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E'A' Poe and the Gothic Tale

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Title: E'A' Poe and the Gothic Tale


1
E.A. Poe and the Gothic Tale
  • Cultura Inglese II S. Anelli

2
Poes Cultural Legacy
  • Poe as an originator of Detective Fiction
  • "Each of Poe's detective stories is a root from
    which a whole literature has developed.... Where
    was the detective story until Poe breathed the
    breath of life into it?
  • (Arthur
    Conan Doyle)

3
Poes Cultural Legacy
  • Poe and Science Fiction
  • Scientific (or pseudo-scientific) discourses as a
    fundamental source of inspiration for his
    creative imagination.
  • "Pym tells what a very intelligent mind could
    imagine about the south polar region a century
    ago
  • (H. G. Wells)

4
Poes Cultural Legacy
  • His Poes ratiocinating hero is the ancestor
    of Sherlock Holmes and his many successors, his
    tales of the future lead to H. G. Wells, his
    adventure stories to Jules Verne and Robert Louis
    Stevenson
  • (H.G. Auden)

5
Poes Cultural Legacy
  • Poe and the Gothic Tradition

Poe as a foremost proponent of the Gothic strain
in literature. Poe as a icon for the troubled
genius and for the horror in art in contemporary
popular culture.
6
The Gothic Poe
  • "At sixteen I discovered the work of Edgar
    Allan Poe When I came home from the office
    where I worked I went straight to my room, took
    the cheap edition of his Tales of the Grotesque
    and Arabesque, and began to read. I still
    remembered my feelings .. I was afraid, but
    this fear made me discover something Ive never
    forgotten since fear, you see, is an emotion
    people like to feel when they know they are safe.
    Very likely, it's because I was so taken with
    the Poe stories that I later made suspense films.
    I cant help comparing what Ive tried to put in
    my films with what Poe put in his works a
    completely unbelievable story told to the readers
    with such a spellbinding logic that you get the
    impression that the same thing could happen to
    you tomorrow
  • (A. Hitchock)

7
The Gothic Poe
  • Legend vs craftmanship
  • Poes myth a tormented genius, a disturbed
    soul.
  • Vs.
  • Contemporary vision of Poe as a rational writer
    ( rationalist in method as well as in practice),
    perfeclty conscious of the narrative techniques
    he adopted and of the dynamics of the literary
    market and the journalistic world of his time.

8
The Gothic Poe
  • Poes literary reputation in America was
    blackened by accusations of perversion,
    alcoholism and drug addiction
  • He walked the streets in madness or melancholy,
    with lips moving in indistinct cursesand all
    night, with drenched garments and arms wildly
    beating the wind and rain, he would speak as if
    to spirits that at such time only could be evoked
    by him from that Aidenn close by whose portals
    his disturbed soul sought to forget the ills to
    which his constitution subjected him
  • (R. Griswold, Introduction to Poes Tales of the
    Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840)

9
Poes Technique
  • Basic Principles
  • UNITY (create a single effect to which
    everything must tend, both in a poem and in a
    tale)
  • BREVITY
  • RATIONALITY

10
Poes Technique
  • The ordinary novel is objectionable, from its
    length, for reasons analogous to those which
    render length objectionable in the poem. As the
    novel cannot be read at one sitting, it cannot
    avail itself of the immense benefit of totality.
    Worldly interests, intervening during the pauses
    of perusal, modify, counteract and annul the
    impressions intended. But simple cessation in
    reading would, of itself, be sufficient to
    destroy the true unity. In the brief tale,
    however, the author is enabled to carry out his
    full design without interruption. During the hour
    of perusal, the soul of the reader is at the
    writers control

11
Poes Technique
  • A skilful artist has constructed a tale. He has
    not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his
    incidents, but having deliberately conceived a
    certain single effect to be wrought, he then
    invents such incidents, he then combines such
    events, and discusses them in such tone as may
    best serve him in establishing this preconceived
    effect. In the whole composition there should
    be no word written of which the tendency, direct
    or indirect, is not to the one pre-established
    design.
  • (E.A. Poe, Commentary on Hawthornes Twice-Told
    Tales, 1842)

12
Poes Technique
  • SINGLE EFFECT
  • Effect

The totality of impression or emotional impact
upon the reader
13
Poes Technique
  • BREVITY
  • If any literary work is too long to be read at
    one sitting, we must be content to dispense with
    the immensely important effect derivable from
    unity of impression for, if two sittings be
    required, the affairs of the world interfere and
    everything like totality is destroyed
  • (E.A. Poe, The Philosophy of Composition, 1846)

14
Poes Technique
  • Tales of Ratiocination or detection
  • Reason Deductive Method
  • Tales of Imagination
  • Hallucinations Nightmares
  • Horror from inside, horror of the soul

15
Poes Nightmare Formula
  • RENEWAL OF THE GOTHIC TRADITION
  • Gothic Artistic Style (12th-16th c.)
  • architectural style of the Middle Ages (12th-14th
    c.) pointed windows, dark, narrow spaces etc.
  • Irregular and barbarous, opposed to classicism
  • Wild, mysterious, frightening, supernatural

16
Poes Nightmare Formula
  • RENEWAL OF THE GOTHIC LITERARY TRADITION
  • Gothic Novel (late 18th -early 19th c.)
  • - magic, mystery, suspense, horror,
    supernatural powers
  • - emotions of fear, terror and pity
  • - to shock the readers
  • H. Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
  • A. Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
  • M. Lewis, The Monk (1798)
  • M. Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern
    Prometheus (1818)

17
Poes Nightmare Formula
  • RENEWAL OF THE TERROR TALE
  • He Poe was the one who discovered our great
    subject, the disintegration of personality in the
    field of narrative fiction
  • (Allen Tate)

18
Poes Nightmare Formula
  • Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840)
  • Arabesque A style of decorative design.
  • stylized flowers, foliage, fruits and animal
    outlines
  • strangeness, appeal to the faculty of imagination
    and wonder

19
Poes Nightmare Formula
  • Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840)
  • Grotesque
  • - fantastic representations of humane and
    animal forms
  • - bizarre, ugly, unnatural, fantastic, abnormal
  • - comic and tragic

20
Poes Nightmare Formula
  • Poes defence against the charge of germanism
    and plagiarism
  • The charge of writing Gothic tales is in bad
    taste, and the grounds of it have not been
    sufficiently considered. Let us admit, for the
    moment, that the phantasy pieces now given are
    Germanic . If in many of my productions
    terror has been the thesis, I maintain that
    terror is not of Germany, but of the soul that
    I have deduced this terror only from its
    legitimate sources, and urged it only to its
    legitimate results.
  • (E.A. Poe, Preface to Tales of the Grotesque and
    Arabesque, 1840)

21
Poes Nightmare Formula
  • Soul Mind
  • Poe draws on English and German gothic tradition
    (very popular among readers, although considered
    as subliterature by critics) to create fine
    psychological fiction.
  • Terror from inside gt Psychic Terror
  • Dark Side of the Self
  • Dark Side of 19th c. American Conscience (faith
    in democracy and in scientific progress, but
    obsessed by the idea of Evil and of the natural
    wickedness of man, rooted in Puritanism)
  • Poe vs R.W. Emerson, H.D. Thoreau, W. Whitman

22
Poes Nightmare Formula
  • TERRIFYING VISION OF THE INDIVIDUAL
  • To be thoroughly conversant with Mans heart, is
    to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped
    volume of Despair (E.A. Poe, Marginalia, 1848)
  • Such a vision comes from
  • Direct experience with insanity
  • New (pseudo-) sciences, focusing on the study of
    the human mind (Phrenology Mesmerism)

23
Poes Nightmare Formula
  • Phrenology a theory which claims to be able to
    determine character, personality traits and
    criminal tendencies on the basis of the shape of
    the head. Developed by the German physician F.J.
    Gall around 1800, it became very popular also in
    America in the 19th century.
  • Basic principles the brain is the organ of the
    mind, the mind has a set of different mental
    faculties, each particular faculty is represented
    in a different part or organ of the brain.

24
Poes Nightmare Formula
  • Mesmerism (or Animal Magnetism) an earlier name
    for hypnosis or hypnotism. The name of this
    discipline comes from the german physician Franz
    Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), who believed in the
    existence of a physical force a universal
    magnetic fluid, pervading both the animate and
    the inanimate world - which could be used to
    cure mental and physical states of disorder.
    Mesmer claimed to be able to exert his strong
    will over his patients and to control their
    actions as well as their minds by using, at
    first, magnets and, later, even without touching
    them (hypnosis).
  • On this subject Townsheds Facts in Mesmerism,
    1840 (London), 1841 (Boston)

25
Poes Nightmare Formula
  • Main features of Poes Horror Tales
  • Psychic plausibility (lt great emotional impact)
  • Symbolism
  • Uncanny atmosphere of terror and anxiety
  • Interior monologues
  • Theme/ figure of the Double-self
  • Influence of pseudo-sciences

26
William Wilson (1839)
  • Poes archetypal horror tale
  • Focus on
  • Narrator (unreliable)
  • Atmosphere (movement from the outer world to the
    inner self villagegt wall, gate gt front of the
    housegtinside the buildinggt school rooms)
  • Relationship btw. the narrator and his namesake
    (affinities and differences)
  • gtwhisper (inner voice)

27
William Wilson (1839)
  • Theme of the Double (conflict btw. the desires of
    the physical self the first W.W. and the
    values of conscience the second W.W.)
  • - conscience seen by the narrator as a
    tormenting, punitive force

28
The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
  • Focus on
  • - Theme madness
  • Perverseness psychic duplicity
  • gt Theme of the Double relationship btw.
    the narrator and the old man
  • Symbols
  • -volture EyegtEvil eyegt evil I
  • - Heart
  • Influence of medical studies on the human mind
    (see I. Ray, Treatise, 1838)
  • Narrator nameless, obsessed criminal

29
  • Homicidal maniacsall possess one feature in
    common, the irresistible, motiveless impulse to
    destroy life.
  • (Dr. I. Ray, Treatise, 1838)

30
Perverseness
  • a radical, primitive, irriducible sentiment
    which impels us to do wrong for the wrong sake.
    (E.A. Poe, The Imp of the Perverse, 1845)
  • one of the primitive impulses of human heart
    one of the indivisible primary faculties
    which give direction to the character of
    Man.(E.A. Poe, The Black Cat, 1843)

31
  • To register the disintegration of human soul
    is Poes pretty bitter doom one of the
    bitterest tasks of human experience but
    necessary task too. For the human soul must
    suffer its own disintegration, consciously, if
    ever it is to survive.
  • (D.H. Lawrence, 1966)

32
The Masque of the Red Death (1842)
  • Focus on
  • Theme Death (horror, inevitability)
  • Apocalyptic atmosphere
  • Symbols
  • - gates, walls (outer vs inner
    world)
  • - seven rooms (laid out from East
    to West)
  • - last room
  • - ebony clock

33
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845)
  • Focus on
  • Theme Death, Science (Mesmerism)
  • Narrator
  • Language pseudo-scientific, detached
  • gt Plausibility
  • Macabre details
  • Comparison betw. The Masque of the Red Death
    and The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

34
  • Horror and fatality have been stalking abroad in
    all ages. Why then give a date to the story I
    have to tell?

  • E. A. Poe
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