【正文】 畢業(yè)論文（設(shè)計(jì)）Suspense Related to the Death of Beauty in Edgar Poe’s Short Stories－Casestudy of “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”Suspense Related to the Death of Beauty in Edgar Poe’s Short Stories 1－Casestudy of “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” 11. Introduction 12. Suspense in Literature 2. The Stories of Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher 4. Suspense and Gothic Romanticism 5. Introduction to Traditional Gothic Romanticism 5. Poe and Traditional Gothic Romanticism 6. Poe’s Gothic Romanticism 13. Suspense and the Narrator’s Point of View 15. Definitions of the Narrator and the Point of View 15. The Differences between the Two Kinds of Narrators and the Narrator’s Points of View 16. Presentation of Poe’s Narrator’ Point of View in Stories 17. Suspense and Other Factors 20. Environmental Descriptions 20. Quotations 213. Conclusion 23NOTES 261. IntroductionEdgar Allan Poe (18091849), the famous American poet, short story writer, and a critic, is one of the greatest figures in 19th century American literature. Being in poverty in his whole life, he wrote many sentimental poems in beautiful melody, expressing his melancholy in The Raven, Annabel Lee, To Helen or Ulalume. He was a creative short story writer. People consider him as “the father of the detective story”. Meanwhile, his horror and crime short stories are famous. Ligeia shows us the power of the supernatural。 in The Fall of the House of Usher, everything is going to be mad。 The Black Cat reveals the dark side of human mind。 The Murders in the Rue Morgue is the representations of Dupin’s wisdom, etc. No matter what theme Poe wrote on in his short stories, Gothic Romanticism is their great feature because Poe lived in the age of American Romanticism。 and Poe bined the traditional Gothic with his descriptions of human psyche. Poe is an expert in writing short stories with suspense, and formulated his own principle of writing, which is applied to most of his short stories. We can see that he conveys “the unity of effect” in The Masque of the Red Death, William Wilson and so on. In his philosophy of position, “the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world”(Edgar Allan Poe, 2004: 135). With this eccentric and morbid theme, he wrote two interrelated famous short stories—Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher—in which death of beauty is depicted with techniques of expression. One of them is suspense. For this reason, this thesis will focus on suspense in these two short stories, showing how suspense is reflected by following factors: the stories, Gothic Romanticism, narrator’s point of view, environmental descriptions and quotations.2. Suspense in LiteratureReferring to suspense, the dictionary has such explanations below:“1. A state or condition of mental uncertainty or excitement, as in awaiting a decision or oute, usually acpanied by a degree of apprehension or anxiety.2. A state of mental indecision.3. Undecided or doubtful condition.4. The state or condition of being suspended.” (.)However, when it is put in literature, the meaning is slight different, as it is explained in A Glossary of Literary Terms: “As a plot evolves it arouses expectations in the audience or reader about the future course of events and actions and how characters will respond to them. A lack of certainty, on the part of a concerned reader, about what is going to happen, especially to characters with whom the reader has established a bond of sympathy, is known as suspense” (. Abrams, 2004: 225).This definition tells us clearly that suspense is always related to a plot in a story. It’s uncertainty in readers’ minds. In this way, authors achieve their purpose for “keeping the reader wanting to read more.” “In some stories, the reader may guess the conclusion before they even finish reading the introduction, but when authors add suspense into their master pieces, the stories bee far more interesting and keeps the reader wondering whether if the conclusion of the story would end like they thought it could, and therefore keeps the reader wanting to read more” (.).28Thus, whether a story is good or bad depends on its suspense, no matter it’s a story of horror, or a story of tender affection. Even it’s a love story, there must be suspense about the end。 otherwise the story is insipid to readers because they have known the conclusion in the progress of reading.Being a penniless writer, Poe certainly hoped that his short stories would bring him any financial support, especially when “he foresaw that he could not gain sufficient financial repense from that genre (poem) to maintain himself” (Kevin J. Hayes, 2004: 78). As a result, his stories must be very attractive so that readers can’t stop reading until they came to the end.That’s a main reason for Poe’s using suspense repeatedly.Poe is an expert in suspense, who takes great advantages of some factors to form suspense. Let’s take the examples of Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher.. The Stories of Ligeia and The Fall of the House of UsherThese two short stories never escaped people’s attention and they are mentioned in any introduction of Poe’s works. People read them again and again for leisure, or their study of Poe. These two stories were filmed. As a story of suspense, the weird and horror theme is essential.In the story of Ligeia, the heroine is a beautiful, perfect woman with profound knowledge and extensive learning. She died later, but succeeded in stealing her husband’s second wife’s body to return from the grave. In the story of The Fall of the House of Usher, the plot is similar. A person was invited to his old good friend Usher Roderick’s house in order to relief his friend’s illness. He met Lady Madeline, who was Usher’s sister and behaved like a ghost. She got the same illness as that of Usher. Soon, she died, and Usher fell