Clash Of Soul And Body

Edgar Allan Poe is a famous 19th-century American novelist,poet,literary critic,and one of representatives of the 19th-century American romantic writers.As the originator of horror novels and forerunner of detective novels,he uses splendid Gothic style and delicate psychological description in his works,attracting a large number of readers.For the far-reaching significance and enduring charms of his works,Poe has been widely studied by scholars home and abroad from different perspectives such as psychoanalysis,feminism,Gothic style,and the theme of alienation.This thesis attempts to make an analysis of Poe’s death view from the perspective of illness metaphor.Illness and death frequently appear in literary works,and the authors who create them usually have illnesses of one kind or another.Endued with rich cultural meanings,illness has become a metaphor.Susan Sontag’s masterpiece,Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphor,criticizes people’s indifference to and discrimination against people with disease and the metaphorization of illnesses by society,which makes the natural events of disease take on the evil and moral colors.These metaphors have created an invisible mental pressure on patients and further aggravated the condition.Due to his own experience,Poe’s works are filled with many descriptions of illness and death,showing Poe’s unique thinking about the clash between body and soul.This thesis consists of three parts:Introduction,body and Conclusion.In the part of Introduction,Poe’s literary status and the artistic value of his works are first introduced.A literature review is then made on the studies of Poe and his works as well as the studies of illness and illness metaphor at home and abroad.The significance of the study and the structure of the thesis are also given in this part.The body of this thesis is divided into three chapters.Chapter One explores the physical illness as death sentence in Poe’s works.Some illnesses,like tuberculosis and plague,are deadly diseases in times and regions that medical conditions are underdeveloped and lagging.Once people get those illnesses,they are sentenced to death.In Poe’s stories,such as,"Ligeia","Bernice","Morella",many beautiful young girls suffer from diseases,mostly tuberculosis,and finally die of these diseases in despair.Poe has also devoted himself to writing about the death of beauty,and he believes that "the death of a beautiful woman is,unquestionably,the most poetical topic in the world"(Poe,2019:219).The deaths of beautiful young girls are pitiful,but the reason why most of them get tuberculosis rather than some other diseases is related to the metaphor behind tuberculosis less or more.In addition to tuberculosis,another physical illness in Poe’s stories is the plague.The plague has been seen as a trial of society and an invasion of outsiders as well as a judgment on a corrupt society.This is also demonstrated in Poe’s stories"King Pest" and "The Masque of Red Death".Chapter Two examines the psychological illness as exile and travel of mind.The protagonists in Poe’s novels always have various mental illnesses or mental disorder such as schizophrenia and phobia in "The Tell-Tale Heart",personality splits in "William Wilson",paranoia in "The Black Cat" and "The Imp of Perverse".Due to these illnesses,the thoughts and actions of the protagonists have been beyond the control of emotions,morality and law;their subconsciousness gradually becomes their real behavior.Their illnesses,experiences,and growing circumstances make their recognition of the whole world deformed.They become barbaric and irrational because the inner peace of them is destroyed.These mental illnesses eventually lead to the death of themselves or others.The evil side of human being is explored.The third chapter focuses on the metaphor of death in Poe’s novels,and analyzes how death as a sublimation of soul is expressed in Poe’s novels and the relationship between death,soul and body.Death is an interpretation of the sublimation of life.In Poe’s novels,there are many phenomena about death,which make people think about the relationship between death and will.In "The Oval Portrait",the artist’s wife died of withering will because the artist was so absorbed in his work that he ignored her.However,there are also some people whose existences go beyond life and death.In "Ligeia"and "Morella",the strong-willed heroines refuse to die and they come to life again in bodies of others.Poe extols the greatness of a strong will and the importance of will in the face of death and shows his desire to resurrect his lost loved one.Life time is ephemeral but death is eternal.Finally,through this thesis,the physical illnesses,psychological illnesses and death phenomena in Poe’s works and their connections with illness metaphors are analyzed.Poe’s philosophical thought about illness and death is revealed.We can also feel the beauty of death in Poe’s novels,get rid of social prejudice against illness and death,and establish a correct view of death.Poe’s novels are not only full of the beauty of horror,but also show delicate humanistic care and deep concern for human destiny.