The female death as an aesthetic moment of transformation: Edgar Allan Poe´s "Morella"

Julia Kulewatz

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2010
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9783640523504
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: English Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1, 0, University of Erfurt, course: American Shortstories, BA-Anglistik, language: English, abstract: "The death of a beautiful woman is the really most poetic theme of the world. "(Edgar Allan Poe)Edgar Allan Poe was made the way for modern times. Till today his stories constitute asaesthetic horrible grotesque fascination, in which the death of the beautiful woman is oftenput in the centre of attention. When Poe was once confronted with the reproach to write inthe tradition of German Horror?Stories, he answered rather calmly: "when in many of myworks the horror is the theme, so I argue that these stories did not come from Germany but fromthe soul."Poe transports the abyss of human subconscious and lets it open a new meta level with thehelp of dead female projection surface. Death and dilapidation overshadow not just thisshort story, which I am about to analyses in the following explanation.With "Morella" is Poe able to return suppressed natural needs and instincts in form of asupernatural 'You', which cannot be captured neither by the nameless narrator nor thereader.In this Work I will discuss in what extend the female 'You' grows into a threat, whichmaintains even beyond death. The female death is used in this case as a transformation ofthe self and as an aesthetic moment. But the focus is to fathom out male identity with thehelp of a fragmentary female identity. Transformation, metamorphosis and doubling are ofmajor importance for this process. As a representative of Black Romanticism Poe opens not only the "Night site of romanticism"for his readers, but also the exemplary illustrates a longing for transcendence in his shortstories. By removing the figure of Morella in exactly this transcendent place, she cannot becaptured by the reader. [...]