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Article: Poe's "The Black Cat" as psychobiography: some reflections on the narratological dynamics.(Edgar Allan Poe)(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Studies in Short Fiction
- Article date:
- March 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Studies in Short Fiction. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Published initially in the United States Saturday Post on 19 August 1843, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" remains one of his most mystifying and horrifying tales. The narrator's motive for murdering his wife, as one might expect, has elicited much commentary and speculation from critics. Few critics seriously accept the narrator's own dubious rationalizations for the cruel murder either of his pet cat or of his wife, that being what he has done, so he confesses, he attributes to the "spirit of PERVERSENESS ..., one of the primitive impulses of the human heart ..., to do wrong for wrong's sake" (Poe 852); or his claim at the end of the tale that the cat, which he calls ...