and interior rhythms, giving birth to all kinds of ecstasies.

However, this is not enough and the attempt fails. The final decision

has been made up: Nevermore! Hope has been destroyed and there is

nothing more to be done, except dream. This is knowledge, erudition,

attainable by means of that world of reveries, trances, hypnotic states etc.,

stiffed into the confusing line which separates the state of watch and the

profound cataleptic sleep. Dreams, in other words its result, have an

individual nature by whose force the conscience and the unconscious are

overlapped.Applying a mystic interpretation on dreams, they are exactly what the

male desperately tries to do: a communication with the outer world of the

divinity and spirits. In order to accomplish this, there is a need of peace and

profound sleep. In this phase, the physical body remains inert, while the soul

(as it is generically called) travels though space, finally getting to meet the

8only memory is able to express the transcendental dialects, he irremediable and counter

pointing feature of the passion of the Night-meaning its call for the yet unborn Day. Even

the definition of the Occidental music says that it is the tormenting harmony of the

opposites. It is an expression of the painful duality, which permanently settles on therealm of life, but dies out in the bright grace beyond the limits of the physical death []

and only it, being both its mother and daughter, can speak about tragedy, as it deserves

(my translation).


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spirits, talk to them and sometimes get answers to the problems of the

sleeping subject.

In his Metamorphoses du cercle, Poulet (257-291) demonstrates that

sleep is lethargic with Poe, similar to a swoon and represents an enclosure of

the conscience. However, it does not leave the subject during his sleep, but

has a contribution to the hallucinations of the collapse: he who had never

swooned is he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in seals

that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visitors that the

many not view (Poe, Tales311)

During this nightmarish sleep, as Poulet sustains it, the existence of a

dreaming subject is isolated from everything, except from his own dream. It

has a strong orientation towards his own inner world. Thus, it is a profound

attention centred upon his person and, because of that, he is notable to have

a mystic experience during his dream. The only thing revealed from his

agitated sleep is his own nature and desires.

Having analyzed these needs and desires, Freud (11-83) emphasizes

that they have a specific sense; it shows how the spirit of the sleeping subject

starts under the influence of the emotions lived during daytime, emotions

which remain active, alive.

Most of the times they are sexual desires printed in the subconscious

and sublimated in the form of dreams. There is obviously a repressed

amorous unfulfilment which brings the subject into a state of delirium,

characterized by the fact that the subjects imagination has become

dominant, found a credit and also received some influence on his behavior

(Freud, 20)

Poes male character is not strong enough to resist this; the result is his

mental and behavioral lack of balance due to the loss of his love. Although


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he keeps looking for it, he is not able to find it and keep it any more. Perhaps

that explains why the mourning narrator desperately seeks to determine the

raven to be the mediator between him and Lenore.

Finally, seeing that his beloved wife is forever lost, the widower takes

the decision to find a new one, but what he is actually looking for is a copy

of his first love: hay personas que aman ms las mujeres durante su vida,

pero todos ellos, obviamente, insisten en repetir el mismo tipo de feminidad.

El tipo de fidelidad mediante el cual, a travs de ms mujeres, uno ama a una

mujer sola genrica, es muy frecuente (Ortega y Gasset 71).9

That is the mourning widower in Poes writings. He may be in love,

but this is his way of understanding to preserve and protect his love. This is

how he understands to suspend time and live in the past. Yet, here is no other

woman like the lost one. The attributes of the new woman are not perfect any

more, as he had sought them to be. Sometimes, the second wife is

completely different, the opposite of the first one, as it happens in the case of

Ligeia and Rowena. Thus, there is no love now. It is only a poor mimesis of

the initial state of perfection. And as there is no way to get it back, his

awareness leaves space to a deep disappointment.

9there are individuals who love more women during their life, but all of them obviously

insist on repeating the same type of feminity. The kind of fidelity by means of which,

throughout more women, one loves a single generic woman, is extremely frequent (mytranslation)


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2.2. Hate

After his profound disappointment, a radical change is produced in the

males mind and actions. Its result is a developed spirit of negation, materialized, by means of violence, into the form of hatred. Because he had

been caused a fatal pain which provoked his loss of equilibrium forever, he

feels the need to cause a great pain in his turn.

However, he cannot forget what exactly led to actual attitude: it was

love and thus he wants to repress it by all means. Out of a very powerful

feeling, another one, having at least the same force, was born. With respect

to this subject, Stendhal states that this is also a feeling within the sphere of

love and may have the same intensity as love has. Here, Ortega y Gasset is of

the same mind and says:

Odiar es prcticamente matar al objeto de su odio, deliberadamente aniquilado, la

represin de su derecho a respirar. Odiar a alguien es sentirse irritado, simplemente

por su / su existencia. Slo su / su desaparicin radical sera satisfactoria [...]. El odiosignifica una cancelacin y una virtual, no slo el asesinato de un asesinato ejecutado

slo una vez, el estado de odio en s es un asesinato incesante, la eliminacin de la

vida del un ser profundamente odia (16-17)10

.

Unlike love, which brings two human beings together, hatred

separates them. It is based on an unpleasant feeling of complete rejection and

may also be presented as a continual process, with its gradual steps. But

when it gets to a final point, it has the power to mercilessly destroy

everything. It has been argued that there is a need to deconstruct and destroy

10To hate is virtually to kill the object of ones hatred, deliberately annihilating it,

repressing its right to breath. To hate somebody means to feel irritated simply by his/herexistence. Only his/her radical disappearance would be satisfactory []. Hatred means a

cancellation and a virtual murder-not just a murder executed only one time; the state of

hatred itself is an incessant murder, an elimination from life of the being one deeply hates(my translation).


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what emerges and ones attention firstly settles on the once dearest beings or

objects. Absolute love turns into absolute hate.

This is what happens in Black Cat. Both the cat and the woman are

rewarded with hate for their love and devotion. The male firstly feels love

for them, too, but this gradually turns into something else:

I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of

others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I evenoffered her personal violence [] I made no scruple in maltreating the rabbits, the

monkey, or even the dog, when, by accident, or through affection, they came in

my way. But my disease grew upon me-for what disease is Alcohol!-and at length

even Pluto [] began to experience of my ill temper (Tales.199)

The ill temper is now the general state of the confessor. Whether

fancying or not, he is overwhelmed by the morbid desire to commit

damnable atrocities. It is an ever increasing need to harm, to cause

sufferings: evil thoughts became my sole intimates-the darkest of my usual

temper increased to hate of all things and all mankind (ibid.207).

What he permanently feels is outrage, increasing ungovernable

outbursts of fury, finally leading to crime, the only thing capable of

bringing peace. But there is still the problem of the object that causes such a

maniacal crisis. Here is the cat, because of her blackness and after that, the

woman, the wife, because she wishes to protect the animal.

They are both mild patient beings, not having done any harm to

anyone. Then, why should they die? There s no reason in their death, only a

fixed idea: it is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but

once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion

there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had

never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire (Tell-Tale Heart, 88).

This will lead to the already known state of restlessness, which only

settles down once the crime is committed. Nevertheless, there must be


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something, one small detail to awake the unreadable hate and its direct

result-the desire to kill. It is the old mans eye: I think it was his eye! Yes, it

was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture-a pale blue eye with a

film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by

degrees-very gradually-I made up my mind to take the life of the old man,

and thus get rid myself of the eye forever (ibid., 88).

He sees the evil eye, as he calls it, everywhere. He incessantly feels

himself followed by its look. Now he begins to imagine things, and as a

result, his torments increase their intensity. They begin their hunt. What they

really want is not their victim, but the victimizers own diseased and weak

conscience. It is not the body they want to seize; the crumb of lucidity and

awareness that is left to him is more valuable.

After the murder is accomplished, a state of soothing peace fills the

killers heart. He feels himself as a patient in convalescence after a long

painful crisis. Having recovered, he now wants to convince the policemen

investigating the murder that he has nothing to do with them.

What is interesting here is not the epic thread, but the murderers

thought and the way he acts. First of all, he is overwhelmed by a strong sense

of self-confidence, speaking freely and relaxed and even making jokes. He is

the one who urges them to search well, takes them look everywhere-sees

them to the place where he murder has been committed. The result is

extremely satisfactory to him, as the policemen suspect nothing.

Yet, there is always something that gives him away: his illness, which

sharpens his faculty of hearing up to an unbearable level. This is the moment

of confession: Villains! I shrieked, dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -

tear up the plank!-here!-here!-it is the breathing of his hideous heart! (Tell-

Tale heart,95).


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This means the end of that short inner peace. Hatred could not have

stayed apart, could not have disappeared, firstly because it has a constant

action, intensely overwhelming the subject in a disadvantageous atmosphere

and eventually destroys him.

2.3. Fear

Nevertheless, violence and hate are extreme faces and manifestations of a

more profound feeling, and that is fear. Its effects bring forth a sentimental

anguish which stupefy, pervades tremors and anxieties which break the heart

and agitate the soul. First of all, there is nothing but the fear of fear itself,

like in the case of Roderick Usher (see Hansson 212):

I shall perish, said he, I mustperish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and nototherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but intheir results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which

may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence

of danger, except in its absolute effect in terror. In this unnerved in thispitiable conditionI feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must

abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm,

FEAR (House of Usher,118).

But, as Louise J. Kaplan points out in her essay The Perverse strategy,

his fear is that of a total annihilation which resides in his wish to be one

with Madeleine, to dissolve his being in the sentience of non-living matter

(45-64). This is incestuous love they feel, for which they are punished to be

the last of the Usher line.

The man found in Black Cat also finds the devotion of others

repulsive, disgusting and annoying with my aversion to this cat, however,

its particularity for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with

a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend.


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Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath my chair or spring upon my knees,

covering me with its loathsome caresses (Black Cat, 205).

And more, he continually feels the hot breath of the thing upon my

face, leading to violent rejection. The fact that both the wife and the cat

insist on accompanying him to the cellar gives birth to an extreme

exasperation. Christopher Benfey (27-44) shows that their proximity felt on

the steep stairs down to the cellar incites the man to kill his closest

companions and also he finds intimacy intolerable.

This is equally the predominant feeling for lady Rowena, who soon

becomes an object of fear and revulsion. The impulsive remarriage to her

develops a feeling of guilt for having betrayed the memory of the poetic

Ligeia; this blocks his mind and makes him repudiate intimacy. Especially

because the young wife is physically attractive, it would have been normal

for him

to feel a strange irresistible impulsive to dissolve his individuality in that of the

other, and inversely, to absorb that of the beloved into his own individuality ().It [should] culminate in a more or less clear desire to symbolically mark their

union by means of a child in whom the perfection of the beloved may becontinued and sustained. The third element, a result of love, seems to seize itsessential signification in all his purity. The child () is the personified union of

the lovers and represents an effort of completion in the shape of flesh and blood

(Ortega y Gasset30).

There is Morellas daughter, the only child in Poes works, who

appears in this world as an act of sealing this effort. Still, she is not meant to

bring peace and joy, but only sorrow and despair. The little girl comes to be

unconsciously accused of her mothers death and finally abhorred. All the

unhappy father feels is aversion, which is explicitly represented in the males

repression for intimate relations with his wife.


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In Rowenas case, there is a strong feeling acting against him. His

interior sense of guilt, as a result of which he has settled his own castigation

of abstinence, is also connected to his morbid desire to kill her.

This marriage has become the obverse of the first one. Now fear and

hatred are mixed. The narrator confesses he finds pleasure at his wifes

avoidance, gratification in the absence of intimacy: it gave me rather

pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her with a Hatred belonging more to a

demon than to a man (Ligeia, 25). He imagines that by killing her, he can

undo this mistake of marrying her and remain faithful to Ligeia. He fastens

her death, even longs for it, as he can no longer bear her presence.

It is only the Unique Woman, the first wife, that he can form the

perfect couple. He finds complete satisfaction in Rowenas death, and the

view of her corpse fills him with a turbulent violence of emotions which

excites his hidden desires. To act like that was necessary, having in view its

understanding. It means everything to him, it is his salvation.

Drawing a parallel between Poe and Rilke, Benfey concludes that this

is obviously the legend of a man who doesnt want to be loved (Benfey,

39). Poes speaker in Black Cat and Rilkes prodigal son are full of

tenderness and love, but which soon flee into intemperance and come to find

intimacy intolerable. For them, love is a prison, from which they must

escape. But, if there is a salvation for Rilkes hero in his learning to love,

there is none for Poes speaker.

Out of this, another fear is born, that one of being misunderstood,

being thought mad. Very much aware of his actions, the narrator constantly

tries to convince the audience of the contrary:

Yet, mad I am not () but to-morrow I die, and today I would unburthen my soul.

My immediate purpose is to place before the world plainly, succinctly () seriesof mere household events (Black cat,196).


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True!-nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you

say that I am mad? The disease has sharpened my senses (Tell-Tale Heart, 88).

Benfey notices that communication for this speaker is itself an act of

salvation (Benfey, 39). Otherwise, a stronger fear of isolation emerges. Thesubject is afraid of being cut off from people, is afraid of being left alone.

Whenever that happens, he can no longer bear solitude. His claim of sanity,

his attempt to convince he is not mad, is a response to that fear of being cut

off from other people, of being misunderstood altogether (ibid.40).

Any analyst will quickly find that all originates in an almighty horror

of death. That is why the ill characters, terrorized by this anguish of death,

try to run away and hide from it. The spaces they find are meant to be

immortal: the arts.

Thus, prince Prospero, followed by his court, chooses to withdraw in a

castle which he locks, in order to be protected by the red Death. And here,

their balls and their luxury are strong enough to defy it, they think. They feel

safe: a strong and lofty wall girdled it in. the courtiers, having entered,

brought furnaces and massy hammers, and welded the bolts, they resolved to

leave means neither ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or

frenzy from within [] security was within. Without was the Red Death

(Red Death, 115).

Men are artists with Poe, or are fond of arts. Not being able to lead a

normal life, they fill their time in libraries, accompanied by different

scientific treatises, or works of literature. From this point of view, theyrepresent the classical type of the lifeless scientist, totally absorbed by his

books, paying more attention to them than to anything else around him.

Though overwhelmed by anxieties, they are somehow able to repress

them in the space of fiction. Hence, the numerous scenes when the subject,


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comfortably sitting in his armchair, is interrupted from his reading by the

woman who enters the room. And what he feels for her is not love, it is pity.

Arts do not mean only painting and books. There is also music and

dancing, which are meant to render the same idea of protection against death.

By the graceful movements of the dance and harmony of the music in the

balls that he organizes, Prospero tries to chase away its obscure quietness.

Nonetheless, its signs are soon felt: Roderick can no longer bear

music, only certain sounds, and also cannot bear light. The entire house is

sunk into darkness and it looks like a huge tomb: dark draperies hung upon

the walls. The general furniture was profuse comfortless, antique, and

tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed

to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of

sorrow (Tell-Tale Heart15).

The same air of dcadence and luxury in the interior shown in Red

Death, House of Usher, Ligeia does nothing but attract death. The enclosed

space where the characters withdraw is a circle, as Poulet demonstrates it.

Characters cannot get rid of their fear of death, not even in the state of

dreams. Their sleep is similar to a swoon and, thus, they are closer to death.

And whenever waking up, a stronger anxiety is felt, due to confusion and to

the nightmarish effects of their tormented sleep: upon awakening from

slumber, I could never gain at once through possession of my senses and

always remained, for many minutes, in much bewilderment and perplexity

(Premature burial 224).

Enlarging its circle of knowledge, the spirit has determined the

reasons of his horror. The more the conscious enlarges the field of its

attention, the more reasons of despair it finds. It is not death itself that

terrorizes the speaker, but the intuition of its arrival, which renders nothing


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but anguish and agony. But what is to be abhorred is its everlasting nature. It

is the critical moment of the narrators entire existence, a dreadful

punishment for its evil nature. And there is no way out.


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3. Pathology of Characters

3.1. Madness

It appears that intelligence is the most visible mark of a genius. In every

period, geniuses have been regarded as madmen by their contemporaries

and, therefore, completely misunderstood, for madmen are to be rejected and

isolated from the society. With Poe, the origin of intelligence lies in madness

as it is explained inEleonora: men have called me mad, but the question is

() whether madness is or not the loftiest intelligence - whether that is

gloriouswhether all that is profound (Poe, Works 76).He, too, admits that madness is a disease of thought, one of the moods

of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect; it is clearly stated that

madness is the inability to communicate: his heros proof of sanity will

therefore be his ability to tell [] the whole story. Sanity is equated in the

characters mind with telling stories. It is an extraordinary opening, with its

mad dashes and nervous, halting delivery (Benfey 31).

In modern psychiatry, madness appears to be a mental disorder, which

is best understood as a shifting, changing category which classifies certain

social problems of mind, a process that involves attributions of irrationality

and unreason (Busfield 119).

It is generally viewed as belonging to the sphere of illness, whose

range is large and diverse, extending from conditions known to involve

some physical malfunctions, such as the broad group of dementia, through

the so-called thought disorders, such as alcoholism and anorexia nervosa

(ibid. 119)

The majority of the Poesque characters do not admit their madness:


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True!-nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you

say that I am mad? (Tell-Tale Heart88)

Nor this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you shouldhave seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded -with what caution-

with what foresight- with what dissimulation I went to work (ibid.88)

Yet, mad I am not () but to-morrow I die, and today I would unburthen my soul.(Black cat196)

Intelligence is again emphasized. A madman could not act so

accurately, in his view, and especially, could not admit the facts and also

speak about them so calmly, so healthily. The observation, according to the

narrator, is meant to provide further and conclusive proof of sanity.

Communication for him becomes an act of salvation. Still, the narrator

accepts hid mental illness, but under the form of several maladies, which

effects an alteration in his condition. This is what Egaeus recounts:

my own disease - for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation -

my own disease grew rapidly on me, and assumed finally a monomaniac characterof a novel and extraordinary for-hourly momently gaining vigor-and at length

obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy(Berenice, Works, 34).

Roderick Usher equally speaks of an acute bodily illness -a mental

disorder which oppressed him (Philips 120). He finds himself in a state ofmelancholy, and has a highly distempered identity and disordered fancy

(ibid. 120). And the attention is set on his species of mad hilarity in his

eyes-an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor (ibid. 120).

However, this is nothing but madness that affects him, which is not

indicated so much by a particular extravagance of thought or feeling, as by

a well-marked change of character or departure from the ordinary habits of

feeling, thinking, acting (Philips 121).

And here interferes the narrator from House of Usherthat notices the

decay of his friend: it was difficult that I could bring myself to admit the


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identity of the man before me with the companion of my early boyhood

(House of Usher, 314).

Rodericks state of madness is being recognized after the ghastly

pallor of his skin and the luster of his eyes (Busfield, 201). This procedure

of recognizing madmen by their uncommon eye glamour and unspecific way

of talking was famous in the 19th century, as Joan Busfield points in her

book.

The case of man specific madness is largely debated by presenting

Cheslers analysis of madness in her book Women and madness. She states

that what we consider madness, whether it appears in women or men, is

either the acting out of the devalued female robe, or total or partial rejection

of ones sex-role stereotype. Thus, gender is intimately linked to madness

since it departures from sex role expectations that are defined and disordered

(55).

This means that men do not escape judgments of mental disorder, for

if they reject masculine identities and act in more female ways, they are

liable to be viewed as disturbed. Men who act out the female role and who,

for example, are dependent, passive, fearful or inactive, sexually and

physically, neurotic or psychotic. If hospitalized, they are usually labeled as

schizophrenic. However, as Chesler points out, men in general are still able

to reject more of their sex-role stereotype without viewing themselves as

sick and without being psychiatrically hospitalized (56-57).

On the other hand, higher level of drinking, aggression and even

violence may be part of being manly. They can be sometimes seen as mental

disorder, if mens drinking is excessive and they have become

inappropriately or unreasonably violent and/or aggressive.


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And this is how the Poesque man behaves; he finds no reason in his

acts of violence and aggression, all of them residing mostly in alcoholism.

Therefore, the burst of disease does not cease to appear:

Loss of memory, insomnia, terrifying dreams, pains, emotional instability,diminution of self-confidence and self-control, attacks of unconsciousness,

sometimes accompanied by convulsive moments resembling those characteristics

of epileptic fits, incapacity to understand but the simplest matters, obsessivethoughts, usually of the gloomiest and most painful kind, even in some cases

hallucinations and incipient delusions (Busfield 215).

All these appear in the case of the Poes male characters. With little or

almost no awareness of what had happened, Egaeus remembers only that

Berenice had succumbed to an epileptic trance, was thought dead and

prepared for burial.

He later learns that he had violated her grave, mutilated her in order to

extract her teeth and killed her. The impress of human nails on one of

Egaeus hands leaves no doubt of the horror of the struggle. He has lost h is

memory and is seized by pains, terrifying dreams and emotional instability

(ibid, 217). He same thing happens to Roderick after his sisters death and

also to the narrator inBlack Cat, orTell-Tale Heart.

Madness lays its basis on an acuteness of senses and sometimes it

even coincides with it:

And now-have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over an

acuteness of the senses?- now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick

sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew hat sound very

well, too. () the disease has sharpened my senses-not destroyed, not dulledthem. Above all, was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven

and in the earth. I heard many things in hell (Tell-Tale Heart90).

Rodericks symptoms of madness are similar and noted carefully by

the narrator. Thus, he

suffered much from a morbid acuteness of senses; the most insipid food was alone

endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; he odors of all flowerswere oppressive, his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but


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peculiar sounds () which did not inspire him with horror () a morbid

condition of auditory nerve () rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with

the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments (Poe, Tales22).

His case is a little more complicated. Apart from the acute sense of

hearing, Roderick cannot bear many other things, which make his life dull

and insipid in the eyes of a normal person. In a way, these sharpened senses

may be perceived as traumatic for the individual.

Generally, trauma is formulated in terms of the reaction to certain

events. A trauma is any experience that provokes distressing effects, such as

fright, anxiety, shame or physical pain, which normally leads to a certain

sense of powerlessness.

However, the males sanity in Poes works is affected more by

drunkenness. In Philips study, alcoholism is a synonym ofdelirium tremens

or mania potu, after the model of Isaac Ray, whose theory she cites

(Philips 217). Hallucinations emerge from this drunkenness; the patient

ceases to sleep altogether and soon becomes delirious.

The character of the delirium in this disease is peculiar, bearing a

stronger resemblance to dreaming than to any other form of mental

derangement. It would seem as if the dreams which disturb and harass during

the imperfect sleep that precedes the explosion of the disease continue to

occupy it when awake, being then viewed as realities instead of dreams.

As an example of this, the narrator ofBlack Cat appears as a man

caught by this vice and, as the disease of alcoholism grew upon him, he

became day by day more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the

feelings of others. Little by little, he was seized by attacks of fury. He knew

himself no longer and hurt the cat. But after the effect of alcohol passed and


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reason returned in the morning, the feeling experienced by him were that

of half horror, half of remorse (ibid. 219).

Under the effect of alcoholic liquors, what is felt by him is that the

original delicacy and acuteness of the moral perceptions are invariably

blunted; the relations of neighbor, citizen, father, spouse, have lost their

accustomed place in his thoughts [] and the finer emotions of the soul,

which will occasionally be felt by the least cultivated minds, have entirely

deserted his nature (Philips 132).

Still, there is not uncommon for a person to present various mental

disorders at the same time. A good example could be Egaeus who manifests

several psycho-neurotic traits.

3.2. Perverseness

The point of departure of this spirit of perverseness resides in epilepsy,

which is very much expressed in the tales. It is a species of epilepsy that

produced a change in Berenicess moral condition that will ultimately bring

her to death. This seems to be the cause of other womens death, in the short

stories, too. Men are equally seized by the same species of epilepsy.

In theirClinical Psychologists Handbook of Epilepsy, Christine Cull

and Laura H. Goldstein state that epilepsy must be thought of as a symptom

rather than a disease. For many persons, the cause of the disorder may never

be identified. However, there may be an indication of a discrete structural

brain lesion (175). In addition, a hereditary component is found more

commonly for epilepsy of unknown origin.

It is interesting to see that the incidence is consistently found to be

higher in males than in females. And also, a diagnosis of epilepsy carries


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with it increased risk of mortality (177), perhaps some two one three times

higher than expected for the general population.

In the case of a person with epilepsy, there is a characteristic alteration

of consciousness and the person demonstrates automatic behavior

(automatism), which takes the form of more or less co-ordinate involuntary

activity occurring either during seizure (i.e. crisis of epilepsy) or after it, and

for which the person is usually amnesic.

An association between epilepsy and memory disorders has been

reported for centuries. Brain damage is probably the most potent factor

underlying memory problems. Many epileptics experience difficulties and

complaints of poor memory, which represent the most frequent reason for a

referral for a neuropsychological assessment (ibid 183).

The link between epilepsy and anxiety may be understood in terms of

a number of potential sources: first, the fear of having a seizure and the

belief those seizures may lead to death; second, the stigmatizing condition of

epilepsy may result in higher levels of anxiety and depression.

Furthermore, epilepsy is a disorder characterized by a loss of control

(locus of control). For many patients, seizures may occur anywhere, at any

time, with little or no warning. The threat of a sudden and unpredictable loss

of control and consciousness is thought to comprise an essential dimension

of epilepsy. Having in view this clinical data, one can easily notice their

application on Poes men. But they do not stop here: epilepsy is only the start

point. Everything is to be developed

USE OF ICT IN TEACHING E. A. POE’S WRITINGS —TYPOLOGY OF THE CHARACTERS

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