Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Didactics - English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, University of Erfurt, course: American Shortstories, BA-Anglistik, language: English, abstract: The death of a beautiful woman is the really most poetic theme of the world.

(Edgar Allan Poe)

Edgar Allan Poe was made the way for modern times. Till today his stories constitute as

aesthetic horrible grotesque fascination, in which the death of the beautiful woman is often

put in the centre of attention. When Poe was once confronted with the reproach to write in

the tradition of German HorrorStories, he answered rather calmly: when in many of my

works the horror is the theme, so I argue that these stories did not come from Germany but from

the soul.

Poe transports the abyss of human subconscious and lets it open a new meta level with the

help of dead female projection surface. Death and dilapidation overshadow not just this

short story, which I am about to analyses in the following explanation.

With Morella is Poe able to return suppressed natural needs and instincts in form of a

supernatural You, which cannot be captured neither by the nameless narrator nor the

reader.

In this Work I will discuss in what extend the female You grows into a threat, which

maintains even beyond death. The female death is used in this case as a transformation of

the self and as an aesthetic moment. But the focus is to fathom out male identity with the

help of a fragmentary female identity. Transformation, metamorphosis and doubling are of

major importance for this process.

As a representative of Black Romanticism Poe opens not only the Night site of romanticism

for his readers, but also the exemplary illustrates a longing for transcendence in his short

stories. By removing the figure of Morella in exactly this transcendent place, she cannot be

captured by the reader. [.]