Humour and Satire as a Social Criticism in Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Stories

This paper aims to analyze Edgar Allan Poe's short stories in order to explore the realities of American social life in the first half of the 19th century from the perspective of humour and satire, and finally, to criticize of social realities through those literary techniques. Humour is analyzed on the basis of the features of horror, comedy, and deception. And satire is discussed on two levels: literary satire and political one. This paper also focuses on the analysis of the internal connections and progressive levels of the three elements of humour, satire, and social criticism. Poe's humour is not just mechanical hilarity and jokes, it is connected with the common feature of Poe's short stories. Poe combines comical and horrifying features to produce a comical effect in his works, and finally achieves the purpose of satirizing and criticizing society. By narrating a series of highly authentic deceit stories, Poe expresses his criticism of the fake, evil and ugly phenomena in society. Poe attacked the arrogance, hypocrisy, and utilitarianism of the literary world in which his value was not recognized correctly. Poe's humour and satire arc ultimately in order to achieve the effect of social criticism. In Poe's short stories, humour and satire are not just for comic and cynical effect. The essay posits that Poe's humour and satire are closely related to social criticism. (Chungnam National University)