포우 단편 소설에 나타난 동물 자력론

Abstract

The idea of animal magnetism was invented by Franz Anton Mesmer, whose mesmerism was closely associated with animal spirits and galvanic electricity in the mind of nineteenth-century Americans. Connecting consciousness and the material body, the magnetic fluid in animal magnetism was known as the “unifying force” between the mind and the body. This essay examines “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” (1850) and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845) with regard to Poe’s interest in animal magnetism, seen in the context of the scientific paradigm shift between animal spirits and animal electricity. Animal magnetism for Poe is another name for poetic imagination exalting the human soul. He envisions literature as a space comparable to the electromagnetic field, where any distinctions between doctor and patient, writer and reader, manipulator and manipulated are blurred, and the two sympathetic parties are connected by the universal fluid, that is, poetic imagination.