Author(s)

Shuyu Chen ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Northeastern University, China

Corresponding Author

Shuyu Chen

ABSTRACT

Jungian Archetypes, as proposed by Carl Jung, are universal, archaic and innate models of human knowledge, behaviors and thoughts which are firmly rooted in the “collective unconscious” inherited from human ancestors. In general, Jung identified four major archetypes as the “persona”, the “shadow”, the “anima” and the “animus”. According to him, whether the balance between androgynous personalities or the confrontation of the “persona” and the “shadow”, is the process of human self-actualization and individuation. Currently, Jungian Archetypes have been widely adopted to do literature analysis in which Edgar Allan Poe’s instrument of Over-Soul seems to be a perfect match. In Poe’s major works, The Fall of the House of Usher is one of the most impressive and prestigious one in exploration of the human psyche. Insofar, through the application of Jungian Archetypes, this essay aims to interpret the psychological states of Roderick Usher, Madeline Usher and the narrator in this short story to probe into the hidden recesses of human minds in Edgar Allan Poe’s age.

KEYWORDS

Jungian Archetypes, Edgar Allan Poe, Psychoanalysis, Unreliable Narration

CITE THIS PAPER

Shuyu Chen. A Jungian Archetypal Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Advances in Educational Technology and Psychology (2021) 5: 24-29. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/aetp.2021.52005

REFERENCES

[1] Edgar Allan Poe. The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales. The Penguin Group, 2006.
[2] Walker, Ian. The Critical Heritage: Edgar Allan Poe. London & New York: Routledge, 1986.
[3] Guerin, W. L., Labor, E., Morgan, L., Reesman, J. C., & Willingham, J. R. A handbook of critical approaches to literature. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2004.
[4] Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961.
[5] Jung, Carl. The Collected Works of Carl Jung. Translated by R. F. C. Hull, Princeton University Press, 1968.

Sponsors, Associates, and Links

---

• Curriculum and Teaching Methodology
  
  
• Transactions on Comparative Education
  
  
• Applied & Educational Psychology
  
  
• Advances in Vocational and Technical Education
  
  
• Adult and Higher Education