Abstract
Edgar Allan Poe is a brilliant American romantic writer，he is very famous for describing death and darkness. His works are full of despair and pessimism, but he try to find the beauty in the ugly, and waking up the people’s desire for beauty and love of life in the dirty world.
This thesis aims at studying the connotation and causations of Allan Poe’s theme of death through analyzing his works Ligeia, To Helen, and concentrating on the analysis of the undertaker of death. The thesis concludes that on the one hand, Poe’s theme of death reveals beauty of melancholy and sorrow, beauty of horror and mystery, and beauty of romance and fantasy, implying the ideal for surrealism and eternal philosophy. On the other hand, the causations of Poe’s theme of death are closely related with his literary theory, personal experiences and social factors.
Keywords: Allan Poe; Ligeia; beauty; theme of death;
Contents
Abstract I
Contents I
1. Introduction 1
1.1 A brief introduction of the author and his works 1
1.2 Literature review 2
1.3 Significance and structure of the thesis 3
2. The connotations of theme of death 4
2.1 Beauty of melancholy and sorrow 4
2.2 Beauty of horror and mystery 5
2.3 Beauty of romance and fantasy 6
3. The motives of forming theme of death 7
3.1 Distinctive literary theory 7
3.2 Bumpy life experience 7
3.3 Social factors 8
Conclusion 9
References 10
