Features of animalistic codes of the prose of Edgar Allan Poe

Abstract

This article analyzes Edgar A. Poe’s short stories “The Black Cat”, “Hop-Frog”, “Four Beasts in One — The Homo-Cameleopard”, “Morning on the Wissahiccon”. The aim of the study is to determine their animalistic codes — artistic images and motifs related to the life of animals, human-animal relations, “animal” symbolism, etc. Having applied historical-literary, psychoanalytical, and comparative methods of research, these short stories are identified as variants of the author’s modeling of an animalistic text. The subject of the study is the specifics of Edgar A. Po’s interpretation of images and motifs that are directly or indirectly related to artistic animalistic. The novelty of the research is determined by the following tasks, solved for the first time in its course: considering the correlation of animalistic codes with the ideological pathos of short stories; allocating the characteristic features of the author’s models of artistic animalistic and the arsenal of their poetics; provides a comparison of the psychoanalytical and metaphorical versions of Edgar A. Po’s interpretation of animalistic codes in the context of his idiostyle. As a result of the study, it was found that the writer’s usage of the animal theme, in the broadest sense, is the result of his view on relevant natural and philosophical ideas, which resonate in his prose with the manifestation of various animalistic codes. Two types of novels of the author’s animalistic text were distinguished. The first one, psychoanalytical, provides a realistic and concrete image of an animal perceived through the prism of the narrator’s consciousness and the tradition of his mystical interpretation, turning into an image-symbol as a result (“The Black Cat”, “Morning on the Wissahiccon”). The parable-like text of the second one, philosophical-metaphorical, despite the absence of an animal image emphasizes the problem of a “human beast” (“Hop-Frog”, “Four Beasts in One — The Homo-Cameleopard”). Symbolization of animalistic codes is common for both types. The article generalizes the important role of animalistic codes in the modeling of a psychological portrait of a contemporary man by Edgar A. Po and in the genre creation of diffuse varieties of a psychological-analytic novel.