2012 American Literature 3

I. Poe‟s life
Poe -- An editor, a poet, a literary critic, and a writer of fiction. - 1809,born in Boston, - 1811, became an orphan. - 1812, adopted by John Allan, a businessman, and named himself Edgar Allan Poe.
(Larzer Ziff. )
2. In Europe: - In France, was hailed as a pioneer in poetic and fictional techniques. - Shaw said, “Poe was the greatest journalistic critic of his time‟; his poetry is “exquisitely refined‟; and his tales are “complete works of art.”
- Poe‟s theories -- influencing French symbolists and the devotees of “art for art‟s sake.”
• The Philosophy of Composition • The Poetic Principle
III. American Romanticism and Edgar Allen Poe:
- D.H. Lawrence: As long as man lives he will be subject to the yearning of love or the burning of hate, which is only inverted love. We live to stand alone, and listen to the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, who is inside us,.. - Yeats‟ declaration – Poe is “always and for all lands a great lyric poet”.
- Nature to Poe is disorder, offering no security. Poe discerns an elusive beauty and with it, the shadow of death, destruction and disintegration. - Emerson embraces romantic affirmation, Poe embraces romantic agony
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V. Some criticism Divergent evaluation of Poe:
1. In America “…., Poe condemned and rejected reality itself, and took flight into a subjective world in which his wish-fulfillment fantasies might be realized….”
2012 American Literature 3
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
The main points
1. Poe‟s life and works 2. Poe‟s contribution 3. He and his romantic contemporaries 4. Art of Poe‟s short stories 5. Some Criticism 6. The Cask of Amontillado 7. The Tell-Tale Heart
Poe wrote about: - The intensest flow he experienced; the ecstasies of extreme spiritual love, the sense of unison, the sense of heightening of life. - A passion for beauty; - Deep rooted fears of death and murder; - Decaying palaces and pallid moonlight and gaping tombs. - Poe was doomed in a great continuous convulsion of disintegration.
(Dr. Louis Harap )
“ Poe‟s poems and tales are only rarely set in a recognizable part of American, bear no conscious relation to the habit of abstract speculation that marked much of its literature, bypass explicit moral themes, are unconcerned with social matters, and adhere to a “literary diction that is confected.”
IV. Features of his short stories
- To place his characters in a special situation so that their psychological states can be detailed and sharply described. - The incompleteness leading to the destruction of the other, thus to self-destruction.
Poe and Individualism: - Poe as an individualist, sees emblems of the divine security, his seeing is inspired by the Oversoul. - While in nature, Emerson discovers the cosmic force of the Over-soul.
Poe and Transcendentalism: - Poe is a transcendentalist of sorts in that he goes beyond reason and values intuition and imagination. - Like Emerson, he also adventures into the human mind.
- 1833, lived with Mrs. Maria Clemm and Virginia Clemm. - 1836 Poe married his 13-year-old Virginia Clemm. - 1847 Virginia died of tuberculosis. - 1849, Poe died in New York. - He tried alcohol, and any drug he could lay his hand on.
- 1826 - 27, attended the University of Virginia, but expelled for not paying his gambling debts, leading to quarrel with Allan, who refused to pay the debts, and later disowned him. - 1827, joined the U.S. Army. - 1830, entered West Point.
- Gothic tales of Poe:
The terror of which I write is not of Germany, but of the soul.
- The use of complex narrators to manipulate narrative point of view. - Symbols: E.g. rays of light---recesses of human mind.
Poe is absolutely concerned with the disintegration-processes of his own psyche. - People‟s disappointment of human beings themselves and human society - To release their unhappiness and depression of the human society in the pleasure of destruction.
- Short enough to be read in one sitting - Taking place in one locale on a single day (or eveห้องสมุดไป่ตู้ in a few hours) - Centering on a single line of action - Maintaining a single mood. Every word or phrase should contribute to the theme and the mood.
- Poetic imagination for Poe meant an honest exploration of human psyche, but not with morality. - Poe‟s criticism incurred the wrath of his contemporaries and was isolated from them.