THE AESTHETICS AND UTILITARIAN VALUES OF STORYING INSANITY IN EDGAR ALLAN POE’S, NIKOLAS GOGOL’S, CHINUA ACHEBE’S AND ADEKUNLE MAMMUDU’S SHORT STORIES
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Abstract
Insanity possesses its own peculiar beauty and serves as a powerful instrument in literature, revealing hidden truths about the human condition, this study investigates the aesthetics and utilitarian values of narrating insanity in selected short stories: Edgar
Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat”, Nikolai Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman”, Chinua Achebe’s “The Madman”, and Adekunle Mamudu’s “The Beauty of Madness”. It examines how madness functions not merely as a psychological or pathological condition but as a narrative technique, a thematic instrument, and a philosophical metaphor. The research situates insanity as oth an artistic medium and a utilitarian tool that enables the exploration of social, moral, and existential tensions within diverse cultural contexts. Anchored in psychoanalytic literary theory, drawing particularly from the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, the study interprets madness as a manifestation of repressed desires, fractured identities, and unconscious
resistance to societal norms. Through close textual analysis, it investigates how anger, frustration, and the collapse of reason serve as emotional and structural forces that drive each story’s form and content. The study adopts a qualitative methodology, relying on close reading, interpretation, and comparative analysis to unpack how each author constructs madness as a mode of critique and revelation. The findings reveal that narrating insanity operates at the level of aesthetics usefulness in exploring human consciousness and societal dysfunction. Madness, as represented in these stories, becomes a creative discourse on identity, alienation, corruption, and the instability of reason. Ultimately, the study asserts that madness in literature is not a deviation from
meaning but a deepening of it — a poetic method of confronting truths that sanity often conceals
Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat”, Nikolai Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman”, Chinua Achebe’s “The Madman”, and Adekunle Mamudu’s “The Beauty of Madness”. It examines how madness functions not merely as a psychological or pathological condition but as a narrative technique, a thematic instrument, and a philosophical metaphor. The research situates insanity as oth an artistic medium and a utilitarian tool that enables the exploration of social, moral, and existential tensions within diverse cultural contexts. Anchored in psychoanalytic literary theory, drawing particularly from the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, the study interprets madness as a manifestation of repressed desires, fractured identities, and unconscious
resistance to societal norms. Through close textual analysis, it investigates how anger, frustration, and the collapse of reason serve as emotional and structural forces that drive each story’s form and content. The study adopts a qualitative methodology, relying on close reading, interpretation, and comparative analysis to unpack how each author constructs madness as a mode of critique and revelation. The findings reveal that narrating insanity operates at the level of aesthetics usefulness in exploring human consciousness and societal dysfunction. Madness, as represented in these stories, becomes a creative discourse on identity, alienation, corruption, and the instability of reason. Ultimately, the study asserts that madness in literature is not a deviation from
meaning but a deepening of it — a poetic method of confronting truths that sanity often conceals
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