Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Arts

Department

English

Advisor's Name

Alfred Lopez, Phd.

Advisor's Title

Committee Chair

Keywords

psychoanalysis, linguistics, sound, heidegger, poetry, music, reader response, Poe, musicology, lacan

Date of Defense

4-3-2002

Abstract

This study analyzed the reader's relationship to the sounds embedded in a written text for the purpose of identifying those sounds' contribution to the reader's interpretation of that text. To achieve this objective, this study negotiated Heideggerian phenomenology, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, linguistics, and musicology into a reader response theory, which was then applied to Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven."

This study argues that the orchestration of sounds in "The Raven" forces its reader into a regression, which the reader then represses, only to carry the resulting sound-image

//

away from the poem as a psychic scar.


Download

Files over 15MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "Save as..."

Share

COinS