摘 要

埃德加·艾伦·坡是美国短篇小说之父，其作品涉及多种类型，包括诗歌，小说，文学评论等。同时，他也是现代侦探小说和科幻小说的先驱人物，以恐怖惊悚题材为代表的哥特式小说独树一帜，深受广大读者喜爱，其独特的写作手法也吸引了许多来自世界各地拥有不同文化背景的学者从不同角度进行评析。爱伦坡的《黑猫》是一本恐怖短篇小说，也是他的代表作之一，主要描写男主人公一步一步走向自我毁灭的心理过程。本文将以象征主义的角度切入坡的经典恐怖小说《黑猫》，分析爱伦坡如何利用象征主义，通过对《黑猫》中的男主人公和他养的两只黑猫的深入分析来探讨爱伦坡的写作技巧以及爱伦坡创造《黑猫》的主题意象，使读者能更好的理解爱伦坡的写作方式以及想表达的思想。本文分为五个部分，第一部分大体介绍爱伦坡，国内对爱伦坡的研究现状以及写作目的；第二部分写爱伦坡生平，写作方式和其运用的象征主义的特点；第三部分描述了《黑猫》的创作背景以及关于人性扭曲的主题；第四部分具体阐述《黑猫》中象征主义的运用，各个意象所具有的含义；最后一部分是总结。

关键词：爱伦坡；恐怖小说；《黑猫》；象征主义

Abstract

Allan Poe is the father of short story in America, whose works include a variety of types. Meanwhile, he is also a pioneer of the modern detective novel and the modern science fiction, especially famous for gothic novel, which is representative for horror themes and accepted by more and more readers around the world. His particular writing skill has drawn much attention from many scholars coming from different countries to further analysis and research. Black Cat is not only a short horror fiction but also it is one of his famous representatives. This essay will discuss Poe’s classic story—Black Cat, analyzing how he makes the best use of symbolism and the images he creates, like two black cats, the white splotch of the second cat and their missing eyes. Through analyzing these images, it can help readers better understand his great writing techniques via the study of the main characters in the fiction and his thesis, which is about abnormal psychology and the importance of humanity. The first part mainly introduces Allan Poe, his research’s situation in China and the task of this thesis; the second part writes about his life experience, writing style and features of symbolism; the third part discusses the background of Black Cat and its theme of humanity; the next part specifically elaborates the symbolism in Black Cat and the deep meaning that every image has; the last part is conclusion.

Key Words: Edgar Allen Poe; Horror fiction; Black Cat; Symbolism

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literary theory of Edgar Allan Poe 3

2.1 Life experience and writing style 3

2.2 Features of symbolism 4

3. Black Cat 5

3.1 Background 5

3.2 Theme of the story 6

4. Symbolism in Black Cat 8

4.1 Images—black cats 8

4.1.1 The first black cat—a lure to crime 8

4.1.2 The second black cat—repentance and guilt 9

4.2 Other images. 10

4.2.1 The splotch of white hairs—external restriction 10

4.2.2 The cat’s eyes—mirror of humanity 11

5. Conclusion 13

References 14

Acknowledgements 15

Symbolism in Black Cat

1 Introduction

Allan Poe is a pioneer of American Horror Tales and American Detective Tales. Although his literary theory and technique made him unique at that time, his works didn’t get attention from others until 20th century and he was not popular with readers in American literature at that time. Allen Poe’s works, no matter his novels or his poems, are full of the death’s atmosphere, which implies his love for death to an extreme extent. In fact, his unique view of death provide people a deeper understanding and awareness, he exhausted his whole life to seek the beauty of death. From his aspect, death is just an aesthetic form, in his works, death sometimes sounds melancholy, sometimes turns mysterious, sometimes even feels hopeless but sometimes sounds extremely romantic. All of these forms show readers different experiences and different aesthetic feeling of death.

In China, there exists some academic papers about Allen Poe’s poems, novels and his critics. From the aspect of poems, people mainly discuss his famous poem like Raven and they intend to emphasize its theme of death. There are also many researches about his novels, some searches for his novel’s theme and some put the research in a particular tradition or background to further analyze social influence. On the whole, because the spread of Allen Poe’s interpretations are late in China, Chinese researchers don’t follow Poe’s tradition and pay much attention to the value of his works. They start from the second stage, following with foreign researchers, and begin to use psychoanalysis to further analyze Allan Poe’s works. We can see that he expresses his dissatisfaction to the world through his works by mainly depicting the darkness and death. In the meantime, Poe reveals the dark side of human’s subconsciousness and tries to catch the beauty in odious thing. Appreciating death has gradually become his unique way to pursue aesthetic goal in order to wake up the people’s desire for brightness and beauty in this filthy and realistic world.