Lacole and other stories adaptations of three of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories /

by Morgan, Bethany A.

This Master’s thesis contains a creative adaptation of three of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories: “Ligeia,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Purloined Letter.” I have always been aware of the art of adaptation but never actually studied it until Dr. Elizabeth Rivlin’s seminar on Renaissance Drama: Adaptations and Appropriations. I became interested in adapting one of my favorite nineteenth-century authors and rewriting his or her stories into a contemporary setting and context. I chose to incorporate the aspects of adaptation, gothic literature, and literary representation of religion into my stories. My interest in Poe’s work began in the summer of 2006 in Professor Frank Day’s American Literature class. We read two of Poe’s short stories, in addition to some of his essays on literary criticism. I enjoyed the morbidity and psychological depth of Poe’s writings and decided to adapt three of his short stories into a contemporary context. Through the process of rereading and rewriting these stories, I made several changes to the original concepts. I hoped to prove a scholarship behind the stories I chose to submit for my thesis. I want my stories to reflect on certain elements from Poe’s writings, but I also desire my stories to stand alone. If the reader has never read Poe’s stories, he or she will still understand and enjoy my stories. If the reader has read Poe’s stories, he or she will enjoy the new approach to an old idea. The scholarship of my thesis delves into the art of adaptation, the psychological depths of some characters, the smaller judgments of civil law, and iii the aspects of devout and hypocritical religious figures. My personal interest leads me to explore the psyche of an obsessive lover (“Lacole”), the mind of a hypocritical student of theology (“Justice”), the minds of minimum-security criminals (“Justice”), and the minds of undergraduate college students (“The Stolen Will”). My final goal in the scholarship of these pieces was to consider the role of the palimpsest. I rewrote Poe’s works for my own purposes, yet the ideas of the original artist remain in my stories. Overall, my work employs the art of adaptation and creative writing in a tribute to Poe and to the process of understanding and recreating the mind of a writer. iv