MADNESS AND METHOD: THE SYSTEM OF DOCTOR TARR AND PROFESSOR FETHER
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1984-1124.v0i13p160-171Keywords:
Edgar Allan Poe, Literature, Madness.Abstract
The present study aims to discuss the theme of madness, comparing the narrator’s perspective in “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” (1845) and another short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. The analysis illustrates that science in the 19th century aims to remove the fear of the unknown, dominating the natural world and its laws; and that fiction, the presumptive opposite, represents an extension of the same logic under another name. Some writers denied any obligation of loyalty to scientific rationalism and tried to decipher this problem through the dream and the supernatural. Fantastic works of Gothic fiction – Hoffmann’s novels and some of Poe’s stories – illuminate these points. Poe reinterprets the Gothic in the Victorian Age, with an unnamed and often unreliable narrator that insists on his rationality. The comic and grotesque horror result of the psychology of his characters often descended into madness.
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