You have it online if you didn't come or if you want to watch it again I'm
going to be reading from three books Me quedo aquí parado, ¿no? Porque
este no va Vale, me quedaré aquí sentado toda la clase Yo soy muy de
andar, pero me contentaré Ok, so, as I was saying normally I do read from
several books as a way of bringing new other points of view and doing part
of the groundwork that I know when you're studying several subjects at the
same time, it's very difficult to cope with going to the secondary
bibliographies and at least reading those messages and seeing if, hey, I
would like to know more about that but there's so many sources of
information if we go, for example to the last book to the last slide where
I have the sources of the online resources I brought, it's not the
Cambridge Compagny but this is a Cambridge introduction Cambridge has two
types of critical collections they have introduction books that are very
good for initial essays and it contextualizes the work, the life, the
reception it's a really interesting book normally it's in the central
library for each of the main authors there must be 20 out of the 24 authors
that we have either have this Cambridge introduction I picked it up this
morning or they have the Cambridge Compagny so the Cambridge Compagny is
more a collection of critical essays the Cambridge introduction a sort of
compiled essay to know more about the author, so if you feel that for
whatever reason you want to extend on the information on that author in
particular I'm going to read a bit from the beginning of this book today,
the beginning of the class and the importance that from Puritanism to
Postmodernism gives to Edgar Allan Poe is significant, so I'm also going to
read Poe as a way of counterposing Poe's work to the work of Emerson
something that we've already spoken about the importance Emerson has for
the entire Romantic movement and how there is a sharp contrast between what
transcendentalism represents and what the rest of the Romantic movement
especially in particular these three authors Herman Melville, Nathaniel
Hoffman that also lived and conquered we could say adopted Concordians
coexisted in time with Edgar Allan Poe whose demise was in 1849 if I'm not
mistaken so why are we studying Edgar Allan Poe after studying Nathaniel
Hoffman and Melville which published their work after or reached the
pinnacle of their work afterwards, I really don't know I don't know if it
would make more sense to probably study Poe in the first place and
afterwards studying Nathaniel Hoffman and Melville but there is a sense
when you study it in the order that Professor Dibet selected of crescendo
in terms of significance we talked about the overall significance that
Nathaniel Hoffman had for American literature how he is considered the
darkest of this triumvirate of Romantics Melville feeds on that darkness
and improves his work through his interaction with Nathaniel Hoffman so it
does make sense to raise a bar and go from Nathaniel Hoffman to Moby Dick
as the pinnacle of American literature and probably if we talk about Edgar
Allan Poe it is no coincidence that whenever you've seen this presentation
at the beginning of a class you could probably only recognize one picture
there was only one picture there that stood out and you could probably say
I probably own a t-shirt of this guy or I have it on a notebook and I don't
know what it is this is part of what we're going to study today why Edgar
Allan Poe is more of a figure of legend and a figure of romantic admiration
not only based on his work but on everything he represents the mystery the
lack of knowledge about the details of his life and that's basically how
legends are born when a character has been analyzed to the smallest of the
details about his life normally the legend around the figure fades away in
this semester we have two very significant cases Edgar Allan Poe and Emily
Dickinson where the legend extends beyond the literary persona because
there are so many things that we don't know about Edgar Allan Poe that make
the entire concept of Poe all the more interesting Edgar Allan Poe had
terrible press during his life and after his death he was crucified by his
own publishers after dying so his reputation was the worst reputation
possible an author could achieve so far from receiving recognition today
we're going to travel through a purely romantic story of doom and perdition
from the personal point of view from the From the passenger seats and with
some elements of the biography that will make us cringe and remind us to
other artists or other relevant figures with doubtful life choices. He
married a cousin of his at a very, very early age, her age, and led a life
that can only be categorized as unusual at the best and indecent for the
standards of the time. So without further ado, and with this, I don't know
if boastful presentation, let's start with this presentation. I've already
added to this presentation the change in our, our timeline, next week we're
going to cover Longfellow and then we'll go on to study Frederick Douglass,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Walt Whitman before we hit the Easter break.
After the Easter break, we're going to come back with Emily Dickinson. It's
slightly unfortunate that we're not able to study Walt Whitman and Emily
Dickinson on back-to-back weeks, but that's the way that the course is
divided. And something very interesting, I think that from all these
authors, all the authors that we have, there is a new biography about
Frederick Douglass that comes to flip many of the concepts that exist about
the person. I had the opportunity of purchasing this biography a couple of
months ago. I haven't had the opportunity to read it yet. It's on my
nightstand. It's on the table glaring at me, but I will hardly refer to it.
I'll bring it to class that day so you can, so you can page through it.
It's a winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize, so it must be a very good
piece of work. I'm looking forward to having some time this summer to read
it. Going back to Edgar Allan Poe, words have no power to impress the mind
without the exquisite horror of their reality. There is... There are
several things in this quote by Edgar Allan Poe, which belongs to the work
of prose that we're going to read today. In the case of Edgar Allan Poe, we
have two sides are equally important. His facet or his persona or his
capacity as a poet and his capacity as a storyteller. We should also add a
third branch. To that set of skills, his capacity as a critical analyst, as
a critic. And applying something that would afterwards, one century later,
become the de facto standard. Close analysis. Edgar Allan Poe is considered
by many to be the pioneer in close analysis. And in this way that we have
nowadays of reading books where we focus very much, on certain passages of
the book and come to conclusions that might change the entire significance
that we apply to a story and that has been so important for movements such
as post-structuralism, new historicism, feminism or post-modernist studies.
What other things can we extract from this quote? And it's not... A lot of
information that we have here. The first one is that Poe has a likening for
the grotesque, for the unusual and for terror. So his view of romanticism
takes romanticism to new heights or to new lows. I wouldn't know how to
classify that. But most definitely, he's going to be the most extreme of
this romantic trio that we've been talking about. It's a threesome of
darkness that Cawthorne, Melville and Poe represent. As you can see, he led
not a very long life. He lived to the age of 40. He died right before what
is considered the pinnacle or the golden period of romanticism. The year
1850, where the Scarlet Letter was published one year before Moby Dick was
published. And therefore, he precedes most of the important works that
would succeed him in life. But he laid the foundation not only for American
romanticism, but for a universal way... of interpreting a movement that he
embodied in his entire work that is called aestheticism. Aestheticism works
under the paradigm, has the motto of art for art's sake. You've probably
heard that quote a million times. And Edgar Allan Poe represents and is the
literary embodiment of aestheticism. And he's a huge... a huge example for
a group, a very significant group of French authors, Baudelaire and others,
that saw in Edgar Allan Poe the roots upon which to found the symbolist
movement. Symbolism relies on Edgar Allan Poe as the reference, the key
reference for inspiration. And it is very interesting to see how... while
Emerson was the most highly considered author, Edgar Allan Poe's view of
beauty has exactly nothing to do with the view that Emerson has. Emerson
believed that beauty and the truth were connected and walked hand by hand.
If you were able to interpret nature, if you were able to unlock the keys
of nature, if you were able to unlock the keys of the harmony in the world
that surrounds us, you would be able to reach the truth. What Puritans
regarded as a didactic purpose. We're writing for a reason. We're writing
to teach to future generations the important things of life that we've
discovered. And Edgar Allan Poe says there's no important things in life.
We write because it's beautiful. And we write because writing justifies
writing. And I don't have to look for another point of view besides making
a good work to justify the work that I create. So if you remember, for
example, the Dead Poets Society and Robin Williams' famous quote, Why We
Write Poetry? We write poetry. And he goes on to cite Whitman. That would
connect directly with the philosophy that Edgar Allan Poe had. We write
because it's beautiful to write. And the beauty of the art is the
justification for art. Art for art's sake. It comes to melt down into the
same idea. And for him, beauty was a much wider concept than the narrow
concept that we normally understand. For him, terror was beauty. Death was
beauty. Crime was beauty. Human fault was beauty. Please. The sublime. The
sublime and the opposite of the sublime. It's more about the creation, the
creative process, and the way of using the observation of the world as a
way of creating art. What Edgar Allan Poe would consider art. Everything
that is art is beautiful in his words, and everything that is beautiful at
the same time expands away beyond what other artists or other philosophers
or thinkers held as beauty. For sure, the transcendentalists had a very
clear view of beauty. The beauty was the untouched. The wildness connecting
with the world. Understanding the natural rhythm of the world. Being
conservation is preserving the purity of ideas. For Edgar Allan Poe, beauty
is to describe a crime. Beauty is to... Are the dead people. Beauty is the
plague. Beauty can be... A raven that is asking you questions and
interacting with the poetic persona. Today we're going to read two stories
that help us understand Edgar Allan Poe. I think more on the side of the
poet than on the side of the storyteller. The story that we're going to
read is one of the lesser known stories. I think that there are other
stories that you might be more familiar with because Edgar Allan Poe is
surprisingly an author that has read... in a contemporary manner very, very
frequently and by people of all ages. It's a typical book that has an
appeal for teenagers, has an appeal for adults, has an appeal for crime
lovers, has an appeal for people that love poetry. Everybody finds
something in Edgar Allan Poe. And I think that's because his work... at the
same time is much more stripped of the dark... of the entanglements that
you find in Melville and in Hawthorne that's sometimes so difficult to
understand because it's so multilayered, it's so archaic, it's so profound
that sometimes readers get lost. And Edgar Allan Poe, you understand the
story. And the stories have a universal feel. They have such a... universal
feel that Edgar Allan Poe has been considered to be the inventor of the
detective story, the confessional crime story, the core source of
inspiration for The Symbolist, to have written... to have inaugurated many
genres or many sub-genres that basically have to do with terror, with
mystery, with crime, with confession, with guilt. In that sense, he is a
writer that has a position on his own, even though we've come to analyze
him within a global whole of a set of writers that we can find easy
connections because one of your tasks as scholars is going to be to compare
and contrast him with others. Can we compare him easily? Yes, we can
compare him super easily. We can compare him to Emerson, therefore we can
compare him to Thoreau from the point of view of... In contrast, we can
compare him to Hawthorne and Melville for sure, both on what makes them
similar and on what makes them different. That's the good thing about Edgar
Allan Poe, that he's so singular that it's very easy to draw the
connections and also to draw the differences. I can find similarities to
the poetry of Walt Whitman in the sense of the length, but at the same
time, in the choice of the point of view, I can find similarities to the...
to the poetry of Dickinson. In prose, you can find similarities from
Washington Irving to Melville to Hawthorne. We have another dimension of
author. That's one of the things that I want you to walk away with today,
that it's a really important and a really significant writer and it's no
wonder that he's a writer that has been celebrated and that he's a writer
that has been celebrated. Enjoyed by generations of readers, except
probably for the generation within which he lived. He was almost forgotten
in time and was only recovered for the readership during the first half of
the 20th century. So almost half a century had to go by before he was
reinstated as an important member of the... of the American literary canon.
Hi Constance, if you have any questions, let me know. I'm sitting down
because the microphone doesn't work and this is the only way you're going
to hear me. The objectives of the unit, as usual, I take them from the
study guide. In this unit in particular, there is, besides the study
guide... Oh, sorry. Besides the point... ...that we talked about, something
that was the topic of a pet a couple of years ago. The unity of effect.
What does the unity of effect mean? And it's a really interesting read. It
goes a bit beyond what we have time to do in this unit. But it comes to
help us understand how the short story that we're going to read today, The
Mask of Red Death, how the entire story has an effect, on the reader, and
how until the very end of the story you're not able to create a full
understanding of the story and how that unity of effect, something that is
very characteristic of Edgar Allan Poe, is an important element in his
work. That final hit, that punchline, that, I don't know, punch to the
stomach or as another way of seeing it. We're going to talk about the
principles of asceticism, art for art, we're going to extend on the idea of
how post-popularity went well into the 20th century and has surely reached
our time. I think it's probably the only writer of 19th century American
literature that is recognizable by name by the majority of readers. of
other languages other than English that comes to say things about how his
message has this universal, which is a dangerous word to use, touch, and
how significant his contribution to literature was. He's considered the
father of the, also the father of the Gothic horror story. Thanks to Edgar
Allan Poe, there are two elements that are taken, I think from Sir Walter
Scott, I don't remember exactly if it's from Walter Scott, but I think it
is. The two elements, grotesque and arabesque, are not his, but he did make
them popular. He categorized his fiction in grotesque as those that
emphasize on the disharmony of the world and the arabesque, where the
narrative has a conclusive or a purpose of leading the reader towards an
effect of terror. We're going to see how Poe does something that is rather
remarkable because he is probably considered the prime example of Gothic,
but he always used Gothic as a way of satirizing the genre. So he actually
uses the genre as a way of mocking the genre itself. However, he's become
the biggest example or the biggest name that comes to mind when we think
about the term Gothic. He did use Gothic fiction as a satirized, and as
Melville and Hawthorne, he has this allegorical touch, this allegorical
feature that is also parody. This is a period that I think that you've
already perceived that there is a tremendous amount, these three authors,
of disillusionment with the entire generation or feel or sentiment of the
genre. Of the world and far from hiding it, they use the same framework of
the society they belong to. It's still very conservative, very religious
America to mock it, parodying the biggest figure of representation of
Puritan narrative, the allegory. I'm using it with a certain twist of
mockery. The Mask of Red Death, is an aesthetic fable about art and nature
and comes to contradict everything that we could, every conclusion that we
might make about Emerson and his view of nature and how happiness and
harmony for humans was entering, contacting or being staying in touch with
nature. Edgar Arcaud reminds us in a period I think is more significant
than ever how it's very, very difficult to run away from disease and no
matter how many barriers artificial or not you try to put in their way if a
disease has to come it will come and we'll find a way to get into our
lives. Interestingly enough these days it seems more current than ever. The
idea of the unity of effect or the unity of impression is a concept that
Edgar Arcaud relies on that creates an enveloping effect that makes it
absolutely necessary to understand the entire story in order to reach the
climax of the story at the very end. So the entire story from the very
first line to the end of the story is necessary to understand the
underlying message that you may come to and that funnily enough is never
going to be clear because if anything is clear about Edgar Arcaud is that
his main purpose is to create ambiguous endings and ambiguous
interpretations. He doesn't. He doesn't want closure. He wants everything
except closure. And in the same way that we've already seen this with
Hopper and with Melville how the typical determined ending that other
authors pre-romantic and proto-romantic gave us these authors very much in
the likening of modernism and post-modernism are going to run away they're
going to go in a divergent direction into closure and they're going to
offer us ambiguous endings. Even though there is this unity of effect or
impression each of us are going to come to conclusions that might seem
contradicting and maybe the interpretation that one of you have about the
story contradicts the interpretation that another reader has and that's
okay because nobody can tell you that your interpretation is better or
worse than other interpretations. Before I read those notes about his
biography let me read a page and a half from the Cambridge introduction to
Edgar Allan Poe I like the way it's written the chapter the first chapter
is devoted to his life and I think it comes to help us understand our
current appreciation of Edgar Allan Poe what has been termed the enigma of
Edgar Allan Poe remains very much with us even though he died in 1849 some
aspects of this enigma which amount to slanting the truth or to outright
lies originated with Poe himself others were supplied by persons who knew
him by others who supposed that they knew about his personal circumstance
and career or by still others who falsified the record because they took
suspect facts at face value consequently a Poe legend emerged which retains
widespread currency today one may not exaggerate in remarking that a
biography brief or lengthy of Poe is published nearly every year although
exceedingly few facts about his life and career have been discovered since
the late 1930 or early 1940s and much must remain speculative about that
life the most reliable biography continues to be Arthur H. Quinn's Edgar
Allan Poe's A Critical Biography which dates from 1941 but which as a
factual narrative accounts of Poe's life maintains its value an
introductory book about Poe such as this requires sensible biographical
treatment much in his life was anything but sensational more often it
became downright grudging but grudgery did not suppress or distort Poe's
amazing creativity whether personal circumstances provided the mainspring
in his creativity may however be questionable Poe is often associated with
the south because he spent most of his first 20 years in and around
Richmond, Virginia he was born through sorry he was born though in Boston,
Massachusetts 7th of October 1809 because his parents David Poe Jr. and
Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe's parents an emigrant from Great Britain were
traveling stage actors who happened to be working in Boston when Edgar was
born I'm not going to continue reading because it's really interesting but
it's very extensive and we don't have time we have to focus on the work
more than on the biography as you can see everything about Poe's life is it
seems like movie material it's fascinating at the same time it's dark and
unresolved he was the second son of teenage traveling actors and therefore
very clear candid to being abandoned at an early life as happened to him
his father had a bohemian lifestyle and very quickly abandoned Edgar when
their mother died each of the orphans went to different families the name
of Edgar actually comes from his adoptive parents he was raised by John
Allen a wealthy tobacco merchant and his wife and what you see is the
typical story of T.O. that you would find in many cases but with an
adoptive parent that was therefore maybe a more difficult situation he
received an education in Virginia where he recited being born in Boston is
actually a matter of chance however there is a there are connections to his
life in different parts of America I don't know if you know this but Edgar
Allen Poe is the only artist creator that I can think of that has a
professional sports team named in his honor the Baltimore Rangers Ravens a
football team quite good one in fact are named after Edgar Allen Poe's
Raven that we will have the opportunity to read today and it just goes to
show how significant the current popularity that he has despite his humble
origin and his humble upbringing he was not a good student he dropped out
after a few months and death is a very recurrent and a very traumatic
experience that appears in his life time after time after time and
especially in the form of the women that were closer to his life that he
endured the death of his foster mother his mother and his wife Virginia in
the case of Virginia he had a very very dodgy relationships and was
considered to lead a life that was far from what would be considered
respectable and he seemed to have this is not a single case in literature
several relationships and you never know if it's part of the slandering
that happened after his death but he was always considered to be to do most
of his poetic work as a way of conquering prostitutes and entertaining his
numerous lovers I think the presentation that says there's a fourth
entangled relationship biographies tend to be divergent there but again I
think that in cases where there are so many holes in the biography we
should stick to what is significant for his literary persona what we see
very clear is how important death is because it is very close to him and at
the same time his father his foster father son relationship there is never
a single father figure in any of historians none if you not find a father
figure in any of the stories and that doesn't seem a coincidence he
considered his father his foster father to be cruel and cheap and they
clashed because of Edgar's difficult I guess personality and because of his
literary aspirations he fled to Boston to publish his first book of poetry
at age 22 so that means that Edgar Alamto's initial reputation is based on
his poetry and even though he was successful from the point of view of
being read he never entered or accessed any wealth due to his work probably
because his idea of art for art sake seems kind of contradictory with
wanting to rake in big amounts of money for his work so he probably wasn't
the most practical person in the world he happened to marry a cousin and if
that isn't shocking enough the cousin was 13 years old in 1835 his wife
Virginia Clement died of tuberculosis at age 25 and his I don't of the
female figures that have tragic endings in Edgar Allen post this story have
a clear reference or are clear revisiting of this case and we can cite many
examples both in his poetry and in his prose of iterations of the figure of
Virginia Clement Poe died in Baltimore and that's the only thing that is
clear how did he die no one knows he's been I've only written some of the
causes that I found reading different sources some have attributed it to
alcohol brain congestion cholera drugs heart disease rabies suicide
tuberculosis shingles syphilis anything that you can imagine that is not
good and frequent in the worst circles of the period is normally cited in
some place as a possible cause the most commonly mentioned is tuberculosis
even though the way that he died the way that he was found dead is kind of
difficult to connect with tuberculosis because he disappeared he was
reported to disappear he appeared the next day dead and he was wearing
different clothes from the moment that he disappeared and he appeared on
the side of a road in front of a tavern so who knows the thing is that he
died and I think that's the loss is all the Edgar Allen Poe that was yet to
be published yet to be written yet to be enjoyed in the case of Edgar Allen
Poe we have a very very strong body of work that is developed only over the
course of 18 years and we're going to see authors that have this frenetic
type of production we've already seen in the case of Nathaniel Hofford that
have a tragic death for example the last author that we read in this course
Stephen Crane we also have the feeling that his only death separated us
from many other works of art and in the case of Edgar Allen Poe is clearly
the case before I read from his works let me quickly read some passages
from Edgar Allen Poe that the authors provide a lot of importance in this
book that I think is seminal to understanding American literature as a
whole today is clear to us that one essential service Emerson performed for
America or for American writing was to release the power of symbolism and
thereby transform much subsequent thought and poetry but he was not the
only poetic revolutionary of his time to perform that task nor was his the
only way to perform it, the French symbolist poets of the middle and later
century discovered an American source for their sense of art's power it was
not to Emerson they looked but to Edgar Allen Poe a writer for whom nature
provided none of the emblematic security Emerson confided in I think that's
very interesting for Emerson nature is a return to security for Poe it's a
way of accessing danger at the unknown normally not with a good ending what
to Emerson gave order to Poe gave disorder where Emerson discerned over
soul or cosmic force Poe saw a more than a genetic entity an elusive beauty
a never to be imparted secret whose attainment is destruction if Emerson
was the affirmative Poe was the decadent imagination poetry led not to
orphic truth new light and power but into the inverted labyrinth world of
the imagination which disinvest the concrete world of its material sorry
materiality while offering no secure and redemptive mystery beyond from the
start the optimism of American transcendentalist symbolism had its
inversion in a poet who suffered neglect and abuse in his lifetime and
after it whose voice has always seemed unripe not only perverse but
frequently insecure yet whose importance is now quite unmistakable as time
has settled as the dust of time settles the greater writers emerge and even
though we are studying 24 authors in this set of very significant
literature the names that emerge as universal are very few and I tried to
convince you over the course of a couple of months that Emerson had an
importance that you have to believe me or you have to read and come to that
conclusion but I don't have to convince you of the importance of Poe
because you've already probably reached the importance of Poe before
reaching this course and that's probably the biggest element that attains
for the importance that Poe has himself he exceeds the limits or the
constraints of the scholar world of the world of the understanding between
the lines his message is so clear that it transcends time and it transcends
generations it's probably more transcendental than the transcendentalists
themselves going back to the poetic principle from the poetic principle
published in 1850 was a poem Poe summed up the principles of his entire
writing life they were symbol principles we have taken this is Poe talking
in his work the poetic principle we have taken it into our heads that to
write the poem simply for the poem sake and to acknowledge such to have
been our design would be to confess ourselves radically wanting the true
poetic dignity and force but the simple is that would we but permit
ourselves to look into our souls we should immediately there discover that
under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly
dignified more supremely noble than this very poem this poem per se this
poem which is a poem and nothing more this poem written solely for the
poem's sake so this idea of the sake of the poem the sake of the art is
what differentiates poem from at least all the transcendentalists and most
of the writers of the time and the sentiment of the time he did not try to
impose his point of view on the world and to impose any type of learning
from a poem you arrive to art to enjoy the art not to learn from the art if
any lesson was extracted was the own beauty of the poem poetic meaning is
located in the poem's own composition and utterance not in the exterior
referential truth in this poem was wholly out of tune with new england he
did not share the epical notes the truth is that i am heartily sick of this
life and of the 19th century in general says ed rollin poe and he certainly
did share what he called its heresy of the didactic the idea of the
didactic he considered it to be heretic because it was like conning the
readers into believing that the art was more important than it actually was
it was just art and that's how you should read it what was the reaction
neither emerson nor the school room poets will get into that next week who
they were could accept poe's counter thesis the fundamental incompatibility
between beauty and truth and i think that's a key phrase incompatibility
between beauty and truth for poe they're absolutely incompatible for
emerson and the sentiment of the time they were the path the path to beauty
was the path to truth and that's as opposed as two schools of thought can
ever be um so poe began his career with poetry his sure voice and insistent
theme a systematic search for supernatural beauty lying both beyond and at
odds with the phenomenal or noumenal world is clear and we're going to read
today the raven the raven is one of the most read poems in english at least
and it's as read as it is parodied and the funny thing is that at the same
time the raven itself is a parody because it imitates another poem
pre-existed to pose from another artist and he disliked the musicality of
the poem so much that he used the same musicality of the raven so despite
how wonderful we might come to believe that the raven is by no means an
original poem it's a poem that uses principles and styles that were already
existing and that's something that we're going to see how Poe does in a
very singular way he doesn't try to hide that he's original and the only
person that sees the truth he knows that he's speaking from here and there
going back to the presentation Poe as an author is probably America's most
original description powerful writing much more interested in aesthetics
and ethics absolutely not interested in ethics as you will be able to read
in the short story more interested in cultivating beauty than teaching
morality which is contradicting with all the Puritan tradition and of
course with the tenets of transcendentalism I said there are no father
figures in Poe's tale whether they are barely any parents at all and it is
not a coincidence when Poe creates a story he has an intentional search for
the eccentric and the extravagant it's not that he arrives there by chance
he is looking for them at the core of his story simplicity was not
synonymous with good taste you will see that his stories are not difficult
capture and they seem to have a simple style but by no means are they
simple in fabrication and excess this is probably the first author in
American literature where we see that excess is a very valid adjective to
categorize his work is by no means proof of bad taste and we're going to
see how his stories his examples his points of view are excessive in many
aspects of crossing red lines that other authors are not there to cross or
in exceeding being excessively repetitive at certain points he didn't
believe in the boundaries that literature had told him to that had to be
preserved poetic beauty in his opinion has this is a really interesting
sentence the quality of strangeness and poetry gives pleasure precisely
because it's difficult to determine and to signify many of the students of
this introductory course to American poetry sometimes are a bit overwhelmed
by the amount of poets and the variety of poets and how to come to
meaningful conclusions Poe's point of view was basically that there were no
meaningful conclusions to write you had to enjoy the poem because the poem
was enjoyable for no other reason and if you did it well it was probably
more a problem of the reader and he understood beauty as something that
exists implicitly in poetry art is an end not a means and when authors like
Baudelaire read Edgar Lepoe they referred to feeling a strange commotion
and that's something that's very characteristic some short stories from
Edgar Lepoe have been said to create reactions that are very similar to
H.G. Wells War of the World and how they were disturbing for a time I find
it hard to believe but that's part of Poe's legend you never know where to
discern what was true and what has been manipulated and fabricated over
time Poe's experimental theories he was a magnificent theorist and critic
besides poet and writer I think that's probably Poe's lesser known side of
his importance as a critic has been repeatedly acclaimed I'm losing my
voice well if I don't die crying too I'm going to read before we continue
the raven I really think I can't read the raven I don't know if that's
going to worsen it I don't see it I don't see it well the raven we can read
the raven on page two hundred ninety nine this the information about the
raven I'm quickly going to jump to the part where we talk about the raven I
think that's slide twelve this is slide seven yeah so I hope there are
several versions of the raven the one we have is the um 1845 final version
there versions as early as 1842 I've already said that the raven is not an
original structure of um uh of I would I would ask you as as an interesting
um source of secondary knowledge to uh look at the um more celebrated poems
of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and you will find that several of her poems
have repetitive structures that are very similar to the raven and some seem
direct mirrors upon which to base the structure of the raven um it was um
uh it was posed first um great success as a poet and suddenly and
transformed overnight into um a superstar a celebrity no poem in America
has ever been so popular even though I think that probably in the raven um
as as you can read there to be seen as grief entering his life to never
leave again and that's the symbolism that we can come to the conclusion um
reading the poem you could come to another conclusion and Paul would be
fine about that um when Paul was composing the raven he was conscious that
it um it was more of elaborating or almost mathematical method of
calculation to create a structure and to make it as significant as it is
and you'll understand why um we're talking so much about a poem before
reading it because it's really an unusual poem and it has a structure that
you probably you probably haven't read many poems are similar to this one
um uh there is a specific reference to the loss of a death beloved person
that we can come to understand as the death of someone in life um the
stanzas are rather unusual they're formed by five lines of octameters and
heptameters that alternate with short verses of seven syllables and
tetrameters the rhyme scheme is also unusual it's an a b c b um with a
repeated beat throughout the poem and you can see that this beat is not
only going to be alliterative and um and constant it's going to be like a
pounding sound throughout the poem the poem is highly musical but at the
same time uh it's very it's very curious and unusual in terms of how
repetitive the rhyming is for the tracé which is um the opposite stress
pattern to the ayam is how we've seen the majority of the poems that we've
worked with in this course follows the opposite structure in each foot of a
stressed syllable and an unstressed syllable so it makes it more difficult
to choose the words and as I said before um there's a lot of internal rhyme
on a matoteya alliteration and um acidence in the in the structure this is
probably our first taste of everything that is to come in terms of poetry
is going to be both beautiful but very elaborate and um a poem that you can
see that is not being written in one single uh raft of inspiration where
the poem poet just comes to write this is these are poems that are created
over the course of many years um in many cases uh let me read from uh from
the point from the beginning page 300 the raven as long as a poem can get
um once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered we can weary over many
acquainted curious volume of forgotten lord while I nodded nearly napping
suddenly there came a tapping as of someone gently rapping at my chamber
door tis some visitor I muttered tapping at my chamber door only this and
nothing more ah distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December and its
separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor eagerly I wished
tomorrow vainly I had sought to borrow from my books surcease of sorrow for
the lost Lenore for the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named
Lenore nameless here forever more and the silken sad and certain rustling
of each purple curtain thrilled me filled me with fantastic terrors never
felt before so that now to still the beating of my heart I stood repeating
tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door some late visitor
entreating entrance at my chamber door this is it and nothing more
presently my soul grew stronger hesitating then no longer sir said I or
madam Trudy your forgiveness I implore but the fact is I was napping and so
gently you came rapping and so faintly you came tapping at my chamber door
that I scarce was sure I heard you here I opened wide the door darkness
there and nothing more and if you notice that at the beginning of each
stanza there's like a peak in the intonation and it ends like in a wave
it's like softly it goes away the last verse is read as if preparing for
the next climax deep into the darkness peering long I stood there wondering
fearing doubting dreaming dreams no morning immortal ever dared to dream
before but the silence wasn't broken and the stillness gave no token and
the only word there spoken was the whispered word Lenore this I whispered
and an echo murmured back the word Lenore merely this and nothing more back
into the chamber turning all my soul within me burning soon again I heard a
tapping somewhat louder than before surely said I surely that is something
at my window's lattice let me see then what there is at this mystery
explore let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore tis the
wind and nothing more open here I flung the shutter when with many a flirt
and flutter in their step a stately raven of the stately days of yore not
the last of eons made he not an instant stop or state perched above my
chamber door perched upon a bust of palace just above my chamber door
perched and sat and nothing more then this ebony were beguiling my sad
fancy into smiling by the grave and stern decorum of the count and instant
war though thy crest be shorn and shaven though I said art sure no craven
ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore till tell
me what thy lordly name is on the night's plutonian shore quote the raven
never more much are my a marvel this ungainly foul to hear discourse so
plainly though its answer little meaning little relevancy bore for we
cannot help agreeing that no living human being ever yet was blessed with
seeing bird above his chamber door bird or beast upon the sculpture post
above his chamber door with such name as never more but the raven sitting
lonely on that placid bush spoke only that one word as if his soul in that
one word he did outpour nothing farther than and then he uttered not a
feather that he fluttered till i scarcely more than muttered other friends
have flown before on the morrow he will leave me as my hopes have flown
start of at the still is broken by reply so aptly spoken doubtless said i
what it utters is its only stock and store caught from some unhappy master
who unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster till his songs
one burden bore till the dirges of his hope the melancholy burden bore of
never more but the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smile
straight i wheel the cushion seat in front of bird at bust and door then
upon the velvet sinking i betook myself to linking fancy unto fancy
thinking what his ominous what this ominous bird of yore what this grim and
gaily ghastly gaunt and ominous bird of yore meant a croaking never more
this i sat engaged in guessing but no syllable expressing to the fowl whose
fiery eyes now burn into my bosom's core this and more i sat divining with
my head at ease reclining on the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight
gloated o'er but whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating
o'er she shall press ah never more then we thought the air grew denser
perfume from an unseen censer swung by seraphine whose foot, footfalls
tinkled on the tufted floor rex i cried thy god has led thee by these
angels he has sent thee respite and depend from thy memories of lenore
quaff oh quaff this kind depends and forget this lost lenore quoth the
raven never more prophet said i thing of evil prophet still if murder devil
whether tempter sent or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore desolate
yet all undaunted on this desert land enchanted on this home of horror
haunted tell me truly i implore is there is there bombing gillet tell me
tell me i implore quoth the raven never more prophet said i thing of evil
prophet still if murder devil by that heaven that lands above us by that
god we both adore tell this soul with sorrow laden if within the days of
aiden it shall clasp a saint and maiden whom the angels named lenore clasp
a raven maiden whom the angels named lenore quoth the raven never more be
that word our sign of parting bird or fiend i shrieked of starting get me
back into the tempest and the night's plutonian shore leave no black plume
as a token of that lie thy soul has spoken leave thy beak from out my heart
and take thy form from off my door quoth the raven never more and the raven
never flitting still is sitting still is sitting on the palace just above
my chamber door and his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is
dreaming and the lamplight over him streaming throws his shadow on the
floor and my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
shall be lifted never more so the idea of the poem being a metaphor of
grief of how grief enters in his life to never leave again is a valid
interpretation as valid as any other that you could come to on your own I'm
just giving you one of the possible interpretations going back to the slide
number seven I think it was well so number eight rather regarding his
influences he was an avid reader of Washington Urban and the founder of
Hawthorne and absolutely critical with the work of his time and the work
that surrounded his lifetime and I think I've already mentioned this it was
very common at the time for readers for writers to be the first critics and
to comment on one another's work and we've already mentioned the fact that
Herman Melville came into contact with Nathaniel Hawthorne after claiming
his work in a very positive critic and Hawthorne and his mosses referring
to one of the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne not only has he been considered
the key source of the symbol is a very direct reference for Voler and it so
coexisted with Hawthorne and Melville and it becomes a very unlikely to
think that neither of them had a very strong understanding and knowledge of
most of his work in the case of Melville we can find a very direct
influence of a pose only novel that if you remember is where Melville
decides to place the initial point where the Pequot leaves or lifts sail in
Moby Dick so the reference and the tribute to Edgar Allan Poe is very clear
in Melville's Moby Dick the tale the fall of the house of Usher is also a
very interesting work that has many elements of Edgar Allan Poe it exceeds
what we can analyze in an hour and a half and as you can see the amount of
writers that feel a direct influence and direct admiration for Poe is
endless Jules Verne considered him the father of science fiction probably
he himself being considered by most people the father of science fiction
Dostoyevsky was inspired by Poe's criminal psychology we already mentioned
something at the beginning where we were talking about Hawthorne how the
three authors are going to engage not in this tale in particular in
creating characters with a great deal of psychological death just in the
poem that we just read we can perceive an amount of psychological death
that goes beyond what we normally perceive in a poem in the case of
Dostoyevsky the criminal psychology his likening for creating these
eccentric and different characters that are so beloved for example in
post-modernism how this anti-hero are the heroes of Poe's tale which sets
him mostly one century ahead in his time and very inspirational I'm sure
for many post-modernists in their early readings his influence has been
clear throughout the 20th century despite being extremely slandered after
his death by his first editor who disapproved his temperament and his
artistic methods and the way that his first editor portrayed him was as an
alcoholic and drug addict that wrote unusual and weird stories under the
influence of drugs and other substances the biased portrait that Poe had at
the beginning of his well after his death influenced an entire generation
of readers and prevented him from having the literary recognition that he
achieved six and eight years after his death his literary work has an
undoubted debt to his own personal suffering we see that suffering works as
a way of feeding his art this is very common in artistic work how suffering
is seen as a catalyzer of artistic outputs his tales were not written
spontaneously but through constant revision and built with care and
precision we already talked about his almost mathematical method of
approaching literature I'm going to leave it there there's so many things
to talk about I'm not even going to mention the elements of the mask of red
death the mask of red death is from 1842 because I want to read the mask of
red death I hope you have time to read it very close call the mask of red
death on page 288 the red death had long devastated the country no
pestilence had ever been so fatal or so hideous blood was its avatar and
its seal the redness and the horror of blood there were sharp pains and
sudden dizziness and then profuse bleeding at the pores with dissolution
the scarlet stains upon the body and special upon the face of the victim
were the pest that would shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of
his fellow men and the whole seizure progress and termination of the
disease were the incidents of half an hour but the prince prospero was
happy and dauntless and sagacious when his dominions were half depopulated
he summoned to his presence a thousand hail and lighthearted friends from
among the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste a strong
and lofty wall drilled in this wall had gates of iron the courtiers having
entered brought furnaces and massive hammers and welded the bolts they
resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses
of despair or a frenzy from within the abbey was amply provisioned with
such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion the external
world could take care of itself in the meantime it was fully to grieve or
to think the prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure there were
buffoons there were improvisatory there were ballet dancers there were
musicians there was beauty there was wine all these and security were
within without was a red death it was towards the while the pestilence
raged most furiously abroad that the prince prospero entertained his
thousand friends at a mass ball of the most unusual magnificence it was a
voluptuous scene that masquerade but first let me tell of the many rooms in
which it was held there were seven imperial suites in many palaces however
such suites from a long and straight vista while the folding doors slide
back nearly so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded here
the case was very different as might have been expected from the duke's
love of the bazaar the apartments were so irregularly disposed that the
vision embraced but little more than one at a time there was a sharp turn
at every twenty or thirty yards and at each turn a novel effect to the
right and left in the middle of each wall a tall and narrow gothic window
looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suites
these windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with
the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opens
that at the eastern extremity was hung for example in blue and vividly blue
were its windows the second chamber was purple in third was green
throughout and so were the casements the fourth was furnished and lighted
with orange the fifth with white the sixth was violet the seventh apartment
was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the
ceiling and down the walls falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same
material and hue but in this chamber only the color of the windows failed
to correspond deep blood color now in no one of the seven apartments was
there any lamp or candelabrum amid the profusion of gold ornaments that lay
scattered to and fro or depended from the roof there was no light of any
kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers but in the
corridor that followed the suite there stood opposite of each window a
heavy tripod bearing a brassiere a fire that projected its rays through the
tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room and thus were produced a
multiple of gaudy and fantastic appearances but in the western or black
chamber the effect of the fire light that streamed upon the dark hangings
through the blood tinted paints was ghastly and extreme and produced so
wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered that there were few
of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts all it was this
in this apartment also that there stood against the western wall a gigantic
clock of ebony its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull heavy monotonous
clang and when the minute hand made the circuit of the face and the hour
was to be stricken there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound
which was clear and loud and deep and extremely musical but it's so
peculiar note and emphasis that at each lapse of an hour the musicians of
the orchestra were constrained to pause momentarily in their performance to
hearken to the sound and thus the waltzers per force seized their evolution
and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company and while the
chimes of the clock yet rang it was observed that the giddiest group hail
and the more aged and sedate pass their hands over their brows as if in
confused reverie or meditation but when the echoes had fully ceased a light
laughter at once pervaded the assembly the musicians looked at each other
and smiled as if their own nervousness and folly and made whispering vows
each to the other that the next chiming of the clock produced in them no
similar emotion and then after the lapse of sixty minutes which embraced
three thousand and six hundred seconds of the time that flies there came
yet another chiming of the clock and then were the same disconcerted and
tremulous and meditation as before but in spite of these things it was a
gay and magnificent rebel the taste of the decor of mere fashion his plans
were bold in theory and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster there
are some who would have thought him mad his followers felt that he was not
it was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not
he had directed in great part the movable embellishments of the seven
chambers upon occasion of this great fest and it was his own guiding taste
which had given character to the masqueraders be sure they were grotesque
there were much glare and glitter and frequency and phantasm much of what
had been seen in her nanny there were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs
and appointments there were delirious fancies such as the mad man fashions
there was much of the beautiful much of the wanton much of bizarre
something of the terrible and not a little of that which might have excited
disgust to and fro in the seven chambers their stock in fact a multitude of
dreams and these dreams rived in and about taking cue from the rooms and
causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echoes of their
steps and anon there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of
clock the dreams are stiff frozen as they stand but the echoes of the
chimes die away they have endured but an instant and a light half subdued
laughter floats after them as they depart and now again the music swells
and the dreams live and rive to and fro more merily than ever taking cue
from the many tint windows through which stream the rays from the tripods
but to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven there are now
none of the masters who venture for the night is waning away and their
flows are ruddier light through the blood colored veins and the blackness
of the sable drapery appalls and to him whose foot falls upon the sable
carpet there comes from the near clock of ebony a muckle peel more solemnly
empathic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote
gaieties of the other apartments but these other apartments were densely
crowded and in them beat feverishly the heart of life and the rebel went
whirlingly on until at length there commenced the sound of the midnight
upon the clock and then the music ceased as I have told and the evolutions
of the waltzers were quieted and thus it happened perhaps that before the
last echoes of the last time had utterly sunk into silence there were many
individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the
presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single
individual before and the rumor of this music, having spread itself
whisperingly around there arose at length from the whole company a buzz or
murmur expressive of disapparation and surprise and finally of terror of
horror and of disgust in an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted it
may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such
sensation in truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited
but the figure eroded herald and gone beyond the bounds of even the
prince's indefinite decorum there are chords in the heart of the most
reckless which cannot be touched without emotion even with the utterly lost
to whom life and death are equally just there are matters of which no jest
can be made the world the whole company indeed seem now deeply to feel that
in the figure sorry that in the costume the figure was tall and gone and
shrouded from head to foot in the hablements of the grave the mask which
concealed the vision was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a
stiff corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in
detecting the chief and yet all this might have been endured if not
approved by the mad revelers around but the mummer had gone so far as to
assume the type of the red death his vest was dabbed in blood and his broad
brow with all the features of the face was besprinkled with a scarlet
horror when the eyes of prince prospero fell upon this spectral image which
with a slow and solemn movement as if more fully to sustain its role
stalked to and fro among the waltzers he was seen to be convulsed in the
first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste but in the
next his brow reddened with rage who dares he demanded hoarsely of the
courtiers who stood near him who dares insult us with this blasphemous
mockery seize him and unmask him that we may know whom we have to hang at
sunrise from the battlements it was an eastern or blue chamber in which it
stood the prince prospero as uttered these words they rang throughout the
seven rooms loudly and clearly for the prince was a bold and robust man and
the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand it was in the blue
room where stood the prince with a group of pale courtiers by his side at
first as he spoke there was a slight rushing movement this group in
direction of the intruder who at the moment was also near at hand and now
with deliberate and stately step made closer approach to the speaker but
from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer
had inspired the whole party there were found none who put forth hand to
seize him so that unimpeded he passed within the yard of the prince's
person and while the vast assembly as if with one impulse shrank from the
centers of the room to the walls he made his way uninterruptedly but with
the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the
first through the blue chamber to the purple through the purple to the
green through the green to the orange through this again to the white and
even then to the violent or the shame of his own momentary cowardice rushed
hurriedly through the six chambers while none followed him on account of a
deadly terror that had seized upon all he bore aloft the drawn dagger and
had approached in rapid impetuosity to within three or four feet of the
retreating figure when the latter having attained the extremity of the
velvet department turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer there was a
sharp cry and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet upon which
instantly afterwards fell prostrate in death the prince prospero then
summoning the wild courage of despair a throng of the revelers at once
threw themselves into the black department and seizing the mummer whose
tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock
gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave seraments corpse like
masks which they handled with so violent rudeness untenanted by any
tangible form and now was acknowledged the presence of the red death he had
come like a thief in the night and one by one dropped the revelers in the
blood bedewed halls of their revel and died each in the despairing posture
of his fall and the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last
decay and the flames of the tripods expired and the darkness and decay and
the red death held illimitable dominion over all okay so that's your story
we'll comment on it next week i've already consumed four minutes of the
next class i'm going to have to cut that short um is that the design effect
well it's a it's an effect yes for sure um i i'll answer your questions by
email because i just don't want to take up the time of the next teacher i'm
very sorry this unit is especially challenging to complete