An Acoustic-narrative Study Of Edgar Allan Poe’s Works

Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849)is an important American poet,short-story teller,and literary critic.He lived in poverty and misery all his life and his writing feature and style are unique and different from his peers.In his short life of forty years,he left many outstanding works to the world behind him.Poe is good at the description of the character’s grotesque psyche and creating odd plots for the effect of horror and melancholy.He is also the forerunner of the modern detective story whose writing mode can hardly be surpassed.To the point of aesthetic ideas,he created the “unity of effect” theory and applied it to his works as much as he possibly can.This thesis centers on part of Poe’s short stories and poems.Based on a close reading of these texts and the acoustic narrative theory,this paper purports to analyze sound techniques by focusing upon sounds of horror,sounds of melancholy,and sounds of humor.In so doing,this paper intends to argue that Poe’s unique technique of acoustic narrative is indispensable to his “unity of effect” theory.The main body of this thesis is divided into three chapters in accordance with analyses of three different sound effects in Poe’s works.Chapter one will study four sound techniques that are used to achieve the effect of horror;chapter two will introduce three sound techniques that are applied to making the effect of melancholy;chapter three will analyze three sound techniques that are applied to increasing the effect of humor.Then the thesis comes to its conclusion that Poe’s application of various kinds of techniques in his acoustic narrative is consistent with his purpose to induce the “preconceived effect.”...