This study examines a small body of 19th-century American literature about the Antarctic: Adam Seaborn's (pseud.) Symzonia (1820), Edgar Allan Poe's "MS. Found in a Bottle" (1833) and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), Peter Prospero's (pseud.) "The Atlantis" (1838-39), and James Fenimore Cooper's The Monikins (1835) and The Sea Lions (1849). These were written in a transitional phase in the history of the Antarctic. At the start of the period, the region was almost completely unknown. Towards the end of the period, however, the region had been mapped in its essence, and the existence of an Antarctic continent had been verified. For complex reasons, the region came into cultural focus in the U.S. during the 1820s to 40s, culminating in the first major American scientific expedition in 1838-42 to explore the South Seas and the Antarctic. The study is primarily historical, tracing ideas to their historical contexts in order to determine what these authors used the unknown space of the Antarctic for. These texts were written in imaginative response to contemporary notions of the Antarctic, which is reflected in the mode of representation. The literature is in the mode of speculative fiction-most of texts imagining a tropical, inhabited Antarctic-up until the region is explored, at which point it turns to realism. The texts fall into three categories: the utopian, liminal, and realistic. The utopian texts-Symzonia, The Monikins, and "The Atlantis"-are works of social criticism, using the blank space of the Antarctic to treat a diverse range of issues, including politics, evolutionary theories, race, and gender. Poe's "MS" and Pym represent the liminal category; they dramatize the anticipation of an imminent Antarctic discovery, narrating up to a point of revelation, only to stop short. The Sea Lions is the only realistic text, coming after the Antarctic is explored. Here the knowledge of the Antarctic has solidified into the environment we know today, but with religiously symbolical overtones.

1 Mgr. Alena Fry Dissertation Abstract Edgar Allan Poe in Czech Reception: Translation and Interpretation History The doctoral thesis investigates the history of Edgar Allan Poe's reception in Czech culture from the 1850s to the present. Its aim is to scrutinize how the author's image has been shaped and reshaped over the course of time by various book editions, interpretive approaches and key translations, and what socio-cultural, literary or individual factors contributed to these transformations. The thesis is intended to contribute to the understanding of the history of Czech literary translation and of Czech literature's intercultural affinities. Chapter 1 defines the research goal, presents the theoretical background and outlines the structure of the thesis. It reveals the inseparableness of Poe's image as the author and the man, i.e. the Poe "myth" that started developing during Poe's lifetime, and the necessity to also account for it when studying his Czech reception. Chapter 2 focuses on the period up to the early 1890s and examines the earliest interpretations. These were strongly influenced by R. W. Griswold's infamous "Memoir" and dwelt mainly on the circumstances of Poe's life. Furthermore, the chapter provides an overview of the first prose and poetry translations which were occasionally...

Denna uppsats undersöker gotiska teman som melankoli, isolering, galenskap och död i verk av Edgar Allan Poe och Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Utgångspunkt är följande forskningsfråga: På vilket sätt framträder melankoli, isolering, galenskap och död i de olika verken, samt vilka är likheterna och skillnaderna mellan hur temana framkommer? Metoden är grundad i tematisk analys, intertextualitet och komparation. De verk som analyseras i uppsatsen är Poes The Fall of The House Usher, Ligeia och Berenice. Verk av Lovecraft som analyserats är Cthulhu, The Color out of Space, The Tomb och Polaris. Resultaten visar att alla teman finns närvarande i verk av båda författarna, men att de tar olika former. Poes melankoli är till exempel mycket närmare hans karaktärer än Lovecrafts melankoli, som är mer kopplade till miljöer och objekt. Vidare visar undersökningen bland annat också att Poe inte fokuserar på fysiska dödsbeskrivningar utan på andra typer av död. Lovecrafts dödsbeskrivningar å andra sidan är mer externa och kopplade till monster. / This essay examines the presence of what is considered to be gothic themes such as melancholy, isolation, madness and death in works of Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The following research question was formulated: In what way do melancholy, isolation, madness, and death appear in the various works, and what are the similarities and differences between how the themes emerge? Methods of thematic analysis, intertextuality and comparison are used. The works analysed in the essay are Poe’s The Fall of The House Usher, Ligeia and Berenice. The works analysed are also Lovecraft’s The call of Cthulhu, The Colour out of Space, The Tomb and Polaris. The results show that all the themes are present in works by both authors, but that they take different forms. Poe’s melancholy is for example much closer to his characters than Lovecrafts melancholy, which are more connected to environments and objects. The study also shows among other things, that Poe does not focus on physical death descriptions but on other types of death. Lovecraft's death descriptions on the other hand, are more external and linked to monsters.

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An important anomaly in transatlantic criticism is the contrast between transatlantic theory and the applied criticism of literature through a transatlantic lens. While most transatlantic scholars assert the value of individual strands of thought throughout the globe and stress the importance of overcoming national hegemonic barriers in literature, applied criticism generally favors an older model that privileges British literary thought in the nineteenth century. I claim that both British and American writers can influence each other, and that mutations in thought can travel both ways across the Atlantic. To argue this claim, I begin by analyzing the influence of Blackwood's Magazine on the literary aesthetic of Edgar Allan Poe. While Poe's early works read very similar to Blackwood's articles, he positioned himself against Blackwood's in the middle of his career and developed a different, although derivative, approach to psychological fiction. I next follow this psychological strain back across the Atlantic, where Oscar Wilde melded aspects of Poe's fiction to his own unique form of satire and social critique.

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本論文旨在分析愛倫坡作品中之陽剛氣質與同性慾望的社會建構，藉由探討男性 敘事者的負面情感與角色間的同性社交慾望，本研究意欲以酷兒閱讀的方法對美 國戰前時期文本提出新詮。 論文第一部分剖析短篇故事《黑貓》中正典陽剛氣質與異性戀婚家常規之共構、 重探維多利亞時期公私領域分離的意識形態如何性別化地形塑家庭與酒館之文 化意義，並據此提出敘事者和其寵物黑貓間的親密關係或可理解為一種酷兒情慾 之隱喻。在此脈絡下，敘事者對雄貓之恐懼與同性親密關係之拒斥遂映照出其悖 離資本主義式中產階級男性身分之挫敗陽剛。 第二部分以《威廉‧威爾森》為例，探討哥德傳統中反覆出現的替身母題與自戀 和男性偏執妄想之內在關聯。延續傳統上常見於愛倫坡研究的心理分析方法，此 章在不否定將主角替身視為超我的前提下，將焦點轉移至主角與替身之間競爭關 係的曖昧模稜，並揭示這種競爭關係與賽菊寇同性社交慾望理論之若合符節。 第三部分檢視同性慾望結構中常見的死亡慾力與肉身性如何具體而微地在長篇 小說《亞瑟‧戈登‧皮姆之自述》中呈現。此章從巴特勒對佛洛伊德《傷逝與憂 鬱》論述之改寫出發，重新闡釋故事中帶有毀滅色彩的重要場景──奧古斯特之 死與集體食人，並分析同性愛結構中被壓抑的慾力投注如何以情感遺骸之形式往 復迴返，成為美國戰前時期性別憂鬱之縮影。 據此，論文將問題意識收束在三個面向:陽剛身分之內在裂隙、同性社交情誼之 踰越性、與情感的性別政治意涵，透過梳理愛倫坡筆下男性角色的負面情感，本 論文得以發掘其作品中哥德元素、破碎陽剛與酷兒情慾間的潛在關聯，進而揭示 同性情慾如何在美國戰前文學中隱沒／現身。 / The present study engages three works written by Edgar Allan Poe to contextualize the construction of masculinity and same-sex desire in antebellum sensation fictions. While ample analyses have been dedicated to Poe’s depictions of femininity, the interrelation between masculinity and incipient homoeroticism in his stories proves to be significantly understudied. By examining the negative affects of Poe’s male protagonists—respectively fear in “The Black Cat,” paranoia in “William Wilson,” and melancholia in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, this project aims to provide a queer reinterpretation of these texts. Structurally, the thesis consists of five chapters. The second chapter délinéâtes the Victorian separate spheres ideology to explore its significance in the formation of normative manhood in “The Black Cat.” By underscoring the homoerotic Relationship between the narrator and Pluto, the study thereby sees the conclusion of the story as a testimonial to the unattainable ideals of Jacksonian manhood and its oppressive continuum with the heterosexual domestic sphere. In so doing, the study is able to substantiate a connection between the narrator’s perverseness with a homosocial desire that is subjected to heteronormative cultural silencing. The third chapter is an attempt to establish a linkage between Gothic doubling, narcissism, and male paranoia in “William Wilson.” While exhaustive studies have been taken upon to validate the readings wherein the second Wilson is treated as the narrator’s super-ego, the present study further argues that Gothic doubling finds expression in this tale in the form of capitalist competitiveness. Building on this observation, the project examines Poe’s doubling in relation to the narrator’s paranoia and his conscious disengagement from the patriarchal social order. Through a reassessment of the gentlemanly edifices of Poe’s male characters, this study explores the constructedness of antebellum manhood and discovers a concurrence of onanism and homosexuality in Poe’s time, thereby establishing a connection between Wilson’s narcissistic desire and its homoerotic potentialities. Lastly, the fourth chapter demonstrates how unconsummated mourning over the loss of same-sex ties in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket functions as an integral part of Jacksonian normative male identity. Focusing on the queer connotations of Pym’s break from patronymic ties, this study contends that becoming the antebellum subject entails a preclusion of homosexual attachments. Reconsidering the protagonist’s inability to mourn Augustus Barnard’s death and the crew’s cannibalism, this study sees Arthur Gordon Pym as the Butlerian melancholic subject who is unable to perform the work of mourning for his beloved object. Read in tandem with Freud’s conception of primordial parricide, the fraternal revolt that works at the center of the story can be viewed as a form of gender nonconformity which foregrounds melancholia in the abandonment of familial bonds. As such, the project excavates the instability, constructedness, and finally—the Gothicness that underlie Poe’s representations of masculinity. Reappraising the failed manhood of Poe’s men, this thesis concludes that the affective dynamics between Poe’s male characters are inextricably bound up with their broken masculinity and queer homoerotics.

This dissertation is an examination of the interiority of American authorship from 1815–1866, an era of political, social, and economic instability in the United States. Without a well-defined historical narrative or an established literary lineage, writers drew upon death and the American landscape as tropes of unity and identification in an effort to define the nation and its literary future. Instead of representing nationalism or collectivism, however, the authors in this study drew on landscapes and death to mediate the crises of authorial displacement through what I term "xenotopia," strange places wherein a venerated American landscape has been disrupted or defamiliarized and inscribed with death or mourning. As opposed to the idealized settings of utopia or the environmental degradation of dystopia, which reflect the positive or negative social currents of a writer's milieu, xenotopia record the contingencies and potential problems that have not yet played out in a nation in the process of self-definition. Beyond this, however, xenotopia register as an assertion of agency and literary definition, a way to record each writer's individual and psychological experience of authorship while answering the call for a new definition of American literature in an indeterminate and undefined space.

Ce mémoire analyse les différentes formes d'anglophilie que l'on retrouve chez Stéphane Mallarmé. Edgar Poe est grandement responsable de l'attachement du poète français pour la langue anglaise. En effet, celui-ci affirme dans sa correspondance avoir appris cette langue afin de "mieux lire Poe". Cette étude le mène à devenir professeur d'anglais à Tournon où il connaît en 1866 sa "crise". À ce moment-là, le poète voit sa conception de la poésie se transformer radicalement. Durant la décennie suivante, il entreprend des travaux philologiques ainsi que des traductions. La "décennie anglaise" voit Mallarmé se doter d'outils scientifiques afin de résoudre la crise déclenchée quelques années plus tôt. Cette démarche participe à l'œuvre poétique qu'il produira par la suite puisqu'elle replie le langage sur lui-même, séparant ainsi le signifiant de son référant. L'effacement langagier, qu'il met alors sur pied, permet au poète de préserver l'Idéal du grand Œuvre tout en admettant l'impossibilité de sa réalisation. Notre travail étudie d'abord les textes que Mallarmé consacre à Poe. Le sonnet "Tombeau d'Edgar Poe" écrit en 1877, le texte en prose paru dans Divagations en 1897 et les quelques références qui apparaissent dans les Vers de circonstance, publication posthume, dessinent une image héroïque du poète tout en redéfinissant son rôle. Synthèse des mythes grecs et chrétiens, le poète conçu par Mallarmé lutte avec son verbe contre les effets du temps. Les traductions que Mallarmé fait des poèmes de Poe entre 1862 et 1889 permettent à l'auteur français de manipuler la matière sonore d'une façon nouvelle. Sacrifiant le critère de fidélité au profit de la mélodie, le poète essuiera les reproches de critiques du XIXe et du XXe siècle avant de trouver des appuis chez certains traducteurs de poésie dont Yves Bonnefoy. Les ouvrages philologiques de Mallarmé, quant à eux, étudient la langue anglaise comme une langue étrangère. À partir de ces textes, le poète développera le mythe d'une langue autre qui donnerait accès à un monde jusqu'ici inaccessible. De plus, le travail de réécriture qui se fait dans ces ouvrages annonce la "disparition élocutoire du poète" que nous retrouverons plus tard dans "Crise de ver". Finalement, la lecture que Mallarmé fait de Poe l'aide à concevoir l'Œuvre pure ainsi que l'effacement langagier. En mettant la mort au centre de son œuvre, le poète américain prépare la voie à l'écriture hermétique de Mallarmé.

“The Purloined Letter,” Edgar Allan Poe's third and final tale featuring the detective Dupin, has evoked a long history of critical response. Criticism has tended to read the text for its role in the development of detective fiction and as illustrative of various theoretical positions. However, the implications of the “The Purloined Letter,” as a tale of ratiocination, has largely been left unexplored. “The Purloined Letter” explores logical processes of value and exchange, particularly economic exchange, in a manner very similar to what Charles Sanders Peirce will call pragmatism several decades later. Dupin's deductive methods and Peirce's abductive logic express the nature of objects in terms of social systems of preference and perception rather metaphysics. Peirce's classification of signs as icon, index, or symbol provides a framework of signification which can be read in conjunction with “The Purloined Letter” to flesh out the role of materiality and value in the theory of economic criticism. Reading value and exchange as part of a social system of signs, perceptions, and representations of value will serve to expose a penchant for material fetishism in economic criticism and provide a theory of currency, value, and exchange that contextualizes representational and material notions of value within the social and economic system that provides the processes and mechanisms of value determination. The way that the Prefect, the Minister D___, and Dupin each conceptualize the purloined letter as having a different representational relationship with value can be used to demonstrate Poe's abductive framework for economy.