LITR 4232 American Renaissance

Poe, “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”

Thursday, 9 March: Poe, “Ligeia” (2462-2472); “The Fall of the House of Usher” (2472-2486). Research Project Proposal due.

Reader: Heidi Gerke > reassigned to later in semester

Proposal is due any time between today and next class (14 March)

Email proposal, I'll reply by end of next week

Received emails from Melissa and Cana, will reply before weekend.

proposals / projects

What's a journal?

from syllabus:

Description of Research Options:

Option 1 (analytic / research essay) requirements

• This option involves a more or less "standard College English paper" in which the student analyzes a literary text or texts.
• The topic is open to any type of literary analysis, but it must have some relevance to the course. That is, a member of the class reading your essay would be able to recognize the relevance of the text or its major themes.
• Possible topics: tracing in one text, or comparing and contrasting in more than one text the development of a theme, image, symbol, usage of language, character type, plot pattern, or conflict.
• In terms of primary texts, you may choose a text from beyond this course, but if you use more than one primary text, at least one should be from the course readings.

·     In terms of research, you must incorporate references to at least three secondary and background sources--that is, your research sources must include both secondary and background types of research; the distinction will be explained.

• Follow MLA style for documentation and mechanics.
• Length: 7-10 pages + Works Cited
• Research Requirements: One or two primary sources; at least 3 secondary and background sources (distinction explained below). At least one source should be "print"--i. e., not from the internet. (see note below)

Option 2 (journal) requirements

If you choose the journal option, you are not choosing an option that involves less work than the traditional research paper option. You are expected to do just as much work and your writing will be judged by similar standards. However, the writing may be less centrally or consistently focused on one subject. Thus you may pursue several subjects, which may not perfectly cohere, but the journal must be “readable.” That is, your writing should lead the reader and connect from page to page. In brief, the journal I read should not be your first drafts, and it has to be going somewhere.

Possible topics: Transcendentalism; slave narratives; journalism and Manifest Destiny; the Utopian movement of the American Renaissance (Brook Farm, Fourierism, Fruitlands, the Shakers); the rise of popular women's writing; the Abolitionist writers; Southern pro-slavery writers (Simms, Fitzhugh, and others); Whitman and the New York demi-monde (bohemian underworld); the "Concord circle" of writers who gathered around Emerson. Many other topics are also possible, and you are encouraged to develop your own. Look at previous examples of journals for this and other courses online through my faculty website, or leaf through the table of contents and introductions of our anthology for inspiration.

Research journal—required & possible contents: (page suggestions are for double-spaced print)

(Except for the introduction and conclusion, all items and page numbers below are optional or variable according to your interests and findings. In no case should your journal be over 20 pages. Other options are always possible.)

·        Introduction (required): rationale: what you wanted to learn and how; preview contents, general themes, choices (1-1 & 1/2 pages)

(All the following “body” components are optional for inclusion or variable in length according to your topics and findings)

• Essential general information about subject: 4-6 pages explaining general subject, drawn from background and secondary sources.
• Review of 2 or 3 secondary sources (articles or books) about your subject. Summarize the content and usefulness of these sources. (1-2 pages each)
• Literary biographies of one or more authors relevant to your subject. Review the lives and writings, summarize importance and contributions. (2-3 pages each)
• Review of one or more websites relevant to your subject. Review contents, accuracy, usefulness. (1-2 pages each)
• Many other possibilities that you will discover as you research. The journal is necessarily a "loose" form, so let your findings dictate your organization.
• Conclusion (required): 1-2 pages summarizing what you have learned, what you would do next if you continued your research, how it might be applied.

Where to list or how to document your “works cited” or “bibliography’ for a journal: You may either fully document your research as you review it, or you may save full documentation for a “Works Cited” at the end of the journal. However, you need not do both; that is, there is no need to duplicate information at the end that you’ve already provided on the way through.

More on Research Requirements

Primary texts. In research writing for literature, primary texts are works of fiction, poetry, or drama. You may refer briefly to three or four primary texts total, but the danger of involving many texts is that the analysis is spread thin.

Background sources refer to handbooks, encyclopedias, and companions to literature that provide basic generic, biographical, or historical information.  For purposes of Literature, these books are generally shelved in the PR and PS sections of the Reference section of the library.

Secondary sources refer to critical articles about particular authors or texts.  (When you write your analytic / research paper, you are creating a secondary source.)  These may take the form of articles or books.  Articles may be found in journals or in bound collections of essays.  Secondary books may be found on the regular shelves of the library.  To find secondary sources, perform a database search on the MLA directory in the Reference section of the library--the reference librarians will help you.

Documentation style: MLA style (parenthetical documentation + Works Cited page, as described in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 4^th or 5^th edition.

Note on use of online or print sources: Most of the best projects use mostly print sources, while "slacker" projects tend to use the internet almost exclusively. I don't use this as a standard, but this is the way things tend to turn out. (Internet information tends to be a lot looser, more careless, sweeping, and second-hand in its assertions, and overall less deeply researched and edited; when you use print sources, you're generally using a superior text, and that tends to carry over. I grade your project on its merits, but the merits of your project may depend on the merits of your sources. Go to the library!

Model assignments

Hawthorne assignments

Tuesday, 14 March: spring break

Thursday, 16 March: spring break

Tuesday, 21 March: Nathaniel Hawthorne, introduction (2242-2245) +  “The Minister’s Black Veil” (2267-76)

Reader: Bill Wolfe

Thursday, 23 March: Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown.” (2258-67)

Reader: Amanda Hanne

Hawthorne assignments

Compare and contrast Poe and Hawthorne

Both use gothic for psychological purposes

Poe as popular, Hawthorne as classical, elite writer

Poe influences more lurid tradition, sensations, surrealism, etc.

Hawthorne more intellectual, lofty, serious, yet elusive, delicate; anticipates Henry James

How does Hawthorne anticipate modern literature?

Ambiguity, perspective

+ compare gothics:

Hawthorne: "moral gothic" of light and dark, good and evil

Moral, not moralizing—less absolute right and wrong than exploration of subject, intermingling of good and evil in human reality—x-unlike other men; > “all have sinned” 2208-09

Puritans as gothic--past, guilt / sin, darkness & light

But also wilderness gothic: forest in Young Goodman Brown 2208

+ YGB as “Rip Van Winkle”

Questions for Poe

Identify gothic

What purposes for the gothic?

Is Poe serious and meaningful, or just great fun and sensation?

What does Poe amount to? Does Poe mean anything, or is it just a great performance?

correspondence 
1. act or state of corresponding, relation or agreement of things to each other or of one thing to another.
2. intercourse between persons by letters

+ Romantic concept concerning relation between inner and outer world, soul and nature, self and cosmos

Emerson 1518 every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind

"Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination

sank deep in the mind of Ichabod

all the stories of ghosts and goblins . . . came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker  

Poe:

first glimpse of building, insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit

 [cf. House] a mind from which darkness . . . poured forth

twinning (cf. "William Wilson")

Roderick and Madeleine twins, sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature

[twinning of narratives]

desire and loss as "drive" of romance narrative

romance narrative: quest, journey--"search for the Holy Grail"

What makes people go on quests? (desire)

What happens when people get what they want (story ends?)

How keep desire alive? (lose object of desire > nostalgia)

"Romance" 2458

"Annabel Lee" 2473-4

Traditional European gothic > psychological

Or parody?

(book that won't stay closed)

 decaying city on the Rhine

abbey

excessive antiquity

Gothic tour

raven-black . . . tresses

fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena

[fair lady / dark lady scheme; compare Byronic hero and "golden boy"

Last of the Mohicans

Alice / Cora = fair lady / dark lady

Magua / Uncas = Byronic hero-villain / "golden boy"

color scheme

memory of color

blood red thing

2413 blood-red moon--[everything goes crash]

phantasmagoric effect  

phantasmagoria: 
1. an optical effect by which figures on a screen appear to dwindle into the distance, or to rush toward the observer with enormous increase of size
2. A shifting succession of things seen, imagined, or evoked in the imagination, as by a fever; a changing medley

1990 Painting "Phantasmagoria"

arabesque  

"arabesque" may be most familiar as a dance posture

But "arabesque" also has a meaning in visual art

arabesque: a kind of ornamentation consisting of a fantastic interlacing pattern of flowers, foliage, or fruit, often with figures of men and animals (except in Arabic art), sometimes geometic in character

Other ways of describing this art:

stylized

geometric

"orientalism"--tendency to romanticize "oriental" images in Romantic art and literature as "exotic," etc. "The Orient" in the nineteenth century included the Middle East as well as eastern Asia.

2396 Eastern figure, Luxor, arabesque

Islamic art: no representations of humans

maze as frequent feature in gothic

labyrinth: 
1. a place full of intricate passageways; a maze, specifically in Greek myth, the maze in Crete in which the Minotaur was confined.
2. any intricate enclosure, esp. a maze of paths in a park or garden [e. g. The Shining; also consider Young Goodman Brown's path in the forest]
3. any inextricable or bewildering state of things, etc.; a perplexity
4. anatomy the internal ear

Other stories by Poe use mazes more often than today's readings, e. g. "William Wilson" (1839)

But the house! --how quaint an old building was this! --to me how veritably a palace of enchantment! There was really no end to its windings --to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult, at any given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be. From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral branches were innumerable --inconceivable --and so returning in upon themselves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity. During the five years of my residence here, I was never able to ascertain with precision, in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to myself and some eighteen or twenty other scholars.

hint of maze-like structure of the gothic in "Usher" 2409

correspondence 
1. act or state of corresponding, relation or agreement of things to each other or of one thing to another.
2. intercourse between persons by letters

+ Romantic concept concerning relation between inner and outer world, soul and nature, self and cosmos

Emerson 1518 every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind

"Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

2097 every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination

2107 sank deep in the mind of Ichabod

2108 all the stories of ghosts and goblins . . . came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker  

2401 first glimpse of building, insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit

 [cf. House] a mind from which darkness . . . poured forth

twinning (cf. "William Wilson")

2409 Roderick and Madeleine twins, sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature

2411 [twinning of narratives]

psychological gothic

point about material gothic: what does it mean?  Is there any meaning beyond the sensation of identity and horror?  cf Hawthorne

But psychological allegory sometimes appears--split personality

psychological

2401 vacant eye-like windows

2402 id house and family

2402 fissure in house [= crack in mentality; p : constitutional and family evil, morbid acuteness of the senses]

2392 science of the mind

2411 history of mental disorder  

desire and loss

 [love + loss]

2399 loss, revival, loss

 mistake “I” in narratives as Poe himself

 parents actors, orphaned, feud with John Allen

 married cousin Virginia at 13

 Southern Literary Messenger [literature in South, Richmond]

 “Raven” overnight success

 death of wife Virginia at age of 25

“Ligeia”

2390 decaying city on the Rhine

2390 in fancy the image of her who is no more

2391 raven-black . . . tresses

2392 science of the mind

2392 very verge of remembrance

2392 commonest objects of the universe

2393 metaphysical investigation

2393 a wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden

2394 [love + loss] In death only was I fully impressed with the strength of her affection

2395 a blood red thing

2394 [cf. Emerson] part and parcel

2395 no lack of wealth

2395 abbey . . . gloomy and dreary grandeur

2396 opium

2396 fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena

2396 ceiling

2396 arabesque

2397 phantasmagoric effect

2397 excitement of my opium dreams

2398 shadow of a shade

2398 I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw

2398 ruby colored fluid

2399 tinge of color

2399 loss, revival, loss

2399 again visions of Ligeia,  again

"The Fall of the House of Usher"

2401 first glimpse of building, insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit

2401 after-dream of reveler on opium

2401 vacant eye-like windows

2401 very ancient family

2402 id house and family

2402 fancy, imagination

2402 excessive antiquity

2402 fissure in house [= crack in mentality; p 1466: constitutional and family evil, morbid acuteness of the senses]

2402 Gothic archway + ebon, etc.

2403 Gothic tour

2403 half of pity, half of awe + utter astonishment not unmingled with dread [sublime]

2405 cataleptical

2405 [cf. House] a mind from which darkness . . . poured forth (cf. Ichabod)

cf.  every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind

2405-6 painting of idea = grave

2406 memory of color

2407 cf Annabel Lee "evil things" x childlike innocence

2408 gothic list of books, cf Borges

2409 identical Madeleine

2409 donjon-keep

2409 Roderick and Madeleine twins, sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature

intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable

2410 a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night + terror

2411 Here is one of your favorite romances

2411 history of mental disorder

2411 [twinning of narratives]

2411-2 knight and dragon

2412 counterpart

2413 blood-red moon--[everything goes crash]

[cf. “City in the Sea”]

point about material gothic: what does it mean?  Is there any meaning beyond the sensation of identity and horror?  cf Hawthorne

But psychological allegory sometimes appears--split personality

Review Byronic hero

Incest as Romantic taboo: Byron, Heathclif

2388 married cousin Virginia at 13 (Byronic incest: Byron, Heathcliff—one of last 2 taboos)

2388 Southern Literary Messenger [literature in South, Richmond]

(south as closer to Europe, ideology of chivalry)

bad luck with women

2453 death of beautiful woman