EDGAR ALLAN POE’S “HIDEOUS DRAMA OF REVIVIFICATION”: RESURRECTING HIS MOTHER IN FEMALE VAMPIRES.

This paper aims to analyze Edgar Allan Poe’s fiction and poems from a psychoanalytic perspective. The Romantic writer’s short tragic life was governed by his Oedipus complex and a strong death drive as the result of his traumatic experiences at an early age. He witnessed his mother’s battle with tuberculosis, which was followed by her death. Throughout his entire life, he has searched for a mother figure. In his works, Poe revives his mother in his portrayals of female characters in the forms of vampires. These characters and all their experiences in his writings appear as uncanny reflections from his unconscious, which he had a strong grasp on long before Sigmund Freud researched and theorized these terms. Resulting from a strong death wish, Poe’s narrators, who are mere reflections of himself, create dark, tomb-like settings where they isolate themselves from reality or consciousness, focusing on the female vampire figures who they admire. However, these figures also horrify Poe as they are the embodiments of death itself. In creating these undead women, Poe expresses his strong desire to reunite with his dead mother and endeavors to uncover the link between life and death, a secret that the female holds. This research focuses on Poe’s short stories “Berenice”, “Ligeia”, “Morella” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” in addition to various of his poems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]