hi,

i have to write a paper about poe titeled: "Perverseness: obsession and literary realisation of it". my problem is that i hardly find any good books which can tell me sth about it. i donīt just want to summarize some of his stories...

HELP ME, PLEASE!!

xx, sabine

-- Anonymous, September 17, 2002

Answers

The "Imp of the Perverse" (which I HOPE is the meaning of perverse in your thesis) does explain in great detail the phenomenon before quoting an example so briefly it is more a note than a story as such. Similar to the "Premature Burial" which goes through some titillating anecdotes and ends with a joke on the author narrator.

The literary realization usually for Poe is getting into the twisted mind(mad, drunk, evil) of the narrator to get to the heart of the obsession. He is not content with talking ABOUT it. It must be experienced though examined dispassionately even by the mind in thrall. it is about perverse contradictions that amused, enthralled Poe himself into these studies and emotional excursions a.k.a. tales of terror. Poe's continual perverseness is his own entrapment in understanding, working out artistically, even ridiculing with scientific analysis, his connection to the lost past, lost loves, and the horror and rebellion it breeds. His essays as such, I don't believe, dwell too much on what shows up in his popular tales and more personal poems. he denies, rebels, uses them dispassionately as his muse of inspiration, but it really is a problem for him.

He connects this by pushing the envelope through deranged minds in wild Gothic tales to the extremes of experience. "The good I would do, Ido not, while the evil I would not do, I do." Even his own alcoholic addiction(a common enough perversion) relates personally to this theme. His obsession(and repulsion/attraction) for his dead loves is the deepest magnet of his soul problem however. Read "Ligeia" and see how love becomes a Frankenstein thing so that only a moth and flame relationship endures. Poe hopes the flame is hope but...Read "The Raven" and the raving dialogue with the bird in that light.

-- Anonymous, September 18, 2002