Between Fancy and Reality: The Crossing of Borders in Poe’s “Ligeia”

Pacini, Lia

Planned object

Title: Between Fancy and Reality: The Crossing of Borders in Poe’s “Ligeia”

Abstract:

The essay aims at exploring the concept of liminality between the borders of reality and fancy, life and death, myth, and fact in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Ligeia” (1838). If we envision reality as a line endlessly stretching backward and forward, we might imagine the main female character of the tale, Lady Ligeia, as lingering under or above this line, in someplace other, while the narrator is rooted on this very line of materiality. The woman is both a presence and an absence due to her characteristics as a threshold entity between the world of the living and another realm. The narration extensively hints at elements that lead us to believe that Poe’s protagonist is trying to access, or tirelessly trying to understand, the limits and potentiality of the gateway to the unknown, with Ligeia being an object able to lead him to it. The paper will not only study the metaphysical implications of Ligeia’s persona, but also her interconnection to the world of animals and the mythological links to the siren Lígeia. The last section will deal with the geographical motives of the displacement of the story from a continental area close to the Rhyne to a typical Gothic panorama, such as the English countryside, as a natural mirror to the feelings of loss experienced by the main character.

Contents

5 Marina Bianchi Artistic/Literary Spaces and Borders: A Brief Introduction to the Monographic Issue n. 4
Articles
11 Francesca Guidotti Charlotte Lennox’s Path to The Female Quixote: A Journey Along and Across Borders
35 José María Balcells Doménech Amor de Láser de Rafael Ballesteros: una poética de transgresión vanguardista
53 Francisco Javier Escobar Borrego “Palabras del agua” y “versos en piedra”: huellas de Guillén y Aleixandre en el imaginario poético-musical de Atencia (con paseos literarios, ecos de Caracola y coda cernudiana)
83 Fernanda Pavié Santana Espacio, memoria y resiliencia en Ruido de Álvaro Bisama (2012)
107 Domenico Coppola Dritte Räume und Widerspenstigkeit der Natur: eine Studie zu den Wechselwirkungen zwischen Mensch und Raum in Robert Seethalers Roman Ein ganzes Leben
131 Lia Pacini Between Fancy and Reality: The Crossing of Borders in Poe’s “Ligeia”
151 Marta Colleoni Debussy, l’étoffe d’un vrai poète ? La synthèse poétique-musicale des Proses lyriques
173 Andrea Cornaggia Monstres d’inépuisable beauté. L’effondrement des limites du corps grotesque chez Alfred Jarry

book reviews

195 Serenella Zanotti, James Joyce, English Teacher. Archival Explorations into Language Teaching in Early Twentieth-Century Europe, Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2020, 204 pp. (Reviewed by Polina Shvanyukova, Università degli Studi di Udine)
199 Steven Swarbrick, The Environmental Unconscious. Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2023, pp. 336. (Reviewed by Stefano Rozzoni, Università degli Studi di Bergamo)
205 Marta Palenque y Ángela Rico Cerezo (eds.), Las colecciones El Cuento Nuevo (1918-1919 y 1934-1935), Ediciones Ulises, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, colección Literatura Breve, Sevilla-Madrid, 2022. (Revisado por Juan Molina Porras, Sociedad Menéndez Pelayo)
211 Pedro J. Plaza, Matriz Granada: Valparaíso Ediciones, 2023, 112 pp. (Reseñado por Erica Lacanna, Università di Genova)
215 Isaac Rosa, Lugar seguro. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 2022, 309 pp. (Revisado por Rosa María Jiménez Padilla, Università degli Studi di Bergamo)
219 Toni Montesinos, Ojos llenos de alegría. Estar vivo con R.W. Emerson Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 2023, 592 pp. (Reseñado por José de María Romero Barea, escritor, traductor, periodista cultural y profesor)
223 José María Saussol, Por el sendero. Almería: Círculo Rojo, 2022, 376 pp. (Revisado por Fernanda Pavié Santana, Università degli Studi di Bergamo)