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assignment
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The American Literature
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Style and Technique of Poe as a short story writer
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Jayshree
Kunchala
Sem:3
Roll
No:10
Guided
By: Prof.&Dr.Dilip Barad
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Submitted To : Department of
English,M.K.Bhavnagar University
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4/10/2014
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ITRODUCTION:
About Edgar Poe
was born 19 January 1809 in Boston, where his parents Elizabethan aroid Poe and
David Poe are both actors are performing. Elizabeth Arnold Poe dies 8 dismember
1811 in Richmond, Virginia.Since David Poe has abandoned the family prior to
his wife’s death Edgar his brother William Henry and sister Rosaline enters
different foster families. Frances and john Allan take Edgar into their family
without legally adopting him however. In 1815 john Allan moves his family to
London where he established a branch of office of mercantile firm Allan and
Ellis. In 1816 Edgar enters a London boarding school run by the misses Dasburg.
In 1838 Poe moves
his family to Philadelphia early in the year. Harper publishes the narrative of
author. Gordon Pym in July. In 1838 he becomes an editor of Burton’s Gentleman’s
Magazine to which he contributes most of its reviews and several tales
including the conversation of Eros and charm ion “The Fall of the House of
Usher”. In 1843 “The tell tale heart appears in the pioneer in January and the
installment of “The mystery of Marie Roget” Appears in the February ladies
companion. In 1843 The gold bug wins $100 prize in literary contents Dollar newspaper.
CRITICS
VIEWS ON SHORT STORY
Edgar Allan Poe poet, short story writer,
and critic was a conservational figure in the publishing world of antebellum
America. His ability to spark controversy stemmed not only from an image
concocted by his contemporary detectors but from the sharp tone and pointed
content of the critical articles he wrote during his life time he worked as an
editor and contributor to magazines in several American publishing venues
including Richmond Newyourk and Philadelphia.
The obituary
notices following Poe’s death in 1849 struggled to make sense of what fellow authors
felt was the central contradiction of his life that he was the one of the country’s
preeminent literary “geniuses” yet he had lived a life of misery and privation.
Overwhelmingly Poe’s contemporary’s where forced to conclude that his peculiar
personality was responsible for his lace of professional success. The very
organization of a mind such as that of Poe the very tension and tone of his
exclusively strung nerves………utterly unfitted him for the rude jostling and
fierce competitor ship of trade. Henry Beck first felt in was Poe’s refusal to
join the critical status quo that made his failure inevitable: Poe was no time
server and as critic he could not and would not lie. Poe disturbed soul
responsible in this accounts for his alienation from a mainstream literary and
social world remains powerful explanatory device in modern assessments of his
professional life and works. Poe’s peculiarity had justified his absence from
most twentieth century accounts of American literature.
POE AND
GOTHIC TRADITION
Few would hazard to long standing opinion that Poe was a
master of the gothic horror tale although many might not as readily be aware
that he did not invent Gothic fiction. Such coverts as well as many offered
over the course of century succeeding his death not withstanding Poe’s gothic
tales are what have typically attracted greatest number of readers and that
allurement is wholly understandable. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for example
drew repeatedly on landscapes to throw into high relief the emotional
explosions that occur throughout the novel. American authors understandably had
no castles abbeys or cloisters in the near proximity that European authors had
and thus AMERICAN GOTHICS tented to foreground other varieties of tangibles. Hawthorne
in The Scarlet Letter (1850) focused
first on the forbidding jail so important to life in seventeenth century Boston
shifted to the scaffold and then made landscapes reflect lights and shadows in
human life and characters. Poe found in gothic tradition the very kinds of
settings and characters that transformed in his imagination would contribute
wonderful symbolism to psychologically plausible narratives of multiple
outreach. The symbolism may also continue to touch readers own innermost
emotional chords (fear of the dark fear to fortune and pain fear of starvation
fear of unknown fear of death)and this factor may promote a recurrent
fascination for such reading. Richard Wilbur started that for him Poe’s probing
of psychic states “transitions between those states and the possible meanings
and implications that such states might have “plus his employment of dream
structures are long with his obviously well considered diction what constitute Poe’s
greatness. This greatness is exemplified in his tales no matter how odd their
language may initially seem. Doubtless Wilbur’s matches those of many other
readers as to what is so compelling about Poe’s tale.
Two much admired
tales “The black cat “and “The tell-tale heart “both appeal in terms of their
Gothicism. In the former as in “Metzengerstein”animal and human characteristics
are reversed as the narrator who, whatever his disclaimers, reveals bit by bit
that he is indeed quite sadistic and maniacal or animalistic while the cats
seem to become quite human. Alcohol complicates his nature although there is
none of the comedy in this alcoholic story as there had been in the folio club
narratives. “The black cat “may in its
inclusion of masculine and feminine traits as parts of an integrated self (what
Poe’s Duping in “The purloined letters” distinguishes in his distinguishing the
mathematician from poet. “The fall of house of usher” one might say that in “The
black cat” as in several of the others the narrator is bested by an avenging
woman whom he has wronged. But this wife remains dead there no supernaturalism
to thicken the plot and it is the very alive cat that brings about the
denouement Here then is another Presque modification of Gothicism.
“The tell tale
heart” similarly centers on the effects of a gailty conscience that of the
narrator who had murdered old man with whom he lives. Setting out to prove his
sanity this narrator well before his story ends convenes us that he is indeed
made. He is clear cut descendant from Gothic character whose nerves the furnish
the platform on which they live. The detailed care in planning the old man’s
death the ascription of narratives motives having streamed from the appearance
of the victim eye. And the tense build up to the actual murder as the killer watches and listen all reveal
narrators derangements he calls madness “over acuteness of the senses”
ironically his over acute sensitivity leads to his arrest. When he thinks he
can hear the beating of the dead man’s heart’s which drives him over the drink
what our narrator actually experiences is the urgings of is own guilty conscience
one made. Since the tale centers on seeing and hearing both sense located in
the head poe by means of this organs sensations again prompts readers to focus
on the human head and more speciphically on the human mind heart and mind are
often used interchangeably to signify emotion and emotion pointedly signify in
this story. The title itself may embody and irony although the narrator tries
to establish the rationalism in his madness he is never the less betrayed by
his heart that is his emotions those emotions are contextually propriety in his
head aching and his ears ringing. Thus found and sense meld hear as we more
typically think of them eliding in a poem.
“The fall of the house of
usher” probably an erasure as one of Poe’s greatest achievement in the short
story and it has admitted many approaches. The tale offers an anxiety ridden
narrator protagonist a hunted mention
tented by haunted siblings who eventually come to “haunt” the story teller
mysterious doctor whose intents seems to be nefarious, plus a veritable gallery
of gothic properties bewildering corridors eerie chamber a terrifying poem that
descends from the interspersed “song” in many gothic novels A picture that is
animated in its in animation a large serving out of supernaturalism or seeming supernaturalism
mystifying illness of the perishing frail one distorted thought and sense
perception that disturb usher and the narrator live burial and the horrifying return
of the interred death of both usher siblings collapse of the mention a the
lasting effect of these horrors upon the narrator all these and much more are
dramatized it model concision. Not accidentally does Poe gives us a tale of disintegrating
boys but more important disintegrating psyches as well which he frames with a
mansion that looks like human head granted that head is grotesque in its
corporeal appearance but once again Poe directs our closer attention to what
lies inside. The opening of the story seems to take place outdoors but what is
precise geographical location of “a singularly dreary tract of country”
traversed by narrator on ours back I submit that even at this initial stage Poe
is establishing a geography of the imagination. At the house of ushers the
narrator “found myself” a loaded phrase which in context with the variations on
house helps to psychological emphasis within the tale no matter outward gothic
trapping lie at the surface. In what does this self-consist very quickly
attention is drown toward the building proper which is melancholy a mansion of
gloom so thinks the onlooker. Ironically although he resent himself as a
rational orderly friend capable of opting with Roderick usher’s negative
fancies this narrators vocabulary strikingly gothic in its implications as
evident in thecotation above in thinking about how a “ere different arrangement
for the particular scene of the detail of the picture would alter his responses
he looks down turn beside to house only the sustain only greater “shudder” in
the image seen their high of course include that of his own face. The blackness
of the house its vacant eyelike windows the rank weeds and pale tars of decayed
trees nearby mirror his own Constance and thus his own mindset. Where this head
of his which resembles the mention in appearance and thus occasions his
emotional unrest because what he sees appalls him to look different were it not
so melancholy he might be of a more pleasant frame of mind.
His horse being
stabled by a servant the narrator presiding even farther within is fraught with
rising anxieties because of the valet’s healthy steps and low cunning and perplexity
of the family doctor who accosted me with temptation as he existed two question
immediately emerge.
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