LAS LECTURAS PSICOANALÍTICAS DE POE: UNA NUEVA APROXIMACIÓN SEMIÓTICA A «THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER»1/PSICHOANALYTIC READINGS OF POE: A NEW SEMIOTIC APPROACH TO «THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

• Published in: Signa (Madrid, Spain) no. 21; p. 567
• Main Author: Doncel, Rosa Eugenia Montes
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Madrid Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED) 01.01.2012
• Subjects: American literature; Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849); Semiotics
• ISSN: 1133-3634; 2254-9307

El narrador habla meridianamente del perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other-it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the state in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the «House of Usher»-an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion (Poe, 1970: 218). Los primeros días que el huésped de Usher pasa en la casa son narrados a través de un relato siléptico («We painted and read together»: 224), y el acontecimiento nuclear de la muerte de Lady Madeline es anunciado abruptamente tras una llamativa elipsis de todas las circunstancias en que el hecho se produjo («I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight [...]»: 229); es por cierto la misma forma en que se comunica en «Ligeia» que el desconsolado viudo ha vuelto a casarse. 13 El primer parágrafo del texto se cierra con este comentario del narrador: «I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down-but with a shudder even more thrilling than before-upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows» (217. 14 Escribe Thomas Mabbott: «The House of Usher has only one soul which has its abode in the mansion, and in the members of the family [...] since they are twins and childless, this soul is interdependent with them and the building [...] if one dies, all must perish together» (2000: 394).