Carnival Elements In Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic Tales

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is a talented American short story writer, poet,and critic whose literary achievements have far-reaching influence on worldliterature. Poe composes sixty-seven tales on such themes as death, revenge,conscience, illusion, science, adventure and humor; However, during his lifetime, hewanders on the margins of the mainstream society, unappreciated. Such socialexperience makes him view the society subversively and tend to understand thehumans in a carnivalized way.In some of Poe’s gothic tales, the hilariously funny carnival scenes are depictedas a stifling atmosphere of horror. Carnival scenes and horror seem to have littlecorelation, however, they mutually strengthen each other in Poe’s tales. Thesubversive nature of carnival elements and the grotesque horror work together tointensify the horrible experiences of the readers and expose humans’ true nature aswell. In the light of Bakhtin’s carnival theory, the thesis analyzes the carnivalelements in some of Poe’s gothic tales and discusses how the ugly side of humannature uncovered through the carnival elements.The thesis falls into six parts: Introduction, four chapters and Conclusion.The introduction is about Poe’s literary achievements and his contribution togothic fiction followed by a review of the previous study of domestic and foreignscholars on Poe and his works.Chapter One is a brief overview of Bakhtin’s carnival theory. In carnivals,people are free to release their repressed emotions by breaking existing hierarchyand rules. Such freedom helps people take off their social masks and remove themoral restrictions. Under such circumstances, humans’ true nature and the hiddenevils in them are all uncovered and unleashed.The following three chapters discuss respectively the three aspects of carnivalelements in Poe’s gothic tales: carnival scenes, carnival rituals and carnivalisticfigures.Carnival scenes in Poe’s gothic tales offer a stage for the evil people to implement their deviant revenge. Through the horrible carnival scenes, Poe exposesthe distorted personalities and contorted souls of the characters which are usuallywell-hidden in their normal social life. In the carnival rituals of crowning anddecrowning, the evil is crowned as the king while the goodness is decrowned, andthe beautiful things are destroyed in the hands of the evil and death. Such carnivalrituals subvert the authority and degrade the scared in Poe’s gothic tales. Thecarnivalistic figures such as the paired images, the figure in mask and the clown inPoe’s tales reveal the complexity of human nature.The last part comes to such a conclusion that carnivalesque offers a way toexplore and understand humans’ inner world. The carnival elements in Poe’s talesnot only heighten the horror, but also expose humans’ spiritual and psychologicalworld, unmask the evil side of human personality, and reveal the true nature ofhuman beings.