1) Alexander Diaz
9/11/2017
Project Proposal
2) The Study Of The Similarities Of Demonology Within Edgar Allan Poe’s Black Cat and HopFrog To Combat Alcoholism
3) Faculty Advisor: Maj Knepper
4) My motives for this project is to uncover the demons we have and how we express them through writing. THis is expanded off of past works such as ghost tours I did for field work last semester and the many papers I wrote in American Literature class about Poe and his short stories. I want to understand why Poe wrote the way he did and how he actually used demons in order to create this supernatural realm in where he can not only teach a lesson but give a grave warning of what might happen if someone doesn’t change their ways. Poe basically does what every ghost tale does and creates this fear around doing something in order for people not to do it. Like how the famous movie IT was derived from an old german tale of a demon who would eat little children and feed off of their fear if they misbehaved.
5) My project will basically be going over the two works of Poe, Hop Frog and Black Cat, and comparing the similarities within those two stories I will relate it back to the many lores of the demon Ba’al that fits the demons MO. Once I compare how the demon arises in both of these stories I will explain how Poe uses the supernatural, specifically demonology, to give a lesson about alcoholism and what alcohol can do to you. This comes in a time of temperance where stories usually were upbeat and happy and gave a lesson at the end. But Poe takes a more sinister approach, using fear in order to convince people that the abuse of alcohol should not be something so lightly done.
6) So the three main steps of research that I need to go through is one, reading the two stories over again the refresh my memory on the subjects at hand and taking notes on what specific details relate back to my main thesis. Two, searching for other scholarly work on what others may have already said on the subject or what might be similiar to my subject that I can use in my own paper. And three would be searching for the specific demon lores and different back stories that might help in connecting Poe’s work with demonology. Maybe even getting a background on Poe himself and his own religious beliefs might prove to be useful since it might connect this idea even further.
7) The significance of my research boils down to understanding how Poe used the powers of the supernatural, as he usually does, to teach a lesson about one of the many illnesses that he was affected by during his time. This project is to show how, in a time of temperance where every other story ended happily, Poe used horrific endings in order to show the truth of what alcoholism can do to a person. The exigence of this project is to basically have a deeper understanding of Poe’s work and to see how he used such odd methods within his stories to influence others.
8)
Poe, Edgar Allan, and J. Gerald. Kennedy. The Portable Edgar Allan Poe. Penguin Books, 2006.
“A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Hop-Frog’.” Interesting Literature. N.p., 14 June 2017. Web. 11 Sept. 2017.
“A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’.” Interesting Literature. N.p., 15 May 2017. Web. 11 Sept. 2017.
“The Spiritual Consequences of Alcohol Consumption.” OmniThought.org. N.p., 09 Apr. 2017. Web. 11 Sept. 2017.
“Baal.” Baal – New World Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2017.