Unit Nine  Beginning of American Literature and Edgar Allan Poe

Warming-up 常识预习
1. Who was the first American to achieve an international literary reputation after the Revolutionary War?
2. In the early 19th century, Washington Irving wrote the Sketch Book which became the first work by an American writer to win financial success on both sides of the Atlantic. What are the most famous and anthologized short stories in this book?
3. What do you know about United States Declaration of Independence?
4. What early American writer’s thrilling work is considered the masterpiece of Gothic literature?
5. DeCoteau is an American film producer known for directing low budget horror movies. Have you seen his House of Usher (2008)?
6. Besides macabre stories, what else did Edgar Allan Poe write?
 
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Beginning of American Literature and Edgar Allan Poe
America, during its early history, was a series of British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States. Therefore, its literary tradition begins as linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, unique American characteristics and the breadth of its production usually now cause it to be considered a separate path and tradition.
Some of the earliest forms of American literature were pamphlets and writings extolling the benefits of the colonies to both a European and colonist audience. And the religious disputes that prompted settlement in America were also topics of early writing. During the revolution itself, poems and songs such as “Yankee Doodle” and “Nathan Hale” were popular. In the post-war period, Thomas Jefferson's United States Declaration of Independence, his influence on the American Constitution, his autobiography, the Notes on the State of Virginia, and his many letters solidify his spot as one of the most talented early American writers. Much of the early literature of the new nation struggled to find a uniquely American voice in existing literary genre, and this tendency was also reflected in novels. European forms and styles were often transferred to new locales and critics often saw them as inferior.
With the War of 1812 and an increasing desire to produce uniquely American literature and culture, a number of key new literary figures emerged, perhaps most prominently Washington Irving (often considered the first writer to develop a unique American style) and Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). Poe began writing short stories – including The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Murders in the Rue Morgue – that explore previously hidden levels of human psychology and push the boundaries of fiction toward mystery and fantasy.
One of Poe’s macabre works The Fall of the House of Usher is summed up as follows.

The tale opens with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his comfort. Although Poe wrote this short story before the invention of modern psychological science, Roderick's symptoms can be described according to its terminology. They include hyperesthesia (extreme hypersensitivity to light, sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria (an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness), and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, death-like trances. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick sings “The Haunted Palace”, then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be sentient, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it.
Roderick later informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she be entombed for two weeks in a vault in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. They inter her, but over the next week both Roderick and the narrator find themselves becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws open his window to the storm. He notices that the tarn surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark, as it glowed in Roderick Usher's paintings, although there is no lightning.
The narrator attempts to calm Roderick by reading aloud The Mad Trist, a novel involving a knight named Ethelred who breaks into a hermit's dwelling in an attempt to escape an approaching storm, only to find a palace of gold guarded by a dragon. He also finds hanging on the wall a shield of shining brass of which is written a legend: that the one who slays the dragon wins the shield. With a stroke of his mace, Ethelred kills the dragon, who dies with a piercing shriek, and proceeds to take the shield, which falls to the floor with an unnerving clatter.
As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, cracking and ripping sounds are heard somewhere in the house. When the dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and hollow, can be heard. Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical, and eventually exclaims that these sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed and that Roderick knew that she was alive. The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls violently in death upon her brother, who dies of his own terror. The narrator then flees the house, and, as he does so, notices a flash of light causing him to look back upon the House of Usher, in time to watch it break in two, the fragments sinking into the tarn.

And the above-mentioned “The Haunted Palace” goes like this:
                        I.
     In the greenest of our valleys,
         By good angels tenanted,
     Once a fair and stately palace -
         Radiant palace - reared its head.
     In the monarch Thought's dominion -
         It stood there !
     Never seraph spread a pinion
         Over fabric half so fair.
                         II.
     Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
         On its roof did float and flow;
     (This - all this - was in the olden
         Time long ago)
     And every gentle air that dallied,
         In that sweet day,
     Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
         A winged odor went away.
                         III.
     Wanderers in that happy valley
         Through two luminous windows saw
     Spirits moving musically
         To a lute's well-tunéd law,
     Round about a throne, where sitting
         (Porphyrogene  !)
     In state his glory well befitting,
         The ruler of the realm was seen.
                          IV.
     And all with pearl and ruby glowing
         Was the fair palace door,
     Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
         And sparkling evermore,
     A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
         Was but to sing,
     In voices of surpassing beauty,
         The wit and wisdom of their king.
                         V.
     But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
         Assailed the monarch's high estate ;
     (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
         Shall dawn upon him, desolate  !)
     And, round about his home, the glory
         That blushed and bloomed
     Is but a dim-remembered story
         Of the old time entombed.
                         VI.
     And travellers now within that valley,
         Through the red-litten windows, see
     Vast forms that move fantastically
         To a discordant melody ;
     While, like a rapid ghastly river,
         Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
         And laugh - but smile no more.
The ballad serves as an allegory about a king “in the olden time long ago” who is afraid of evil forces that threaten him and his palace, foreshadowing impending doom. As part of The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe said, “I mean to imply a mind haunted by phantoms — a disordered brain” referring to Roderick Usher. The poem takes a marked change in tone towards the second to last stanza. After discussing the wit and wisdom of the king, and song and beauty in the kingdom:
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.
The house and family are destroyed and, apparently, become phantoms. The beginning of the poem compares the structure with a human head. For example, the windows are eyes, its door representing a mouth. The exterior represents physical features while the interior represents the mind engaged in imaginative thought.
The Fall of the House of Usher is considered the best example of Poe's "totality", where every element and detail is related and relevant. The theme of the crumbling, haunted castle is a key feature of a late 18th Century novel which largely contributed in defining the Gothic genre. The house and the setting is really a reflection of Roderick Usher as described in the story, it could symbolize the bleak cheeks, huge eyes...rank and slightly bushy mustache, and perhaps even white trunks of decayed teeth of Usher.
The Fall of the House of Usher shows Poe's ability to create an emotional tone in his work, specifically feelings of fear, doom, and guilt. These emotions center on Roderick Usher who, like many Poe characters, suffers from an unnamed disease. The illness manifests physically but is based in Roderick's mental or even moral state. He is sick, it is suggested, because he expects to be sick based on his family's history of illness and is, therefore, essentially a hypochondriac. Similarly, he buries his sister alive because he expects to bury her alive, creating his own self-fulfilling prophecy. The House of Usher, itself doubly referring both to the actual structure and the family, plays a significant role in the story. It is the first character that the narrator introduces to the reader, presented with a humanized description: its windows are described as “eye-like” twice. The fissure that develops in its side is symbolic of the decay of the Usher family and the house "dies" along with the two Usher siblings. This connection was emphasized in "The Haunted Palace" which seems to be a direct reference to the house that foreshadows doom. Roderick Usher, his sister Madeline, and the house all shared one common soul". The explicit psychological dimension of this tale has prompted many critics to analyze it as a description of the human psyche, comparing, for instance, the House to the unconscious, and its central crack to the personality split which is called Dissociative identity disorder. Mental disorder is also evoked through the themes of melancholy, possible incest, and vampirism. An incestuous relationship between Roderick and Madeline is not explicitly stated, but seems implied by the strange attachment between the two.

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macabre: thrilling 惊悚的
Thomas Jefferson: the third President of the United States (1801–1809), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence 托马斯 杰佛逊
United States Declaration of Independence: a statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were now independent states, and thus no longer a part of the British Empire美国独立宣言
Washington Irving: an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century华盛顿 欧文
ballad: a form of verse, often a narrative and set to music歌谣
allegory: a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than the literal寓言
Dissociative identity disorder: a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a condition in which a person displays multiple distinct identities or personalities (known as alter egos or alters), each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment 人格分裂症

Going-over复习反馈
Multiple-choice Questions
1. American literature began with the first ________ in Virginia and New England.
A. English colonies   B. French colonies   C. aboriginal settlements
2. American literature at first was naturally a _________ literature, by authors who were Englishmen and who thought and wrote as such.
A. unique     B. colonial     C. original
3. Thomas Jefferson’s attitude, that is, a firm belief in progress, and the pursuit of ________, is typical of the period we now call Age of Reason.
A. happiness    B. natural beauty    C. truth
4. Washington Irving, the Father of American literature, developed the ___________ as a genre in American literature.
A. short story    B. novel      C. black humor
5. ____________ is usually acknowledged as the originator of detective stories. His detective August Dupin of Muders in the Rue Morgue is the forerunner of Sherlock Holmes and other later fictional detectives.
A. Washington Irving   B. Thomas Jefferson   C. Edgar Allan Poe
6. In The Fall of the House of Usher, the opening description establishes a mood of gloominess that foreshadows ______________ to follow.
A. the terrifying events  B. the romantic affairs  C. the detective stories
7. In ________________, the sister who was buried alive by her brother breaks out of her coffin and dies in the embrace of her brother, who then also dies.
A. The Fall of the House of Usher       B. The Masque of the Red Death 
C. The Pit and the Pendulum
8. In which genre are the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe placed?
A. dramatic    B. historical    C. Gothic
9. Poe emphasized the _______of impression of short stories, that is, every element and detail is related and relevant. This is well manifested in The Fall of the House of Usher.
A. foreshadowing   B. totality    C. onomatopoeia
essay Q’s
10. How was American literature related to the literary tradition of Europe in its early stage?
11. Edgar Allan Poe’s position is unique in the history of American literature. Comment on him and his works.
12. What is the tone of The Fall of the House of Usher? How is it developed in the story?