The Pendulum of Enjoyment: Reading Edgar Allan Poe's Works in Terms of Schizoanalysis and Psychoanalysis

This dissertation reexamines the relation of Poe and his works to his society and argues that Poe, like the Bostonian transcendentalists, set up a visionary world for his society despite its failure to be appreciated. To reform the critical body of his day, Poe intended to elevate Beauty as an effect as the dominant value of poetry or art in place of the traditional values of Truth and Good. To implement his ideal, Poe lashed hard at his contemporaries, the Bostonian or New England transcendentalists in particular, found faults with their works, and made a distinction between cant and authentic transcendentalism. Denouncing those Bostonian transcendentalists or Frogpondians for cant transcendentalism, Poe claimed himself a defender of authentic transcendentalism. In the name of authentic transcendentalism, Poe censured didacticism-oriented values and explicated his ideal, or Poesque aesthetics. Thus, I argue that Poe hoped to reorient the literary world of his day to an immoral or amoral world dominated by Beauty as effect. Featured with its immorality or amorality, Poe and Poesque aesthetics were greatly acknowledged and appreciated by his contemporaries. Despite so, it cannot be denied that Poe and Poesque aesthetics attempt to set up a visionary world. Then this dissertation will employ schizoanalysis to elaborate Poe’s ideal and the relations of Poe and his works to capitalism and to every one of us living in a capitalist society. Although the affective utopia that Poe and Poesque aesthetics lead one to can be delineated through schizoanalysis, the difficulties it creates cannot be solved with schizoanalysis. Thus, this dissertation will finally resort to psychoanalysis to analyze the difficulties and offer its solution to readers.