Psychoanalytic Denial and Projection in Edgar Allan Poe's Short Fiction

Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis influenced literary criticism and cultural studies in profound ways; significant modern and postmodern theories of literature frequently engage with Freud's theories of the human unconscious. Psychoanalytic criticism and the arrival of "Deconstruction" in America destabilized the boundaries between linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and literature. When theorists applied psychoanalysis to literary study in the twentieth century, texts suddenly brimmed with secret meaning, distortion, the Symbolic order, and Ecriture feminine; writers and poets became patients susceptible to regressions, unconscious repression, projections and interjections appearing in their work. Reading a text was a form of dream interpretation for the literary critic and using a psychoanalytic approach provided the necessary framework to decode symbolism and untangle loose fantasies. Decades before Freud developed any of his theories, Edgar Allan Poe illustrated the unconscious and other uncharted psychological territory with his Gothic tales. Poe's fascination with psychological behavior has been the perfect subject for psychoanalytic criticism for decades. This project will analyze representations of psychoanalytic denial and projection in Poe's short fiction: "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Imp of the Perverse", "William Wilson", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado", and "The Masque of the Red Death".