A Prophetic Vision At The Historical Watershed

Edgar Allan Poe is a Romantic and also a founder of American literature. Living in the 19th century, as a poet, literary critic and storywriter, he possesses a great influence on the later generation of writers. He is regarded as a progenitor of Western Decadent Literature, the Aesthetic Movement and American detective stories, and also an explorer of human abnormal psychology. It is widely accepted that, it is Allan Poe, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and several other writers that founded the authentic American literary tradition. Living in a quickly-developing period of American Capitalist society, he can not understand the aftermath of social development. Therefore, writing on the disordered inner world of characters, the human living dilemma, and the cultural and spiritual crisis within social changes as well, becomes his central concern.Different from others in American literature, Allan Poe had never obtained any illustrious reputation while alive, though he has been acclaimed as a master of short stories in Europe, especially in France. However, only many years after his death has he got a wide identification in the entire America. Definitely, one of the important reasons that Allan Poe interests some modern critics is his pioneering and original influence on the later generation, which also means his works are beyond his own times. Therefore, just as Allan Poe ever asserted, he did not care about whether his own works were read when alive or by posterity, and he would wait a century for his desirable readers.Among more than seventy short stories of Allan Poe, presumably, one third of all these works have taken on fantasy narrative characteristics, which are deeply rooted in the Western fantasy narrative heritage and meanwhile have borne itself with Allan Poe’s personal features. This thesis is to explore how fantasy in Allan Poe’s short stories, as a narrating means, effectively serves to review the lost history and tradition, represent the early disordered American society and its psychological morbidity, and prophesy the living dilemma, the cultural and spiritual crisis in modern society, relating to his personal experiences, religious views, and the intellectual and cultural background of New England and the Southern America.The part of Introduction comprehensively summarizes Allan Poe’s literary theory and ideas, the categories and genres of Allan Poe’s fiction, the major narrative strategies and techniques. And then, based on some influential criticism on his short stories, this thesis introduces its own viewpoint, that is, to approach the fantasy narrative in Allan Poe’s short stories and its profound connotations.Chapter One retrospects the fantasy narrative heritage in Western literature, summarizes and analyses the characteristics of the Western fantasy literature, and resets Allan Poe’s short stories into this tradition and tries to approach Allan Poe’s transcendence over Western fantasy heritage.Chapter Two aims to demonstrate the literary world in Allan Poe’s short stories as narrated in fantasy, review the lost history and tradition in Western world, represent the early disordered American society and its psychological morbidity, prophesy the living dilemma, cultural and spiritual crisis in modern society.Chapter Three discusses the temporal dimension, spatial dimension, and Allan Poe’s viewpoints toward the characters in his fantasy narrative of short stories.The part of Conclusion concludes the traditional classification of Allan Poe’s short stories and fantasy narrative characteristics in his short stories, and then puts forward a new understanding toward genre classification of Allan Poe’s short stories, targeting at illuminating some valuable things to literary criticism of Allan Poe in the integration of literature and biological conceptions and theory.