Imprisonment in Memory in Edgar Allan Poe's Songs of Grief

Abstract

This research paper argues that the speakers in Poe's poems on death are so attached to their dead loved ones that they cannot move on with their lives. They cannot break out of the linearity of time, displaying a state of utter entrapment, where both the present and the future are almost doomed and foreclosed . Denying the death of their loved ones, the speaking subjects have a tendency to keep them alive through memory or by giving them different states of existence. Drawing on the key concepts in Freud' theory about death as represented in his essay " Our Attitude towards Death," (1915) this study shows that the speakers in Poe's poems on death deny the fact of death as a separation ; consequently , they create an illusory world to go beyond their fear of abandonment hoping for a reunion with the dead loved ones. Fear of annihilation leads the mourners in Poe's poems on death to create an afterlife , which is considered to be unreal according to Freud's secular view of death , in order to escape the sense of being abandoned by their dead loved ones. The concepts of denial , fear of abandonment , and defence mechanisms in Freud's theory are particularly relevant to the present study. The state of entrapment within the past and the tendency to create an illusory world where fears of abandonment and separation are surpassed are best represented in "The Sleeper" (1831), "Bridal Ballad" (1841), "Lenore" (1843), "To One in Paradise" (1845), and "Annabel Lee"(1849). The poems are examined in light of Freud's secular theory of death . The circumstances of Poe's life which form the background of these poems are also considered. Textual analysis includes the thematic as well as the formal features of the poems under study .