Poe, Edgar Allan - Shawn Rosenheim (essay date 1995)
Shawn Rosenheim (essay date 1995)
SOURCE: Rosenheim, Shawn. “Detective Fiction, Psychoanalysis, and the Analytic Sublime.” In The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Shawn Rosenheim and Stephen Rachman, pp. 153-76. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995.
[In the following essay, Rosenheim explores the nature and function of analysis and psychoanalysis in Poe's detective stories.]
“We have gone so far as to combine the ideas of an agility astounding, a strength superhuman, a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nations, and devoid of all distinct or intelligible syllabification. … What impression have I made upon your fancy?” I felt a creeping of the flesh as Dupin asked me the question. “A madman,” I said, “has done this deed—some raving maniac escaped from a...
[The entire page is 10683 words long]
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