International Journal of Language & Literature

The Problem of Mental Landscape in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym
Daniela Carstea

Abstract
The article attempts a formulation of the conditions of possibility for voyage as an epistemological method. The South Pole, the pole of discovery, seems to allow Pym to sublimate his oceanic passion, to turn the desire to die into a desire to know. All the hardships undergone seem to break the circle of his melancholy desires and passions, the ensuing freedom allowing Pym to travel differently, driven, this time, by the political, geographical or ethnographic interest, or curiosity. I argue that, by inscribing in the figure of desire the schema of rebellion and, vice versa, by describing rebellion (as transgression of a pact of submission or as violence) as a composite figure wherein desire is retraceable, the narrative tends to establish a relation of identity between the same and the other, between the individual (the protagonist) and society (the crew), the Civilised and the Barbarians. All in all, The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym can be construed either as a phenomenology of consciousness or as an odyssey of the spirit, witnessing the passage from immediate knowledge to ultimate knowledge. But what the text ironically reveals is that the condition of existence of this knowledge is self-ignorance.

Full Text: PDF      DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v10n2a4