Questions about the self: a psychoanalytic approach on E. A. poe’s work

Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe was an important Romantic writer who had a troubled life during the 1800s. The present work aims to realize a bibliographical analysis of three short stories written by Poe, they are: “William Wilson”, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Ligeia”. Each of these stories reveal specific psychoanalytic aspects of the characters that allow the reader to understand them in a deeper way. In this paper, the psychoanalytic approach has the main objective to comprehend the aspects that stand out in Edgar Allan Poe’s work and to analyze the points where those literatures were similar. The specific objectives of this paper include analyze how the uncanny feeling is established in the stories written by Poe; examine how the double is constructed in “William Wilson”; recognize the three aspects of the mind studied by Sigmund Freud in “The Fall of the House of Usher”; and associate the Oedipus complex with the main character of “Ligeia”. The results revealed the human contradictions in William Wilson; the house being the shelter of the characters, just as the mind is the shelter of the unconscious in “The Fall of the House of Usher”. In this sense, the ego is represented by Rodrick Usher, the id is related to Madeline and the superego is the narrator of the story. Finally, the results also showed how the obsession emerges by the failure of the character to overcome the Oedipus complex in “Ligeia”. From a fundamented perspective, this study emphasizes the importance of psychology during the analysis of a literary work. Through the psychoanalytical approach it was possible to understand the stories from a new perspective.