Barrett

Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.

Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.

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Psychoanalytic Denial and Projection in Edgar Allan Poe's Short Fiction

Description
Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis influenced literary criticism and cultural studies in profound ways; significant modern and postmodern theories of literature frequently engage with Freud's theories of the human unconscious. Psychoanalytic criticism and the arrival of "Deconstruction" in America destabilized the boundaries between linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and literature. When theorists applied psychoanalysis…

Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis influenced literary criticism and cultural studies in profound ways; significant modern and postmodern theories of literature frequently engage with Freud's theories of the human unconscious. Psychoanalytic criticism and the arrival of "Deconstruction" in America destabilized the boundaries between linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and literature. When theorists applied psychoanalysis to literary study in the twentieth century, texts suddenly brimmed with secret meaning, distortion, the Symbolic order, and Ecriture feminine; writers and poets became patients susceptible to regressions, unconscious repression, projections and interjections appearing in their work. Reading a text was a form of dream interpretation for the literary critic and using a psychoanalytic approach provided the necessary framework to decode symbolism and untangle loose fantasies. Decades before Freud developed any of his theories, Edgar Allan Poe illustrated the unconscious and other uncharted psychological territory with his Gothic tales. Poe's fascination with psychological behavior has been the perfect subject for psychoanalytic criticism for decades. This project will analyze representations of psychoanalytic denial and projection in Poe's short fiction: "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Imp of the Perverse", "William Wilson", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado", and "The Masque of the Red Death".
ContributorsSmith, Noah (Author) / Hattenhauer, Darryl (Thesis director) / Cisler, Sherry (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
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Madness and Immorality in the Works of William Shakespeare and Edgar A. Poe

Description
This thesis analyzes the relationship between the themes of madness and immorality in two plays from William Shakespeare (Hamlet and Othello) and three stories from Edgar Allan Poe (“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Black Cat”). In the beginning, this thesis provides a brief overview of the…

This thesis analyzes the relationship between the themes of madness and immorality in two plays from William Shakespeare (Hamlet and Othello) and three stories from Edgar Allan Poe (“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Black Cat”). In the beginning, this thesis provides a brief overview of the history of madness, focusing on humanity’s longstanding association of mental illnesses with immorality. Afterward, an analysis of the aforementioned works reveals connections and differences in how the works portray the relationship between the two themes. Throughout the analysis, the thesis includes information regarding each author’s historical context (specifically in regard to social, cultural, and historical associations between madness and immorality) to explore the authors’ depictions of their mad characters. The plays Hamlet and Othello indicate that madness, on one hand, results from God’s bestowment of rightful punishment on those that pursue revenge against His prohibition of seeking revenge. The plays, although primarily Othello on this second point, also suggest that madness originates from the influence of diabolical sources that gain control over those that pursue immoral actions. On the other hand, Poe depicts the relationship between madness and immorality slightly differently. In the works of Poe, immorality and madness connect in that madness triggers immorality. In the end, this analysis reveals how these works, differing slightly in the details, nevertheless show humanity’s old, prevailing association between madness and immorality.
ContributorsAragon, Maya (Author) / Fazio, Marsha (Thesis director) / Hattenhauer, Darryl (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05