LITR 4328 American Renaissance / Model Assignments

Sample Student Research Project 2015: Essay

Alex Cordero

The Sublime in Poe’s Works: Its Uses, Alterations, and Importance

Edgar Allan Poe has been one of the better known writers of the Romantic Movement, and his stories have been analyzed as such. One of the romantic notions Poe was particularly fond of, was the use of the sublime. The idea of the sublime is about an impression so beautiful and powerful it leaves the reader in awe, such is why Poe’s works often seem wordy and complicated. Our class definition of the sublime was “beauty mixed with terror, danger, threat--usually on a grand or elevated scale” and it was used to elicit a “powerful mixture of pleasure and pain” to its readers. The sublime is not just made up of the magnificent and the beautiful; it is also composed of the grotesque and the dreadful, and sometimes both. It was this idea of stacking different, complex emotions that made Poe a great writer, and thus attract and keep his readers entertained. My goal in my research was to broaden the term and apply to Poe’s Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Raven. The sublime was well used by Poe in not just expressing unfathomable beauty, but also as way to describe great horror. It also functions as a great tool to describe landscapes and sceneries. On top of those it is a way to analyze personal relationship between characters and narrators, and how this idea channels their reactions and emotions.

          The current idea of the sublime I’m focusing on Poe’s work is relatively new, as it was created from the new found idea of using sensory experiences in writing, something that helped mold the Romantic era in the American Renaissance. Beverly Voloshin in her essay Transcendence Downward: An Essay on “Usher” and “Ligeia”, says that the idea of using heightened feelings in writing was partly inspired by Locke’s works in philosophy and this was taken up by writers who used these ideas in their writing. Thus it “pointed the Romantics in a new direction” (Volshon 19). Ideas to take from Voloshin, are to know that the idea of transcendentalism heightened the power the sublime could have on the reader and more so made the power of expression become stronger, something Poe does in his stories and poems.

          The idea of the sublime is not just grounded in writing and literature, it also shares its usage in art, this according to Frederick Burwick in his article Edgar Allan Poe: The Sublime, the Picturesque, the Grotesque, and the Arabesque. In Burwick’s article, he says that the term of the sublime was first used by a French critic Nicolas Boileau to describe the “visual sources that could excite such powerful emotional response” (Burwick 424). Poe, besides being a writer, was also known in the literary circles as a critic and this is where he shaped what the sublime could be, and how to utilize it and modify it in his own prose. Poe and most critics of the time agreed that the sublime was mainly compromised of a magnificent beauty. To go against other critics of the time Poe argued that the following terms could also be in the realms of the sublime; obscurity, power, darkness, solitude, and vastness. (Burwick 425). It is in Ligeia where Poe predominantly uses original version of the sublime, as his exaggerated view of his dead lover are made to be heightened in his retelling of her utmost and perfect beauty.

          Adding to the artistic aspect of the sublime, Burwick argues that Poe also uses the picturesque, or visual into his writing. There must be a clear imagining of a scene as would in any piece of art, for example a painting. Such is how in The Fall of the House of Usher, the house gets a lot of description from the narrator. The narrator “looked upon the scene before [him]—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees”(Poe 1). Poe wants to you to see the painting he sees in his own mind, perhaps a particular house he found utterly depressing and devoid of life. This is where the picturesque comes in. Poe in his quest to strike fear into readers personifies the house into having human characteristics, as a means to tie its current woeful state to that of his friend Roderick. Also he goes to great precision in describing the house, as it is an important aspect of the story, for us to get immersed into the house by fully envisioning it. Just as any art critic would go into lengthy details to describe the beauty in a painting, the same is being done by Poe. His lover Ligeia and the house are being portrayed as great paintings hanging from the depths of Poe’s mind, which carry the essence of the sublime in their importance.

          Such as painting and photographs trick the mind into experiencing extreme emotion, the same is being achieved by Poe according to Burwick. Poe would have been limited in his story-telling had he only used one the original aspect of the sublime, its original meaning of describing the esthetics of the beautiful. Burwick says “the experience [Poe] wanted to communicate [were] too complex to be grasped with only one of these categories” (Burwick 433). Drawing from art criticism, where paintings are described by their artistic qualities he attempts to emulate all these features into his prose as a means to display what he imagines into his readers, who have never seen the House of Usher or the people he attempts to describe. Terror and beauty where blended by Poe into one aesthetic, one he could use to trigger his reader into being afraid for the narrator’s safety.

          In a sense, Poe undulates the reader with emotions, swaying back and forth between vague emotions, to the most expressive of feelings. This was just another tool he used to magnify the power of the sublime in his prose, something similar to the crescendo and decrescendo a musician uses to get louder and softer when performing. The beginning description of the mansion is described as the narrator as being “dull”, “dark” and on a “soundless day” (Poe 1). This first line eases the reader into a mild mood, one where you would not expect a house to harbor such horrors, but also the melancholy mansion was giving of the aura where anything horrible could happen, but did not harbor such horrors. In this first paragraph is where Poe intentionally jumbles the reader’s emotions, as the dullness and mild terror are mixed with the “insufferable gloom” the house also possessed. This stacking of strong and weak emotions is a point Burwick attempted to make in his article as Poe mixes all these aesthetics and emotions into a different type of sublime Poe created to include the emotions he was after. Such is the case when later in the story Poe unleashes the powerful sublime, in line thirty of the story, “a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty”(Poe 30). This would be the place where the music would suddenly become loud, shocking us when we’ve not been expecting such change in dynamics. It is from Poe’s modified sublime where the reader experiences the power in his words, we as readers are shocked when his ‘orchestra’ suddenly picks up the pace and suddenly we are on the edge waiting for the narrator to see what else can happen in the mansion.

          Christy Johnson, in her article Sublime Terror in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”, also states that Poe “manipulates the convention of the sublime to make it his own” (Johnson 43). Johnson argues that Poe uses the Kantian version of the sublime to describe the narrator in The Raven, in order to unify the object and subject into one entity. This take on the sublime is different as opposed to how Burwick analyzed Poe’s use of the term. Johnson claims that in the Raven, the narrator is driven mad by his own conscious. This is achieved by the Kantian notion that the narrator and his imagination are merged into one being, which in turn drives him mad, and his madness can only portrayed as sublime terror, one he cannot escape. The narrator and the bird struggle to find cohesion, in order for the narrator to achieve peace of mind. The narrator, being in a depressed state, cannot explain Lenore’s death in a logical way. A way explained through academic logic, but he cannot and this is where his madness takes flight. It is here where he slowly personifies the bird and starts channeling his rage and insecurities towards it. “’Prophet!’ said I, ‘thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!’”(Poe 16.5), says the narrator to the bird, whom has been tormenting him with its presence. In other words the sublime is the terror itself, the terror made into the bird, which is tormenting the narrator. In a sense the sublime is being fabricated by the narrator himself with his own fear forged into the talking raven. Such is where the subject and object are made into one being, one the narrator cannot escape as both are in his mind. Although it lacks the beauty of the sublime, Poe uses his own version of the term to heighten the fear the readers experience when reading the poem. To add to the narrator’s tragic depression is that there is no resolution to his state of mind as there is no probable way of bringing Lenore back from the grave and he is cursed to live out his remaining days in said state. The narrator says this in the last line of the poem “my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor…Shall be lifted—nevermore” (Poe 18.5-6) Such is a way of how Poe analyzed different types of the sublime and uses it to mold his stories, which is an interesting quality of the Romantic movement.

          Craig Howes in his article, Burke, Poe, and “Usher”: The Sublime and Rising Woman, claims that Poe overstretched his use of the sublime in Usher by contradicting himself with the definition literary critic Edmund Burke gave to the term. Burke claimed that the sublime could only exist if it was a pleasant emotion that individuals sought out, and a close reading regarding these rules explains that Poe did not use it in Usher. In the article Howes goes into depth as to what features compromise the sublime. “Obscurity”, “vastness”, “distance”, and “proximity” are what Howes, claims makes the Burkean version of the sublime (Howes 177). Fear, and terror have no place in this version of the sublime, but Poe manages to include them without breaking the Burkean aesthetics of the sublime. According to Howes, this is possible by an examination of the relationship between Roderick and his sister Madeline. Using and applying the object-subject idea Johnson used in the Raven, Poe manages to apply sublime qualities to the brother-sister relationship in Usher. In a way, Roderick and Madeline have the same relationship the narrator and the raven have, with Roderick representing the narrator and Madeline the raven. Roderick’s fear of not continuing the family legacy leads to a problem he can never fix, much like the narrator in Raven. Fixing it would imply an incestuous relationship with his sister, and from this he arrives at a dilemma, create said relationship or destroy the heritage of the Ushers. The implied relationship would put Roderick in the same position as the narrator in Raven, a decision with no immediate fix. Roderick’s dilemma can be overlooked by the reader as we see the story through the narrator’s point of view, bus his mental breakdown is also an integral part of the story. The object-subject issue mentioned by Johnson would also lead to the horrible sublime that the narrator experiences in Raven. Roderick cannot extend his family legacy because doing so would lead to an incestuous relationship with his sister, but not doing so leads to his family’s heritage dying. It’s a lose-lose situation for him and that is where the source of his terrors, and fears arrive, as a sublime power drives him insane. The fact that he no longer holds the power to make any decisions, leads to fall of the house and his own name.

          Adding to Roderick’s problem with his decision, is the implied power women carry in the story. Madeline, in this story is given supernatural power to her being a woman. According to Howes it is with Madeline that this is issue succeeds at being so powerful. Howes says, “it is the contrast between death and beauty that makes this scenario so ‘poetical’ and the ‘single effect’ of melancholy so strong” (Howes 184). This power to reduce men to their knees is what makes the women so powerful in the two works as Howes says that the men have no options other than to “flee, either physically, as in ‘Usher,’ or mentally, as they shake with the laughter of madness” (Howes 185). Such is what happens to the narrator in the Raven, he loses his mind. Adding mysticism to the women in these stories Poe achieves to place the power into a being, one who can unleash it their own discretion. A source of bear and beauty.

          The last thing I’ll try and analyze is the sublime in both short stories, is how it shaped the narrators. Ronald Bieganowski talks more in depth about the narrators in both, Ligeia and Usher in his article, The Self-Consuming Narrator in Poe’s “Ligeia” and “Usher”. In it Bieganowski describes the narrator and their struggles to “mediate between the mundane and the sublime, present dreariness and recollected excitement (Poe’s terror), the unpoetical and poetical, the text and the reader” (Bieganowski 186). Imagination is what drive both of these narrators and that is what makes their journeys the more interesting. Specifically in Ligeia where the narrator vivid imagination does his best to describe the beauty of Ligeia, his despair at their passing, and his glee at seeing his first love return from the dead. In this story we experience the psychological aspects of Poe’s narrative and his purpose in achieving them. The stories share many similarities in their quest for the sublime, for the awe-inducing beauty they once experienced and which Poe tries to convey in his prose. This would be the original meaning of the sublime, its lively beauty, and one effectively uses and later distorts in his stories. Such is why the sublime, is what I feel is the strongest of Poe’s devices in telling his stories, and poems. Much of Bieganowski’s article deals with the narrators conveying their feelings on to us, the readers. Bieganowski says, “the power of fiction relies precisely on such a sense of the imagined world as if it were the world of experience”  (Bieganowski 180). Such is why the narrators share a common idea of looking for the beauty in their world and being denied it, they arrive at the horrors the worlds throws at them. Shaped from Poe’s own personal experiences we get a glimpse of what happens when beauty betrays us, and how these characters suffer from it.

          I felt in my research that there was little written on the sublime in Poe’s works and I felt the idea of the sublime is overlooked in his work. I argue that the power and depth the sublime carries is what defined the Romantic Movement, as the writers are given full power over what emotions they can convey, and how strong they can be. It is something that still inspires writers to this day, and plenty of writers today have issues achieving what Poe did in his prose. At the end I learned plenty from my research as to how the sublime can be used and manipulated to display the emotions they writers bear.

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