On The Modernity Of Edgar Allan Poe's Horror Fiction

In this thesis, modernity is a category of culture and aesthetics, referring to the aesthetic modernity posited by the 20th century modernist culture and art. With Edgar Allan Poe's most influential horror fiction works as its data, the thesis analyzes their modernity from the perspectives of meaning and narration, and explores the causes for the modernity through a survey of Poe's identity under historical and cultural backgrounds. By studying Poe's horror fiction under the category of modernity, we no longer limit horror fiction only to itself and can have a better understanding of Poe's artistic innovation and prominence in the world literature.The thesis is divided into four parts. The first part, proceeding from the modern consciousness of the content, discusses Poe's pioneering role in the modern conversion from rationalism to irrationalism through his revelation of terrific souls and the aesthetic innovation of appreciating the ugly. The second part focuses on one of the important characteristics of Poe's themes, the prediction of the 20th century nightmares, which are composed of three levels: the static level of the spiritual predicament symbolized by being buried alive, and the dynamic levels of the self-redemption through murder and the final relief through death. The third part interprets the modernity of narration in Poe's horror fiction from the perspective of forms and its emphasis is laid on his propelment of the first-person narrative angle, the breakthrough from the traditional space-time narration and the application of the symbolic technique. The last part, based on a survey of Poe's identity, probes into his psychology as an abandoned child and self-consciousness of acting as God on the one hand, and his artistic innovation resulting from his incompatible identity of an aesthete poet and a novelist fishing for popularity, and thus discovers the causes for the pioneering modernity in his horror fiction.