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Death and telling in Poe's "The Imp of the Perverse." (Edgar Allan Poe)

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From: Studies in Short Fiction
Date: 19940322
Author:Brown, Arthur A.

Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Imp of the Perverse' connects reading, writing and death in a manner that makes the reader part of the perversity of both the murder in the story and the act of talking about it secretly. As such, the story includes what Jacques Lacan labeled the three viewpoints of the signifier, the agency of death. These viewpoints are that of the glance that sees nothing, the glance that sees and recognizes that the first glance does not see, and the glance that sees what the first two see and also recognizes that the agency of death is exposed to view.

In her essay, "Henry ...

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