Abstract

Widely regarded as a representative of American Romanticism, Edgar Allan Poe is a poet, literary critic, one of American earliest practitioners of detective and horror stories. His description of horrible scenes and twisted souls in his horror fiction is quite compelling. While a lot of critics look at his works from a perspective of psychoanalysis and they focus on Freudian personality theory, this thesis attempts to apply the theory of defence mechanism to analyse the characters’ criminal mentality. Among all Poe’s short stories, this thesis opts for three ones— “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), “The Black Cat” (1843) and “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846) to explore the protagonists’ abnormal mentality and behaviour. It is argued that the protagonists in the three stories all suffer from mental illness that makes them anxious and aggressive. They perform defensively in order to protect themselves from unpleasant situations and achieve self-identity. Through this analysis, we can achieve an overall view of how defence mechanisms work in these three stories and more deeply understand the complexity of human nature in Poe’s works. 

The main body of this thesis is divided into three parts. The Introduction which is Chapter One briefly provides the background of this study including basic information about Poe and three stories, a literature review of studies on Poe, a summary of defence mechanism theory and the layout of this thesis. In the next part which is composed of Chapter Two, Chapter Three and Chapter Four, the author would conduct a literary analysis of the three stories. These three chapters correspond respectively to three steps the protagonists experience—the formation of defence mechanisms, the functioning of defence mechanisms and the collapse of defence mechanisms. The last part which is Chapter Five is a concise conclusion of the author’s analysis and a restatement of this study’s significance. 

Key words: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”, “The Cask of      Amontillado”, defence mechanism

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Chapter One Introduction-3

1.1 Edgar Allan Poe and His Short Stories-3

1.2 Literature Review-4

1.3 Theoretical Framework-7

1.4 The Layout of the Thesis-9

Chapter Two The Formation of Defence Mechanisms-11

2.1 The Protagonist’s Psyche in “The Tell-Tale Heart”-11

2.2 The Protagonist’s Psyche in “The Black Cat”-13

2.3 The Protagonist’s Psyche in “The Cask of Amontillado”-15

Chapter Three The Functioning of Defence Mechanisms-17

3.1 Rationalization in “The Tell-Tale Heart”-17

3.2 Ritual and Undoing in “The Black Cat”-19

3.3 Reaction Formation in “The Cask of Amontillado”-20

Chapter Four The Collapse of Defence Mechanisms-23

4.1 The Collapse of Rationalization in “The Tell-Tale Heart”-23

4.2 The Collapse of Ritual and Undoing in “The Black Cat”-25

4.3 The Collapse of Reaction Formation in “The Cask of Amontillado”-26

Chapter Five Conclusion-28

References-30

Acknowledgements-33