Unit 2 Edgar Allan Poe Romanticism

1. Unit 2 Edgar Allan PoeRomanticism Hao Guilian, Ph,D. Yunnan Normal University September, 2009

2. Historical Background • The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and beyond, reached America around the year 1820, some 20 years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by publishing Lyrical Ballads. In America as in Europe, fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles. Yet there was an important difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. The solidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces of "the American Renaissance."

3. Romanticism • The qualities of Romanticism vary from place to place, and few Romantic writers exhibit all of them. But there are six characteristics that can give us a general definition of Romanticism: ( 1 ) a profound love of nature; (2) a focus on the self and the individual; (3) a fascination with the supernatural, the mysterious, and the gothic; (4) a yearning for the picturesque and the exotic; (5) a deep-rooted idealism; and (6) a passionate nationalism. • Romantic writers reveal with emotion their own personal visions and go deeply into the individual personalities of their characters. Poe is the best representative of this strain of Romanticism, for he often displays the tortured minds and hearts of inward-looking characters. It is Poe also who demonstrates a fascination with the gothic--the dark, irrational side of the imagination.

4. Edgar Allan Poe • An American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. • Edgar Allan Poe, a southerner, has a darkly metaphysical vision mixed with elements of realism, parody, and burlesque. Poe's short and tragic life was plagued with insecurity. Like so many other major 19th-century American writers, Poe was orphaned at an early age. Poe's strange marriage in 1835 to his first cousin Virginia Clemm, who was not yet 14, has been interpreted as an attempt to find the stable family life he lacked.

5. Signature of Poe

6. General themes • Poe's best known fiction works are Gothic, a genre he followed to appease the public taste. His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decay, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a literary reaction to transcendentalism, which Poe strongly disliked. • Poe believed that strangeness was an essential ingredient of beauty, and his writing is often exotic. His characters never seem to work or socialize; instead they bury themselves in dark, moldering castles symbolically decorated with bizarre rugs and draperies that hide the real world of sun, windows, walls, and floors. Themes of death-in-life, especially being buried alive or returning like a vampire from the grave, appear in many of his works. • In every genre, Poe explores the psyche. Profound psychological insights glint throughout the stories. To explore the exotic and strange aspect of psychological processes, Poe delved into accounts of madness and extreme emotion.

7. The Cask of Amontillado, 1846 • It was Poe’s last, and some say greatest, short story. It’s a tale of revenge, murder, torture, and addiction set in a vast underground Italian underground cemetery. It’s also a journey into the dark and mysterious recesses of the human psyche. • Although the subject matter of Poe's story is a murder, "The Cask of Amontillado" is not a tale of detection: there is no investigation of Montresor's crime and the criminal himself explains how he committed the murder. The mystery in "The Cask of Amontillado" is in Montresor's motive for murder. Without a detective in the story, it is up to the reader to solve the mystery. • Montresor's motive for murder is uncertain other than the vague "thousand injuries" to which he refers. Many commentators conclude that, lacking significant reason, Montresor must be insane, though even this is questionable because of the intricate details of the plot.

8. Illustration of "The Cask of Amontillado" by Harry Clarke, 1919.

9. Horror Why? Why is horror so popular?Why do we want to be scared, and why do all these people want to scare us? • Horror writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, author of the dismal tale at hand, will tell you that scary stories are a great way to express social and personal anxieties over sex, drugs, parents, children, bullies, and war, to name a few. We want to talk about them because we want to understand them, but we can’t always find the right time or place. • For the person reading or watching horror, it’s also a kind of freedom. The horror story is an argument, usually a dark and mysterious one, about human nature. By reading or watching, we participate in this argument. • Horror-master Steven King says, “We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones”. In some ways, we read and watch horror for the same reason: our own lives often seem nice and calm after a few hours of fear. • Plus, Edgar Allan Poe's stories are fun because they're complicated puzzles. You have to exercise your brain muscles to figure them out. And because “The Cask of Amontillado” is so very short, we can really focus on its details, and we can read it as many times as we want.

10. Study Questions • Textbook: p.16 • Do you think Montresor is insane or just a normal person seeking for revenge? Present your reasons. • Do you think that evil is an inborn feature of human beings? Tell us why or why not.

11. Thank you !