Ordering memories
Tania PeptanABSTRACT. The present study attempts to loosely intertwine fictional works of two authors (Poe and Shakespeare) of overwhelming legacy, in shared ghostly or indefinite presences, demanding order from contradictorily unreliable elucidators, in a form of transgression (a condition transferred to the corresponding outliving legislators, namely heirs, narrators, detectives), in the way they narrativize a so-called unfinished or “pending” death as a matter of persistence of haunting memory. An ordering tendency refers also to an internal adjustment, it responds to the trauma, “an event in absentia,” delayed into memory and built retroactively with a necessity of materializing fear in order to gain a sense of control. The disruptive effect of untimely departure determines conflicts that channel narrative energies in an aesthetic contemplation and psychological adjustment to the most radical transition from life to death, in coping with vengeful instincts, sometimes self-oriented, and with anxieties of forgetfulness. pp. 67–77
Keywords: Poe; Shakespeare; ghost; order; memory; forgetting; pending death; control