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by
YONJAE JUNG
Department of English
May, 2000
UMI Number. 9981837
Copyright 2000 by
Jung. Yonjae
UMf
UMI Microform9981837
Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company.
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17. United States Code.
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~~ committee)
(signed)
(date)
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*We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any
proprietary material contained therein.
This dissertation is dedicated to my loving wife, Misun
Hong, who always looks at me from the place from which I see
my name. PTL!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER ONE:
CHAPTER TWO:
CHAPTER THREE:
CHAPTER FOUR:
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dr. Anne Rowe, Dr. Linda Saladin, and Dr. Karen Laughlin,
the manuscript.
vi
"The Most Inseparable of Companions":
Lacan(-izing) Freud(-ianized) Poe
Abstract
by
YONJAE JUNG
vii
the Lacanian theory of the Imaginary and its accompanying
identification.
"Evil Eye"), I will examine the role of the old man in terms
Masque of the Red Death," "The Black Cat," "The Imp of the
viii
I HTRODUCT ION
1
2
insight.
4
inaccessible.
Imaginary identification.
Heart," and argues that the tale is the story about a young
the old man comes not from the individual person but rather
examine the role of the old man in the Poe story in terms of
tales.
ROTES
12
13
"Tales of the Father," and "Poe and the Human Soul." In the
carrying out her task, Bonaparte uses the methods and models
15
work hides and distorts the latent content through the four
win honour, power, wealth, fame and the love of women; but
the outset:
for the mother or hatred for the father. Along with Joseph
Wood Krutch, Bonaparte argues that Poe's life and work can
in "The Masque of the Red Death" and "Never Bet the Devil
inquiry.
virginia's hemorrhages.-
II
Subject" 298).
actions:
27
hard to deny that Lacan has been the major influence in the
literature.
III
analysis" (457).
endnotes. I I
35
ROTI:S
earthly love, and make him shun health and vitality in his
loved ones. • . • Thus, through his eternal fidelity to the
dead mother, Poe, to all intents, became necrophilist. But
. . . Poe's necrophilia had undergone drastic repression.
Had it been unrepressed, Poe would no doubt have been a
criminal" (83).
15. It is true that both Bonaparte and Lacan use Poe's text
to illustrate Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Lacan, like
Bonaparte, also accepts the basic Oedipal triangular
structure implicit in the story. However, another crucial
difference between the two analysts is that Lacan leaves Poe
the author outside his frame of reference. Bonaparte, by
contrast, sees the minister and the king as representations
of the paternal figures in Poe's childhood (such as David
Poe, John Allan, and Elizabeth's unknown lover), whereas
Dupin is Poe-the-son. Bonaparte tries to explain the
struggle between Dupin and the minister in terms of the
"Oedipal struggle between father and son, though on an
archaic, pregenital, and phallic level, to seize possession,
not of the mother herself, but of a part: namely, her penis"
(483). For Bonaparte, the story, then, is really about a
41
42
43
was this Wilson? -- and whence came he? -- and what were his
Oedipus complex.
man" (282).
Lacan argues:
when the child experiences itself, its own body, as its own
Freud argues that the ego does not exist from the beginning
and that for the ego to come into existence, "a new
54
the ego. Thus, for Freud, the ego is "first and foremost a
II
the being who stood before me, at some epoch very long ago -
57
this uncanny feeling that the two have been long acquainted?
view, the second Wilson is both the narrator himself and the
secretly felt that I feared h~, and could not help thinking
rival.
construction.
III
that he was self-willed, and that his weak parents could not
own actions:
of his own name and his family identity. Moreover, the fact
two stages" ("The Agency of the Letter" 149). The bar that
within signification):
51 ~ 52, 53, . . • 5n
s
emphasizes his strong dislike for his own name: "I had
to the academy, I felt angry with him for bearing the name,
an incomprehensible paradox:
to the outside "was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and
IV
is his real crime: "I would fain have them believe that I
(427) .
notes that
complex.
(539).
ROTBS
87
88
Cat," which was published later the same year as "The Tell-
very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you
claims that the ca~ way he can recount the events proves
I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never
like the perverse narrator of "The Black Cat" who kills the
cat "with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the
the murder of the old man any other way than in terms of the
90
uncanny eye: "I think it was his eye! yes, i t was this!
eye, with a film over it" (792). Because of his hatred for
the "Evil Eye," the narrator vows to "take the life of the
old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever" (792). The
with the old man's eye, and ends with the narrator's
told the exact relationship between the narrator and the old
learn from his tale that he and the old man live under the
man the old man's servant? Odd that he would not say so.
Father.
92
old man comes not from the individual person but rather from
that they give • • • the law of the acts that will follow
him right to the very place where he is not yet and even
the human subject (Marcel Mauss 37). The child is born into
Lacan 121).
95
himself proclaims that "I will emphasize what Freud does not
kill his father/rival for the sexual love of his mother. l '
own desire for the mother. "If the desire of the mother is
complex:
has the anatomical penis, Lacan argues that neither men nor
dual relation between the mother and the child and laying
penis: both the boy and the girl must give up "being" the
phallus for the mother and suffer the division from the
"damned" eye. It is not the old man but his uncanny eye
blue eye, with a film over it" gazes at him, his blood runs
puts his head very slowly inside the old man's bedroom door,
"do the work." For seven nights, he goes to the door and
looks in, but never finds the eye open. Then, on the eighth
are. The narrator finally opens the lantern and shines the
105
light toward the old man's bed. Be has managed to aim the
light directly into the eye he fears and says "I could see
(795). At this moment, the eye is wide open, and then the
risk to his own safety. This prompts him to rush into the
chamber and finally kill the old man. After a few minutes,
old man's evil eye represents not only the father's gaze but
106
Davis has pointed out, it is not so much the old man's Evil
slowly that it takes him an hour to get his head through the
doorway:
In his entry into the old man's room, into the father's
more quickly than did mine. Never, before that night, had I
the climactic murder scene. The narrator drags the old man
out of his bed and smothers him with it. The old man is
loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the
dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him"
triumph: "I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done"
The bed here serves not only as the instrument of murder but
corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and legs. I then
house:
The narrator gloats upon his triumph over the police who are
own heart beating fast and loud out of guilt for the
derision.
all the women and expels the sons when they reach sexual
totemic status:
accept his command only after the murder -- the dead father
at the same time. Thus, the sons feel guilty because they
"operate on the side of the father who had just been got rid
sense that the word can only be where the object was. From
Hegel, Lacan takes the idea that the word is "the murder of
the father, that is, the murder of the father of the primal
Father:
the story of a younq man who "acts out" the Oedipal murder
separates the disturbinq and accusinq eye from the old man
man himself but his "Evil Eye," the paternal metaphor or the
119
ROTBS
not refer to the real father, then, nor to the sexual organ,
Lacan used this term to underline the idea that the
biological father, the penian part-object, and the phallic
differential function are confused in language" (283). In
"The Signification of the Phallus, " Lacan himself writes
that the phallus is the privileged signifier not only
because it is "the most symbolic element in the literal
(typographical) sense of the term," but also "the most
tangible element in the real of sexual copulation" and "by
virtue of its turgidity . • • the image of the vital flow as
it is transmitted in generation" (287).
20. Robert Con Davis explains the sole motive for the murder
in terms of the paranoiac narrator's fear of "becoming a
mere object for the eye's gaze" ("Lacan, Poe, and Narrative
Repression" 993).
CHAPTER POUR
133
134
who discuss Lacan's work I will bracket the Real and talk
the Crowd," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Black Cat,"
the same time the Lacanian concept of the Real will help us
organized and known reality. The real is that which has not
eludes us:
Crowd" (1840).
The old man is short, thin, and very feeble, and his clothes
despair" (511). Despite the heavy rain and thick humid fog,
All night long and through the ensuing day, the narrator
The narrator approaches the old man directly and stares him
in the face. But the old man takes no notice of him, and
the old man's dark history and believes that he "is the type
515) .
The narrator's anxious search for the old man's history and
symbolize."
among the courtiers: "The figure was tall and gaunt, and
eloquently:
Real. In the story, when the one-eyed black cat causes the
finally vanished: "The second and the third day passed, and
with a cane the very wall behind which he has placed the
and of awe" and then confesses his murder (859). Bow can he
Wolf Man case, Lacan argues that something that could no·t be
repressed are just the two sides of the same coin. The
does not return from the inside: "the Verwerfung -- that is,
his estate, all went well with me for years" (1224). Since
from all suspicion if, as he puts it, he "be not fool enough
himself:
in the relations between the ego and the external world" (SE
hallucinations (1225).
his sleeping enemy. When he opens his lamp and the beam of
mirror-image of himself:
his name, effectively imitates him, and so on, but that the
knot is such that if "you cut one, every single one of the
156
aligned with the " little object a" (objet: pet:i t: a). As Alan
(in the first instance, the mother); the infant's demand for
need, she cannot fulfill that absolute demand for love made
by the infant.
the demand for love, but the difference that results from
writes:
rim of the anus, the tip of the penis, the vagina, the slit
the Real and the objet petit a, I will take two of Poe's
face -- the pale and placid forehead, the once black hair
Egaeus' obsession with the teeth goes far beyond his earlier
he thinks about:
164
that she is taken for dead and placed in the family vault.
there is a small box that lies beside his lamp and an opened
Berenice's grave has been violated and that she had been
box on the table but drops it. The mysterious box falls
(219) .
Her teeth become for him 'des idees,' that is, they are
sense" (139).
be met, its demand responded to, but its desire only exists
Lacan writes:
object for the entire body of the woman. Like most female
her body, and then fragments her face into forehead, hair,
"Berenice" :
exclaims "How poignant, then, must have been the grief with
course of his teaching. Since the term Real does not retain
two meanings, of which the one asserts and the other denies
assume that the final question of the poem ("How can we know
reveals:
these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes of
ROTI:S
5. In one sense, we can say that the order of the Real does
not exist because existence is only made possible by the
signifying function of language. As Bruce Fink points out,
"what cannot be said in its language is not part of its
reality. . . • The real, therefore, does not exist, since
it precedes language • • . it 'ex-sists.' It exists outside
of or apart from our reality" (The Lacanian Subject 25). In
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Sl.avoj Ziiek
describes the Real as that which does not exist but
nevertheless produces intense effects: "The paradox of the
Lacanian Real . . . is that it is an entity which, although
it does not exist . • • exercises a certain structural
causality . . . in the symbolic reality of subjects" (163).
Real, and the subject to, in a way which avoids any notion
of hierarchy, or any priority of anyone of the three terms"
(Feminine Sexuali ty 171) •
Relation
(Jakobson): similarity contiguity
Relation
(Freud): condensation displacement
25. From the 1964 Seminar XI: The Four Fundamenral Conceprs
of Psycho-Analysis onwards, the register of the Real becomes
a genuine Lacanian concept, and Lacan's later work is more
and more preoccupied with the Real. In his Encore or
Seminar XX: On Feminine Sexualiry, rhe Limits of Love and
Knowledge (1998), a collection of seminars from 1972-73,
Lacan explores the problematic relations between the sexes
in terms of the impossible Real. Here, Lacan proposes his
controversial thesis: "There is no such thing as a sexual
relationship" ("il n'y a pas de rapporr sexuel"). According
to him, this is the very reality of psychoanalysis:
"Analytic discourse is premised solely on the statement that
there is no such thing, that it is impossible to found
(poser) a sexual relationship" ("On Jouissance" 9). Of
course, Lacan's ambiguous formula has little to do with the
act of sexual intercourse; rather, it is primarily concerned
with the question of the relation between the masculine
sexual position and the feminine sexual pOSition in the
Symbolic order. One of the reasons sexual relations are
impossible is that there is no direct, unrnediated
relationship between men and WO;llen, because all sexuality is
marked by the signifier. In other words, language as the
Other always gets in the way between them. In his 1957
paper "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason
Since Freud," Lacan provides an interesting story about the
186
188
189
psychoanalytic concepts.
194
ROft:S
196
197
-----. The Ego and the Id. Standard Edition, 19, pp.12-66.
Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. New York:
Doubleday, 1972.
200
(1983): 73-79.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New
York: Macmillan, 1992.
206
Ostrom, John Ward, ed. The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe. New
York: Gordian Press, 1966.
1-13.