On The Archetypes Of Insulation In Poe's Tales Of Terror

With a relatively small volume of works, about seventy short stories, a short novel, some fifty poems, and a roughly equivalent volume of essays, Edgar Allan Poe has exerted a substantial influence on American and world literature. The influence of his tales of terror on the subsequent novels or short stories is especially enormous. With respect to the criticism on Poe and his works, most are concerned with some individual tale, and much research work has been devoted to Poe's biographical details. In the thesis, the author is going to examine Poe's tales of terror as a whole, putting the stress of the research on his texts, his theories of composition and his philosophy.The thesis endeavors to analyze the common features of the tales as a whole, and meanwhile probe into the deep meanings of these features. By comparisons and generalization, the author finds the archetypes of insulation exist in most of Poe's tales of terror. The spatial settings are mostly confined in enclosed spaces; the temporal settings are usually set in an eternal darkest midnight and the time goes in closed circles which possesses no past and future; the characters, who are excluded from the normal life, always have an abnormal psychology that turns inward and drives them mad in the end.The whole thesis consists of three parts. Chapter I is devoted to a detailed discussion of the spatial settings in Poe's tales of terror. It points out the circumscribed spatial settings in Poe's tales of terror such as isolated mansions and chambers, enclosed dungeons and cellars and descending whirlpools belong to the spatial archetypes of insulation presented in many of the Gothic literature, which symbolizes the separation of the inside from the outside world. In these insulated spaces of terror macabre events such as murders, killings, dismembering happen and almost no lives can escape without being destroyed.Chapter II concentrates on the analysis of the temporal archetype of insulation in Poe's tales of terror. Poe's time in his tales of terror belongs to the insulated temporal archetype of Gothic literature. The characters of his tales eternally live in the enclosed circle of time within which it possesses no past and future. The ticking of the clock measures their lives. Midnight, the ending as well as the beginning point in the clock-dial, is the symbol of the time of death. Nothing in the universe can escape that dark and doomed hour.