Proper, Politic, and Fetishized Object: Representations of Body in the Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe

This thesis involves a close-reading of how Edgar Allan Poe writes the body and how bodies operate as discursive spaces to explore identity, sexuality, gender, and society and are constructed and deconstructed. Consideration is given to how Poe challenges, destabilizes, and problematizes notions of the body exacerbated by abnormal bodies absenting themselves via death, decay, or prosthetics and the meaning that is gathered around either their conjunction or disjunction. The introduction gives an overview of relevant Poe criticism and a rationale for this project. Chapter II explores how Poe’s treatment of the body-proper and identity in “How to Write a Blackwood Article” and a “Predicament.” Chapter III looks at the body object in “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “Berenice.” Chapter IV investigates how the body politic functions in “The Man of the Crowd” and “The Man that Was Used Up.”