论文总字数：49809字

摘 要

Introduction 1

Chapter One Science as a Tool in Poe's Gothic and Detective Stories 4

1.1 The Building of Horrible Atmosphere in Gothic Tales 4

1.2 Logical Thinking in Detective Stories 6

Chapter Two The Double-edged Sword of Science in Poe's Science Fiction 10

2.1 The Positive Effects of Science 10

2.2 The Side Effects of Science 12

2.3 The Other Way Out to the Future 14

Chapter Three The Grand Vision of Science in Poe's Cosmological Essay 16

3.1 The Eureka of Archimedes and Poe 16

3.2 The Discovery about the Universe 18

Conclusion 21

Works Cited 23

Acknowledgments

On the completion of my thesis, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all those who helped me with my writing, and those who kindly gave me advice to make this thesis a better work.

I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Zhu Litian, for her instructive suggestions for this thesis. I would also like to thank her and the other teachers in the past four years. They have taught me many valuable things beyond the knowledge on the textbooks.

I am very grateful to my family and friends as well. They have always been there as a support for me, and inspired me while I was working on the essay.

Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), a nineteenth century American writer, poet and literature critic, is a pioneer writer of American short stories. He is generally regarded as the father of detective stories and a master of Gothic stories. Well-known for his pursuit of beauty in literature, he also puts great emphasis on science, and is recognized as the father of science fiction.

Poe’s science-related works can be roughly divided into four types: Gothic stories, detective stories, science fiction and science essay. An increasing portion of scientific knowledge can be found in these four types of works. In the first two types, science is just used as a tool, a decoration to achieve a certain effect. In his science fiction, science becomes the theme of the stories. Cutting-edge technologies at that time, such as hot-air balloon, are used as the main topic. However, the work that truly shows Poe’s systematic exploration of science is “Eureka”, a science essay written in his late years. In this essay, Poe discusses his opinions about the science of the material and psychological universe. These four types of works also reveal, in a chronological order, that Poe goes deeper into the exploration of science.

This essay will focus on the scientific elements used in Poe’s different types of works. By putting his works against the scientific background of the nineteenth century, this essay will discover his overall attitude towards science.

Key words: Edgar Allan Poe, Science Fiction, Detective Stories, “Eureka”

摘要

埃德加·爱伦·坡(1809-1849)，美国十九世纪作家、诗人、文学评论家，被公认为侦探小说的鼻祖和哥特小说大师。他因在文学中对美的执着追求而闻名于世，同时他还十分关心科学，被誉为科幻小说的鼻祖。

坡涉及到科学元素的作品可以被大致分为四种类型：哥特小说、侦探小说、科幻小说以及科学随笔。科学知识越来越多地被坡运用于这些作品中。在前两类作品中，科学只被当成一种工具，是为了达到某种文学效果的装饰。在科幻小说中，科学已经变成了故事的主题，许多当时最先进的科学技术，例如热气球技术，就被用作了主要的话题。然而，真正显示爱伦·坡对科学领域系统探索的是他晚期的一篇科学随笔——《我发现了》。在这篇科学随笔中，他表达了自己对物质宇宙和精神宇宙的探索和理解。从这几类作品还可以看出，随着时间的推移，坡在自己的创作历程中越来越重视科学的作用，并且越来越以一种严肃的态度探索科学世界。

本文试图将坡的作品分类，将其作品放在十九世纪的历史背景下着力研究其中科学元素的运用以及坡的科学观。

关键词：埃德加·爱伦·坡，科学，科幻小说，侦探小说，《我发现了》

Introduction

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), a nineteenth century American writer, poet and literature critic, is a pioneer writer of American short stories. He is generally regarded as the father of detective stories and a master of Gothic stories, and is recognized as the father of science fiction.

Poe is an important figure in American literature, and the academia hold controversial opinions about him. Many scholars consider him as a writer detached from the mainstream of American culture. However, if they put him against the historical background of the nineteenth century, they would find his works closely related to the Scientific Revolution. Ever since the eighteenth century, the revolution of technology has brought huge changes to America and many European countries. The revolution stimulated a profound reform of the society. As a writer living in the time of industrial revolution, Poe has a complicated feeling towards science. On the one hand, he holds the opinion of “art for art’s sake” and considers the effect of beauty the ultimate goal of literature. In many of his works, he expressed the idea that science could damage the beauty of both nature and people’s spiritual world. On the other hand, he adopts various kinds of scientific knowledge in his literary creations. In his science fiction, hot-air balloon is used as the theme three times. Hypnotism and marine technologies are also elaborated exhaustively. In his stories of ratiocination, precise reasoning is used together with physical and medical knowledge. Even in his Gothic horrible tales, science is a crucial element. He discusses the damages that scientific development could bring to the earth and tries to find the way out for human beings in the future. Besides, he first solves the “Olbers Paradox”. His theories about the universe are considered an inspiration for modern theories such as “The Big Bang Theory” and “Heat Death Theory”. Some Poe scholars such as René van Slooten even compare him to Newton and Einstein in the field of cosmology. However, in 1847, Poe spent plenty of time demonstrating the existence of God. In his view, the origin of the universe is God’s heartbeat.

What is Poe’s real attitude towards science behind his contradictory behaviors listed above? What is the current condition of the study on Poe’s scientific world? In foreign countries, especially America, the Poe study started early. On the one hand, studies about Poe’s aesthetic pursuit, self-recognition, mysticism, racism are numerous. On the other hand, studies about Poe’s science world also make some progress. The American science fiction writer Thomas M. Disch believes that in terms of science fiction, Poe is the originator. Clarke Olney claims in his essay that Poe “was the first writer of science-centered fiction to base his stories firmly on a rational kind of extrapolation, avoiding the supernatural”(417). In Adam Roberts’ book The History of Science Fiction, he spends an entire chapter to introduce Poe’s achievements in science fiction field. Peter Swirski studies Poe’s cognitive science, philosophy of science, cosmology and futurology in his book Between Literature and Science: Poe and Lem and Explorations in Aesthetics, Cognitive Science and Literary Knowledge, and combines them with social culture, which provides new ideas for the Poe study. This book also puts great emphasis on Poe’s scientific essay “Eureka”. Except for this book, there are two websites named “Poe-Eureka” and “The Poe Decoder”, which have some essays focusing on this scientific essay. Moreover, there are quite a number of academic papers focusing on Poe’s scientific world, such as “Edgar Allan Poe─Science-Fiction Pioneer”, “Poe’s Peering Eyes of Science”. These essays can be divided into three types: the first kind generally explains Poe’s cosmic vision and scientific study, such as David Ketterer’s “The SF Element in the Work of Poe: A Chronological Survey”. The second type mainly analyzes Poe’s science fiction. Maurice Bennett’s “Edgar Allan Poe and the Literary Tradition of Lunar Speculation” is the representative of this type. The third type thoroughly examines “Eureka”, such as “Poe’s Eureka” by Carol H. Maddison. Except for the three types mentioned above, there are almost no essays focusing on the scientific elements in other types of Poe’s works. On this account, the use of scientific elements in Poe's different types of works still needs integration.

In China, the Poe study presents a different view. The focuses are mainly on psychological field and social scientific field, and few studies are conducted within natural science area. As for the famous scientific essay “Eureka”, which is well-known for its exploration of the spiritual and the material cosmos, domestic studies mainly focus on its philosophical speculation. “The Exploration of ‘the Great Chain of Being’ in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Eureka’” is a typical example of this kind of essays. As Yu Lei puts it in his essay “The Acceptance and Cognitive Deficits of Allan Poe in China”, domestic studies of Allan Poe ignore many crucial aspects, such as racial, religious, sexual and scientific elements in his works. From 2012 when the thesis was published till now, there have been some new progress in the Poe study, and the studies of the religious and racial elements are developing steadily. However, the researches concerning scientific elements only have very little progress after Zhu Zhenwu published the essay “The Humanistic Care in Allan Poe’s Science Fiction” in 2009. As for Zhu’s essay, although it generally discusses the influences of the Scientific Revolution on Poe’s literary works, the core topic is the relationship between science and humanity rather than scientific knowledge used in literature. On this account, the domestic study on Poe’s science world needs deeper explorations.

This essay divided Poe’s literary works into four types: Gothic tales, detective stories, science fiction and scientific essay. These four types of works are further divided into three categories in terms of the different functions scientific elements play: Gothic tales and detective stories which use science as a tool to achieve certain kinds of effects, science fiction which adopts science as the main theme, and the scientific essay which uses science as a serious topic to explore. By analyzing the examples in different types of works, this essay will study the scientific world in Poe’s writing thoroughly. Through the study, this essay will compare Poe’s attitude towards science in different type of works and summarize his overall opinion upon science in his literary creation.

Chapter One Science as a Tool in Poe’s Gothic and Detective Stories

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