Unveiling Death and Desire: A Psychoanalytic Criticism of Edgar Allan Poe’s Lenore
AC Lhyn Cagas-Mangga
*
La Salle University, Ozamiz City, Philippines.
Carousel Tagaylo
La Salle University, Ozamiz City, Philippines.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Aims: This study aimed to analyze Edgar Allan Poe’s Lenore through the framework of psychoanalytic literary criticism, with a focus on the interrelated themes of death and desire. By employing Freudian and Lacanian perspectives, the research sought to uncover the symbolic structures that informed the poem’s portrayal of death and mourning.
Study Design: The study used a qualitative design, with a theoretical literary analysis conducted within the framework of psychoanalytic literary criticism.
Methodology: A close textual analysis was employed to examine the poem's symbolic structures, including language, imagery, and thematic oppositions, to uncover the underlying emotional and unconscious forces at work. Also, this study explored how repressed emotions, idealization, and unconscious desires were encoded within the poetic form and how these aspects influenced the reader's perspective on loss and psychological turmoil.
Results: Lenore is deeply infused with Freudian motifs that reflect the unconscious processes of sorrow, repression, and desire. The poem, viewed via a Freudian lens, depicts mechanisms such as melancholia and the death drive, in which the speaker's idealization of Lenore acts as a coping strategy for dealing with personal grief and emotional loss. Lacanian theory also reveals how Lenore serves as a symbolic object of unachievable desire—absent yet central—highlighting the role of language in molding and distorting emotional truth. The debate highlights how the poem transforms pain into poetic transcendence, demonstrating how the psyche navigates trauma through symbolic frameworks and unconscious projections. Ultimately, Lenore is more than an elegy; it is a portrayal of the psychological conflict with mortality, in which loss is reinvented via idealization and the endless quest for what cannot be reclaimed.
Conclusion: In summary, Lenore's symbolic patterns and emotional depth depict the psyche's complicated struggle with mortality, demonstrating how the human subject copes with pain by transforming unresolved feelings into lyrical transcendence and unreachable longing.
Keywords: Lenore, close textual analysis, Freudian, Lacanian, psychoanalysis