Edgar Allan Poe was an important Romantic writer who had a troubled life during the
1800s. The present work aims to realize a bibliographical analysis of three short stories
written by Poe, they are: “William Wilson”, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Ligeia”.
Each of these stories reveal specific psychoanalytic aspects of the characters that allow the
reader to understand them in a deeper way. In this paper, the psychoanalytic approach has the
main objective to comprehend the aspects that stand out in Edgar Allan Poe’s work and to
analyze the points where those literatures were similar. The specific objectives of this paper
include analyze how the uncanny feeling is established in the stories written by Poe; examine
how the double is constructed in “William Wilson”; recognize the three aspects of the mind
studied by Sigmund Freud in “The Fall of the House of Usher”; and associate the Oedipus
complex with the main character of “Ligeia”. The results revealed the human contradictions
in William Wilson; the house being the shelter of the characters, just as the mind is the shelter
of the unconscious in “The Fall of the House of Usher”. In this sense, the ego is represented
by Rodrick Usher, the id is related to Madeline and the superego is the narrator of the story.
Finally, the results also showed how the obsession emerges by the failure of the character to
overcome the Oedipus complex in “Ligeia”. From a fundamented perspective, this study
emphasizes the importance of psychology during the analysis of a literary work. Through the
psychoanalytical approach it was possible to understand the stories from a new perspective.
