Mental Illness In The Works Of Edgar Allan Poe

• Thesis title in Czech: Duševní choroby v díle Edgara Allana Poea
• Thesis title in English: Mental Illness In The Works Of Edgar Allan Poe
• Key words: Edgar Allan Poe|Duševní choroby|Gotika|Šílenství
• English key words: Edgar Allan Poe|Mental Illness|Gothic|American Gothic|Madness|Insanity
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2018/2019
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: prof. PhDr. Martin Procházka, CSc.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 27.02.2019
• Date of assignment: 27.02.2019
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 04.03.2019
• Date and time of defence: 05.09.2019 08:30
• Date of electronic submission: 14.08.2019
• Date of proceeded defence: 05.09.2019
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: Mgr. Pavla Veselá, Ph.D.

Guidelines

In my thesis I would like to concentrate on the topic of mental illness in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. Insanity and mad characters are very common for Edgar Allan Poe and he incorporates these topics very frequently in his work. Therefore, I would like to approach the topic with focus on what the role of insanity and madness is in Poe’s narrative techniques, how he uses it to induce the feeling of horror, and what is its connection to grotesque.
My aim is to establish a typology of madness based on different characters from Poe’s stories which show similar or even identical features of madness and analyse how he works with these types of insanity. I then intend to compare the characters, define attributes they share and argue how it contributes to the building of the atmosphere of horror.
I also want to provide an insight into Poe’s biography in the thesis and create a link between his own relationship to mental illness and the way it projected in his writing because I believe it is an interesting fact important for a better understanding of his work.

References

Poe, Edgar A, and Hervey Allen. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. 1938. Print.

Botting, Fred. The New Critical Idiom: Gothic. Routledge, 1996. Print.

Poe, Edgar Allan. Eureka. Alma Books Ltd, 2018. Print.

Crow, Charles L. A Companion to American Gothic. John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2014.

Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew, editor. The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Hogle, Jerrold E., editor. The Cambridge Companion to the Modern Gothic. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Print.

Kilgour, Maggie. The Rise of the Gothic Novel. London: Routledge, 1995. Print.

Butler, David W. “Usher's Hypochondriasis: Mental Alienation and Romantic Idealism in Poe's Gothic Tales.” American Literature, vol. 48, no. 1, 1976, pp. 1–12. JSTOR, JSTOR,www.jstor.org/stable/2925310.

Young, Philip. “The Earlier Psychologists and Poe.” American Literature, vol. 22, no. 4, 1951, pp. 442–454. JSTOR, JSTOR,www.jstor.org/stable/2921539.

Cleman, John. “Irresistible Impulses: Edgar Allan Poe and the Insanity Defense.” American Literature, vol. 63, no. 4, 1991, pp. 623–640. JSTOR, JSTOR,www.jstor.org/stable/2926871.

Pruette, Lorine. “A Psycho-Analytical Study of Edgar Allan Poe.” The American Journal of Psychology, vol. 31, no. 4, 1920, pp. 370–402. JSTOR, JSTOR,www.jstor.org/stable/1413669.