摘 要

作为哥特式作家的代表，爱伦·坡为哥特式文学发展做出了突出贡献，他独树一帜的哥特式风格也为他在世界文学史上的重要地位奠定了基础。爱伦·坡吸收了传统哥特式小说恐怖的美学风格，突破了原有的限制并做出了创新。他注重通过复杂的人物，独特的描写方法，诡异的情节巧妙地展现惊悚的美，从而在艺术上达到恐怖的美学效果。本文旨在从爱伦·坡的代表作《丽姬娅》入手，探析其哥特式风格, 揭示其独到之处，并分析作者是如何展现美艳中的恐怖的。本文分为五部分，以小说中怪诞复杂的人物形象；特殊的环境及心理描写；以死而复生和非自然死亡为代表的荒诞的故事情节为研究视角展开分析。通过对文章的详细剖析，读者不仅可以对爱伦·坡的哥特式风格有更充分的认识和欣赏，还可以对自己所处的世界有深刻的思考。

关键词：爱伦·坡; 哥特式风格; 丽姬娅; 美艳; 恐怖

Abstract

As a representative of Gothic fiction writers, Allan Poe has made a great contribution to the development of Gothic literature and his unique Gothic style laid the basis for his important position in the history of the world literature. His absorption of the horrible aesthetic style from traditional Gothic fictions makes a breakthrough in the limit and brings an innovation. He skillfully puts an emphasis on using complex characters, special narrative methods and weird plots to show the horrifying beauty and thus artistically achieves the aesthetic effect of terror. With the purpose of making an analysis of Allan Poe’s Gothic style in Ligeia , the thesis elaborates on the specific characters and explores the embodiment of terror in beauty. It includes five parts, putting the perspective of research on grotesque and complex characters; unique narrative methods including environmental and psychological description; absurd and weird plots including reincarnation and unnatural death. It is expected that, through the detailed analysis of Ligeia, readers can be provided with not only a better appreciation of Allan Poe’s Gothic style, but also some thoughtful reflection on the world where they are placed.

Key Words: Allan Poe; Gothic style; Ligiea; beauty; terror

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Grotesque and complex characters 4

2.1 Beautiful female roles 4

2.2 Twisted and morbid human characters 5

3 Unique narrative methods 8

3.1 Environmental description 8

3.2 Psychological description 10

4 Absurd and weird plots 13

4.1 Reincarnation 13

4.2 Unnatural death 14

5 Conclusion 16

References 17

Acknowledgements 18

Terror in Beauty

An Analysis on Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic Style in Ligeia

1 Introduction

Edgar Allan Poe, one of the most famous representatives of Gothic writers, was born in 1808 and died in 1849. He is an American writer, editor and literary critic. And he is generally considered as a centre figure of Romanticism in America as well as the inventor of detective fiction, psychological novel and science fiction (Chang, 2003). His best known fiction works are Gothic and in Gothic literature, his works occupy a high position (Brown, 2012). Allan Poe inherited and developed the traditional Gothic fiction and made an innovation based on it. He absorbed the gloomy and horrible aesthetic style of traditional Gothic fiction and abandoned its theology beliefs, forming his own Gothic style (Zhu, 2012).

Allan Poe’s fiction works embody typical Gothic themes like absurd, terror, death, bloodiness and so on. At the same time, Poe made an innovation which makes his works exceed reality without limits of certain ages (Han, 2014). He integrated his preferred description of psychological conflict as well as his understanding and pursuit of beauty. So, his works embody a perfect combination of terror and beauty which differs his novels from the traditional Gothic fictions. He made an emphasis on description of gloomy and horrible environments. A variety of weirdos with complex personalities and absurd plots are also the features of Allan Poe’s Gothic style. In addition, the use of the first-person narration is another innovative point which makes the audience put themselves in a real horrible existence. All these features make up Allan Poe’s unique Gothic style which made him an innovative reinterpreter and brought a huge effect on later writers.

Ligeia is one of the most representative fiction works of Edgar Allan Poe as well as one of his favorite novels. It is an early short story of Poe, firstly published in 1838 (Brown, 2012). And it was collected in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. Ligeia tells a story of reincarnation. Ligeia, the narrator’s first wife, was a beautiful and intelligent woman and the hero loved her passionately. She was ill and died which made the hero pained. It was surprising that Ligeia revived in a new guise after the death of the hero’s second wife. This novel is a typical work which embodies Allan Poe’s Gothic style and it is deeply loved by readers.

Because of Allan Poe’s great achievements and influence, the research on him has never stopped during the past 190 years (Cao, 2008). Among so many scholars who study Allan Poe, researchers abroad have made an all-round research on Edgar Allan Poe based on the traditional and innovative study. Their research methods are more flexible and research perspectives are broader. History, policy, economy, art, race, gender have all become research topics. The research abroad can be broadly divided into three stages: the first stage is the perspective of personality which means analyzing his life experience and character; the second stage is the text level which means the analysis of his texts and the third stage is the aspect of abstract structure which means making appreciation of Allan Poe’s emotion through the analysis of his abstract structures in his novels (Cao, 2008). The researchers dig out the internal cultural features of Allan Poe’s works and their relevance to the modern society. At present, the research of Allan Poe and his Gothic style has become interdisciplinary. Politics, economics, sociology, arts, anthropology, ethics, criminology even medicine have all participated in this research (Gong, 2008).