1. The Use of "Anecdote": A Strategic Concept to Record
the Phenomenon :
As has been referred to in the first chapter, the term
anecdote presents a new historicist concept that refers to a
revolutionary method adapted by the author to break the rigid boundaries
between literature and history. It serves as a medium to achieve the author's
aim to not be trapped in the literary sphere by having a free access to report
the societal events that literature is unable to describe. The use of
anecdotes presents a strategy to create the effect of verisimilitude
since it presents the real version of the fictitious events of the literary
work. Unlike his other tales, Poe chooses to present taphephobia in "The
Premature Burial" from a more realistic perspective, by choosing anecdote
as a strategy to internalize the public
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obsessive fear and to fuel the horror already spread in the 19th
C America. By choosing this strategy, Poe guarantees an eyewitness accounts of
the horrors of taphephobia, moving from a purely aesthetic level to a
documentary level. In his study of the concept of anecdote, Greenblatt
highlights the idea that the concept revisits the canon and at the same time
infringes it. Poe's choice to start with anecdotes of real accidents of
premature burial presents a celebration of the tradition of storytelling, which
presents the essence of literature, and at the same time a transgression
against the traditions of the canonic gothic works. In "The Premature Burial",
Poe surpasses the classical openings of gothic works, which traditionally
starts with the presentation of characters and setting, focusing on the gothic
aspects of both elements. However, he chooses to use another tradition by
offering a set of successive stories that would function as a contextualization
of the narrator's experience and as a tool to create the effect of the real.
Poe presented taphephobia, throughout his tales, in a "romantic"
way, overemphasizing the tragic nature of near death experience and the various
emotions of regret, pain, agony and horror. However, "The Premature Burial"
presents an exception since he mixes up three types of presentations. He starts
by anecdote, narrating different real cases of premature burial to add
authenticity to his story and to accentuate the morbid taphephobia. Then, he
presents a detailed image of what the victim feels physically and emotionally
during a panic attack and he ends with a humorous scene in which the narrator
discovers that he is not prematurely interred but rather asleep in a ship berth
and that all what he felt was just a nightmare (175). This echoes Robert
Scholes' modes of fiction stated in Gerald Kennedy's essay "Poe and Magazine
writing on Premature Burial", published in Studies in American Renaissance
(1977), showing that the motif is actually presented in three
different ways; historical (through giving factual details),
satirical by adding humoristic touch to a dramatic event and
romantic by exaggerating the tragic effect of such experience
(166).
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In this particular tale, Poe chooses an unknown narrator, a
symbol of a common American who suffers from taphephobia that is empowered by
the nature of his illness which is catalepsy. His feelings, his physical and
psychological horror and the precautions he takes present a reflection of what
common people feel and do to prevent being buried alive. The realistic feature
of this particular tale grants its historical dimension that can be used to
study a social phenomenon that invades the 19th C American society. Poe uses
different literary techniques to guarantee different effects on different
readers and to widen the scope of taphephobia as a universal fear that can
overwhelm any human being.
Unlike his other tales, Poe dedicated "The Premature Burial" to
be a historical document, rather than a mere fiction. He starts enumerating a
number of cases in US and in Europe as an introduction to his tale and as a
method to express his personal attitude towards this motif. He directly stated
that the direct cause of the phobia presents an extreme example of horror and
"[...] the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of
mere mortality" (CTP 252). He even explains the rationale behind his
choice, which actually lies in his fascination with the tenuous boundaries
between life and death and how the concepts of death and afterlife are
ambiguous in relation with the "temporary pauses in the incomprehensible
mechanism" (252), caused by mysterious cases of epilepsy and coma. Then, Poe
provides lengthy examples of premature burial cases in France (the example of
aristocratic lady), US (the case of one of the elite's wife) , the example of
the prestigious, authentic German medical journal and the famous case of Mr.
Edward Stapleton.
The four examples are well chosen and serve the strategy of the
author. They are all chosen to be reliable to strengthen the public panic of
the 19th C American society. The example from France serves as a proof that the
phenomenon is not restricted to the American context but rather a global event
shared by all social classes from all countries. The cases share the idea of
medical incompetence to discover the mysteries of certain diseases, leading
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to tragic ends. This lengthy enumeration of cases and the
detailed description of each one of them serve as an introduction to the unique
experience of the narrator. Poe tries to present a different story of the near
death experience, by showing the psychological agony of the narrator rather
than the mistaken medical diagnosis. The whole tale revolves around the
obsession, that psychological monster that consumes the narrator's emotional
and physical life. Poe presented the motif from a mere psychological
perspective in an attempt to highlight the nightmare that Americans lived
during the 19th C.
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