The Life and Works of E. A. Poe: a Psychoanalytic Interpretation
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The Life and Works of E. A. Poe: a Psychoanalytic Interpretation (1933) is a psychobiography and a psychoanalytic reading of the work of Edgar Allan Poe written by Princess Marie Bonaparte. Jacques Lacan made use of her commentary in his seminar on "The Purloined Letter."
The Purloined Letter (1956 seminar of Jacques Lacan)
Her thesis is that Poe's art was the product of neurosis. According to Bonaparte, Poe was a "repressed sado-masochist and necrophilist" (299). Bonaparte also claimed that Poe was impotent: "It was opium, Hervey Allen claims, which made Poe sexually impotent, since his conduct with Mary Devereaux was still entirely normal." (85)
René Laforgue, had published The Defeat of Baudelaire: A Psychoanalytical Study of the Neurosis of Charles Baudelaire with the same publisher [1].
References
Bonaparte, Marie. (1949). The life and works of Edgar Allan Poe, a psycho-analytic interpretation (John Rodker, Trans.). London: Imago. (Original work published 1933)