Origins Of Poe's Gothic Stories

Edgar Allan Poe is an American talented writer in nineteenth century, whose gothic novels are deliberately composed with specially terrifying contents. Many of his gothic stories related to death, murder and burial alive. His works are not accepted by the society of that time because his writing skills and literary theories are so different from the mainstream literature; even he himself is severely criticized and attacked. Not until the twentieth century is he accepted by critics and readers. The examinations of his texts have always been taking a predominant position in researches on Poe these years. Though there are some explanations of the reasons for his creation of gothic novels, they only mention that his abnormal character is the main reason because of his personal experience. As to how his abnormal character is formed, little is probed. This paper will explore the psychological origin of his writing gothic stories analyzing his psychological structure; at the same time, other origins will be explored from the aspects of culture and market, with an attempt to understand Poe systematically.In Chapter One the style and theme of Poe's short stories are briefly introduced. The gothic elements in his novels give the reader terrifying feelings and the novels like The Black Cat, The Fall of the House of Usher etc are taken as examples to show the horrible effects brought by his gothic novels. Then the theme of this paper is introduced.Part 2 in Chapter One is mainly concerned about literature review. Literature review chiefly states the basic information of study on Poe at home and abroad as a whole. The study on Poe focuses on his short stories, poem and poetry. Later, a new study is carried out from the perspective of historicism.In Chapter Two the psychological origin of literary creation is discussed. The psychoanalytic theories are applied to the exploration. The psychological theories, Horney's neurotic anxiety and Fromm's psychoanalysis from social aspect are used to explain the psychological motives of gothic story creation. The misfortunes in Poe's childhood and the bad relationship between him and his father lead to his worsening neurotic anxiety. The main symptoms are the lack of safety sense, the inability to deal with conflicts and his terror of death. Because of the experiences of these emotions he could understand the inner plight of people's psychology and the pains brought by the changing society. By creating terror in his gothic novels, he could express his concerns over human's fate, and transmit the terror to the reader, with an aim to stimulate readers to think deeply about life.Chapter Three analyzes the cultural origin of his gothic novels. The emergence and development of the gothic novel obviously has an impact on Poe's gothic novels. Poe's gothic novels clearly have the gothic elements like deserted castle, violence, death, murder etc. The sharing features explain why Poe's terrifying novels are also called gothic novels. Poe steps forward by changing the gothic novels into a tool to express the psychological traumas of people, the reflection on the destructive effects brought by capitalist development on traditional civilization and values, and the desperate and painful efforts human has made to adapt to a ever changing society.Market origin is discussed in Chapter Four. Gothic novels can bring a special emotional experience to readers, so they were popular in the society of that time to some extent, which means one could make a living by writing gothic novels or stories. Combining the above origins, Poe starts writing gothic novels.Poe's gothic novels might be better understood if his writing motives are better understood, that is, the terror in his gothic novels which is the writer's own terror exists in people's heart, and human's psychological problems should be paid attention to.