4. Edgar Allan Poe's Tales: Concluding Notes:
Poe's tales present a subversion of all classical notions of
beauty and aesthetics. He destroys the Romantic myth of female beauty by using
it as a source of horror and builds a unique definition of aestheticism based
upon grotesque, gloom, decay and horror. Poe adopts a particular descriptive
style that serves his perception of the sublime. He uses narrative strategy
based upon objectivity, by using a scientific, detailed analysis, and a common
use of first person pronoun "T" and plural pronoun "we" to create an effect of
verisimilitude , guaranteeing the sublime effect. Besides, unlike the 18thC
gothic literature, Poe tries to create an illusion of reality by using real
cases of premature burial, by a diary like style and notably by the remarkably
exact analysis of the phenomenon.
Poe's basic feature lies in his creation of a world where
medicine, history and literature are intermingled in one tale. He follows the
same style of suspense in the classical gothic stories, relying on the nature
of the human mind as a raw, undiscovered place, to be a source of mystery and
horror. Poe uses fear as an inherent feeling in the human nature and develops
it by using its extreme situations like taphephobia. Poe adopts the role of a
scientist trying to examine different experiences exercised over the human mind
with a preconscious belief that the real horror lies within the human psyche.
Poe uses medicine as an active participator to show the horrific side of the
experience of a panic attack caused by the obsessive, irrational
Layouni 54
fear of premature internment. He uses the scientific, factual
explanation of the phenomenon in order to isolate it from its folkloric
roots.
He succeeds to present a full diagnosis of taphephobia as a 19thC
social illness, referring to the different mythologies that the phobia
originates from within a literary fictional context. Poe's tales reflect the
public trepidation that ravaged their peace of mind and how that phobia
controlled their lifestyle, leading to obsessive thinking about the different
solutions that may protect them from such horror. This exact reflection of the
American society is related to Poe's own life which presents one of the major
sources of inspiration for his choice of characters and his detailed
description of the psychological agony of the victim. Poe presents more than an
author of gothic literature, he is a witness of the losing confidence in the
medical and scientific progress that set America at the top of the world and
especially the losing faith in the Catholic canonic concepts of death and
punishment that controlled the public thought during the 19th C.
Layouni 55
Chapter 3: Taphephobia in Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic
Tales : A Reflection of 19th
Century United States' Worst
Nightmares
Poe used many literary and non literary sources as a backbone of
his multidimensional representation of taphephobia, conveying his aesthetic
theory of sublime by entering the hidden, unconscious side of human psyche and
reflecting victims' agony of being under the threat of premature internment. He
fully diagnosed the human mind in an obsessive, uncontrollable state of fear,
in which the human rationality is replaced by a compulsive need to reassure
their survival from a premature burial. However, Poe did not restrict himself
to the classical representation of a psychological phenomenon, but he rather
transcends the boundaries of aestheticism and deals with taphephobia as a
historical event that marked a particular age of the United States. Poe's aim
from choosing taphephobia as a motif is to historicize his tales and to
literalize the history through his parallel use of literary, fictional elements
and historical documents as one of the constituting components of his
representation of taphephobia. Thus, the boundaries between fiction and reality
are vanished and the panic is further internalized.
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