Sample Student Research Project, spring 2006
LITR
4232: American Renaissance
Sample Student Research Project, spring 2006
Becky Mobley
April 18, 2006
Poe’s Spirit: the Sublime in Poe’s Tales
Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe has always had a strong influence on me, and he has always been one of my most favorite authors. He is known for his use of the Gothic genre style of fiction writing. However, his use of the “sublime” is addressed very little. For me, the “sublime” is a spirituality–connected experience. It allows “pleasure and pain” to be experienced by the narrator of a work. It is connected to a “higher level” of spiritual feelings and emotions that are often equated with mystical experiences. It is a style of writing that is intertwined with the Gothic genre through characters who are not only subjected to supernatural elements, but they are oftentimes subjected to those elements through painful experiences that are felt in safe environments. Because they are felt and experienced in these “safe” environments, their experience is often elevated to a higher level – thus the pleasure and pain experience. Poe stylized this writing in much of his work, but I will be discussing it two of his short stories: “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
In my search for elements of “the sublime” in critical essays on Poe’s work, I quickly realized that “the sublime” is not mentioned in many critical essays – none in the research material that I found. What is mentioned, however, is Poe’s use of “word magic,” and the connections of the spiritual and supernatural, within his works (May 60). According to M.H. Abrams’ A Glossary of Literary Terms, “the sublime” has elements of “figurative language, nobility of expression, and elevated composition,” as well as the traits “loftiness of thought” and “strong and inspired passion” (316). It is connected to the “natural world” and to “things which are ‘in any sort terrible’ – that is, to whatever is ‘fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger’ – provided that the observer is in a situation of safety from danger, and so is able to experience what would otherwise be a painful terror as a ‘delightful horror.’ The features of objects which evoke sublime horror ...are obscurity, immense power, and vastness in dimension or quantity.’” These include examples of “vast architectural structures... natural phenomena;” things that “evoke ‘a great and awful sensation of the mind’” (317).
Abrams explains that “Gothic” novel authors “exploited the sublimity of delightful horror both in the natural and architectural settings of their narratives and in the actions and events that they narrated” (317). He defines the “dynamic sublime” as that which “encompasses the objects conducive to terror at our seeming helplessness before the overwhelming power of nature, provided that the terror is rendered pleasurable by the safe situation of the observer” (318).
The ability to maintain pleasure with pain seems to be the basic ingredient to “the sublime.” The “connection to the natural world” is found in Poe’s work – especially in the immense structures (e.g. the mansion in “Usher”). Since the “sublime” is connected to the Gothic genre, it is only fitting to assume that the “spiritual” and “supernatural” that the various critics have written on can be considered the same thing as “the sublime.” Poe’s use of immense structures and architectural design within his prose is combined with his “metaphors of mind’ are considered to be “sublime.”
In our readings, “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe uses his “word magic” to convey an ability within his characters to “delve deeply within and bring to light the most hidden crannies of suffering, [and] oddly prolific self” (Carlson 132). For Poe, “word magic exists only in the realm of art where things exist only by virtue of words, silence is the ultimate horror because it suggests ultimate nonbeing” (May 60). Through my research, I had hoped to gain a better understanding of the “sublime” and how it relates to Poe in his prose pieces. I discovered that the “sublime” takes on various forms in Poe’s writing style – concentrating on the consciousness of the mind, expression, and the supernatural.
Poe’s Life
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809 to David and Elizabeth Poe – who belonged to a traveling theatrical company. David Poe was not involved in Poe’s life. He was a poor player who was an alcoholic and suffered from Tuberculosis. Poe’s mother, Elizabeth, who happened to be a good player in the company, died of Tuberculosis on December 8, 1811, in Richmond, Virginia. -- orphaning three children. Young Edgar was taken in by John and Frances Allan (Shanks 19-23). Poe attended schools in England and Richmond, and eventually registered at the University of Virginia on February 14, 1826. While there, he was an active member of the Jefferson Literary Society. He remained in school until December, when Mr. Allan refused to pay off un-approved debts. A quarrel ensued between Mr. Allan and Edgar - causing him to leave home with no money. He then went to Boston, where he published a volume of poetry: Tamerlane and Other Poems. While in Boston, he enlisted in the U.S. Army on May 26, 1827, under the name Edgar A. Perry. After two years of service, he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant-Major. He reconciled with Mr. Allan and, with his help, was discharged from the Army and moved to Baltimore, Maryland. There, he lived with his aunt, Mrs. Maria Poe Clemm, on a small amount of money sent to him by Mr. Allan. He received appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In 1829, he published his second set of poems: Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems. After another quarrel with Mr. Allan, he stopped receiving money from Mr. Allan (who had remarried his second wife in 1830). He took release from West Point and was dismissed on March 6, 1831. He also published his third volume of poems: Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, Second Edition. He began writing prose tales while still living with Mrs. Clemm.
Five of Poe’s tales appeared in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier in 1832. From December 1835 to January 1837, he edited the Southern Literary Messenger, for Thomas W. White, in Richmond, Virginia. While in Richmond, he married his young cousin, Virginia Clemm, on May 16, 1836. Harpers published his book-length narrative, Arthur Gordon Pym, in July, 1838. He also moved to Philadelphia in 1838 - where he lived for six years. He found work as the editor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine from July, 1839 to June, 1840. He was then the editor of Graham’s Magazine from April, 1841 until May, 1842. In April, 1844, he moved to New York, where he found work on the New York Evening Mirror. In 1840, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in two volumes. He became famous with the success of the poem “The Raven” in 1845. In March, 1845, he joined CF Briggs in effort to publish The Broadway Journal. Also in 1845, Wiley and Putnam issued Tales by Edgar Allan Poe and The Raven and Other Poems. In 1846, Edgar moved to Fordham, where he lived the last three years of his life. During this time, The Broadway Journal failed, and his wife, Virginia, died on January 30, 1847. After visiting Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia, for lectures, Edgar was found ill in Baltimore -- where he was taken to the hospital; he died on October 7, 1849. To this day, his cause of death remains a mystery (poemuseum.org).
Understanding Poe
Poe’s life influenced his writing. Since he suffered greatly in his life, his work reflects this pain. The mind and memory are central themes in his work, as well as death and reincarnation. In Ligeia, the theme of remembrance and reincarnation is central to the story’s plot. “This theme of remembrance is crucial to understanding Poe and the series of tragic losses he suffered as a child and an adult. His characters’ attachment to their lost loved ones (often physically and fetishistically) represents an unwillingness to accept the finality of death... There is also the recurring paradox of the character making a strong effort to forget, an act which actually conceals the stronger need to remember” (Hutchisson 52). In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” death, resurrection, and vengeance are central themes. While Roderick Usher is a madman who entombs his twin sister alive, the sister escapes her entombment and seeks her vengeance on him in her “final death agonies” (2485).
The idea of a young woman dying too young and medicine inaccurately identifying death were common during Poe’s time: “Some elements of the tales, however, were also rooted in tragic reality – that of women dying far too young, and of primitive medicine that could not accurately identify the state of death... The fallibility of diagnosis of death was one of Poe’s recurrent themes” (Hutchisson 51-52). These themes reverberate sublime moments within Poe’s Gothic-genre works. Poe incorporates these themes through his writing style that Charles May refers to as “word magic.” This “word magic” is founded in his belief in the supernatural – which is definitive of what the “sublime” is.
According to Taylor Stoehr, Poe and many of his narrators are “practitioners of word-magic. They believe that there is a natural (or super-natural) connection between the word and what it names – not merely a conventional semantic relationship.” Since for Poe such word magic exists only in the realm of art where things exist only by virtue of words, silence is the ultimate horror because it suggests ultimate nonbeing (May 60).
Poe’s use of “word-magic” in a supernatural (or natural) context is what makes his writing style contain various degrees of the “sublime.”
Elements of Sublime
Since most criticism of Poe does not actually address “the sublime,” I had to research those elements that are definitive of the “sublime”. Though they are not referred to directly as “sublime,” these elements are representative of what the “sublime” is. The research I have found discusses Poe as using a style of writing that is based on the “spiritual,” “supernatural,” and “the consciousness of the mind,” as well as a “consciousness that perceives the reality of expression” (May 62). He uses “figurative language” that allows the reader “to conceive supernatural events” (De Shell 58). These “transcendental events” are intricately linked as elements of the “sublime” through the fact that they are connected to the supernatural, as well as having characters who are subjected to pleasure and pain:
Self-afflicted and self-victimized
(so to speak, their own executioners), Poe’s characters must perform a
persistently downward journey, sinking further and further into voluble
wonderment at themselves, until they arrive at one of those shattering silences
with which their narratives customarily end. And yet, even as they descend, they are granted a kind of
glory which no hero of the earlier Gothic could ever have matched... During a
single, transcendent moment, however, they have had the privilege of calling up
out of their very beings a totally new order of reality (Griffith/Carlson 131).
This “new reality” is by definition a sublime experience: the narrator is jolted from one reality to another is considered a basic supernatural event. In this sense, the supernatural event has put the narrator through a higher-level spiritual experience by going through a transcendent moment. The pleasure and pain they experience, which is also a definition of a “sublime” moment, is experience through the “persistently downward journey” that the narrator is forced to “sink” into (Carlson/Griffith 131). Poe’s descriptive devises are also elements of the “sublime,” because they “bring to light the most hidden crannies of suffering, yet oddly prolific self” (Carlson/Griffith 132). These “sufferings” are key elements of the “sublime,” because they cause the narrator pain and pleasure at the same time. These descriptive devises are “Poe’s metaphors of the mind” – which is part of the consciousness of the mind (Carlson/Griffith 132).
“Ligeia”
Poe uses the elements of the Gothic and the “sublime” in his writings. In “Ligeia,” his first-person narrative description of Ligeia is both gothic and sublime:
...the skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet... (2463).
Poe uses her “ivory” skin to contrast with her “raven-black” hair; he describes her eyes to be “the most brilliant black” with “jetty lashes” and matching dark eyebrows.
Though the comparison of light with dark is Gothic, elements of the “sublime” are also found in his description of her by way of placing his beloved on a higher pedestal. He praises her to the level of worship – while describing her “strangeness:”
She came and departed as shadow... It was the radiance of an opium-dream – an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos (2462-63).
Even her teeth are described on a gothic and sublime level:
...the teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of the holy light which fell upon them in her serene and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of all smiles (2463).
The “whiteness” of her teeth – with red lips, dark hair, and pale skin – is classic Gothic elements. His use of “exultingly radiant” and “holy light” put her features on a spiritual level that is uniquely sublime.
His experiences, feelings, and emotions while describing her, and remembering her, are also sublime:
The
“strangeness,” however, which I found in the eyes, was of a nature distinct
from the formation, or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must,
after all, be referred to the expression. Ah,
word of no meaning Behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we intrench our
ignorance of so much of the spiritual (2463).
He can barely keep his composure while talking about her – he becomes so overwhelmed with emotions. These “spiritual” experiences are what give the story its “sublime” elements.
...in our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember... I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia’s beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt always aroused within me by her large and luminous orbs (2464-65).
His feelings are repeatedly connected with spiritual experiences and references. Ligeia’s eyes are the focal point for him; he continuously makes references to them:
I
was possessed with a passion to discover. Those
eyes! those large, those shining,
those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest
of astrologers...
...And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me – by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her very low voice – and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered (2464-65).
Poe uses his “word magic” to give the narrator a sublime experience by using elements of the supernatural; “Ligeia is less a physical reality than a metaphoric vehicle for that which has no name or presence” (May 62). Poe’s concentration on Ligeia’s face is sublime because he uses “expression” to place natural elements on a higher spiritual level. For Poe, “expression” is the “unified combination of individual features, an overall pattern that exceeds the sum of its parts... Whatever is thought to be spiritual is a result of expression, the pattern of the human face” (May 62). Poe compares this “expression” to common objects, which suggest that Ligeia is a “metaphoric embodiment of intangible and inchoate experience” (May 62). This “metaphoric embodiment” is an element of the “sublime;” Ligeia is described in such a vague way that she, herself, is sublime.
Another level of the sublime that Poe uses is through consciousness. This consciousness is “that which perceives the reality of expression, that ineffable sense of identity that is constituted by pattern alone” (May 64). Poe’s writing style is “sublime” through his use of this consciousness that puts the narrator into another, more supernatural or spiritual, world:
In this sense, the narrator is the
romantic artist who, to use Coleridge’s terms, projects the “I AM” on to
things in the world and makes them live (May 64).
Thus, Poe uses the Romantic genre of the Gothic to express “sublime” occurrences of the consciousness within his works – in this case, “Ligeia.”
“The
Fall of the House of Usher”
In this tale, Poe creates a first-person narrative that creates “doubts on the reader’s ability
to trust the narrator” (De Shell 57). Poe uses aspects of the “sublime” through the duality between the narrator and Roderick Usher. This tale is “sublime” through the fact that it is a “journey into the depths of the self” with supernatural events, a gothic mansion, and eerie surroundings. Poe’s use of sound is also “sublime” through the sounds that the narrator hears while reading the book to Roderick. The experiences of the narrator are also “sublime” through the association of “the self” and dreams:
...all journeys in Poe are
allegories of the process of dreaming, and we must understand “The Fall of the
House of Usher” as a dream of the narrator’s, in which he leaves behind him
the waking, physical world and journeys inward toward his ‘moi interieur,’
toward his inner and spiritual self.
That inner self is Roderick Usher (Regan 108).
Through this duality of the inner self, the narrator experiences moments of the “sublime.”
The settings in the tale have not only elements of the Gothic, but it creates “sublime” moments for the narrator:
I looked upon the scene before me
– 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 – with an utter
depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly
than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium – the bitter lapse into
every-day life – the hideous dropping off of the veil.
There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart – an
unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could
torture into aught of the sublime (2473).
The narrator has “sublime” feelings about the estate and foreshadows impending doom. This “sickening heart” of the narrator is sublime through the pain he feels, and through the supernatural, and yet unnatural feel, he gets being on the estate grounds.
Poe’s use of sounds within the text is the main “sublime” element. The narrator hears frightful sounds that he equates to the supernatural – which are definitive of being elements of the “sublime.”
I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened – I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me – to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable (2482).
These supernatural occurrences are prime examples of the “sublime” that is found in Poe. Poe often uses sound to create phantasmagoric experiences in his narrators’ minds. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe’s use of sound heightens the narrator’s belief in the supernatural events that are taking place, thus increasing the idea of the “sublime” within the text:
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement – for there could be no doubt whatever, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound – the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon’s unnatural shriek as described by the romancer (2484).
Poe uses sound to create “sublime” moments from supernatural experiences; these experiences are creations of the narrator’s mind believing in the supernatural and from his imagination. The narrator’s state of mind progresses his imagination. His experiences are oftentimes referred to as “dreamlike” because they delve into the consciousness of the narrator.
In this tale, Poe also uses duality to further the “sublime” consciousness of the narrator by connecting him to Roderick Usher.
Roderick Usher, then, is part of
the narrator’s self... We may think of Usher, if we like, as the narrator’s
imagination, or his visionary soul. Or
we may think of him as a ‘state of mind’ which the narrator enters at a
certain stage of his progress into dreams (Regan 108).
The “state of mind” that Poe incorporates into his stories is very much part of the “sublime.” Without the mind, consciousness and imagination, Poe would not be able to as successfully incorporate the ideas of the spirit and the supernatural into his tales. These are key elements to creating his Gothic work, and they also are part of the key definitions of the “sublime.” It is through these elements that “The Fall of the House of Usher” incorporates the “sublime” into the Gothic style text.
Bibliography
Books
Abrams, M.H., and Harpham, Geoffrey Galt. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Boston: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005.
This book is a dictionary of literary terms. It is a necessity for any person serious about
Literature – it defines various literary terms (like “Sublime” and “Gothic”). I used this book to define “sublime,” and to establish a basic understanding on the Romantic Movement as well as the Gothic genre.
De
Shell, Jeffrey. The Peculiarity of
Literature: An Allegorical Approach to Poe’s Fiction. New Jersey: Assoc.
Univ. Press, 1997.
De Shell discusses the figurative and allegorical language Poe uses in his work. I reviewed this book and applied it to my research on “The Fall of the House of Usher.” He delves into great detail on how Poe uses the first-person narrative as an untrustworthy character. He explains how the untrustworthy narrator causes the reader to doubt and “detach slightly” from the narrator. He claims that “[h]esitation is created while reading, and ‘oscillates between the two poles of trusting the narrator implicitly and not believing anything the narrator says” 57-58). I found his criticisms very useful for broad and generalized research topics – especially regarding Poe’s style and structure of writing.
Griffith, Clark. “Poe and the Gothic.” Critical Essays on Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Eric W. Carlson. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1987. 131-132.
In this critical essay, Griffith details a comparison between Poe’s various works and the Gothic genre as written by other authors of the time. He examines how Poe’s characters are self-afflicted, and are always following a persistent pattern of a downward journey. He explains that Poe’s language is descriptive, yet it “deviles” his Gothic predecessors who “re-emerge as Poe’s metaphors of mind; their rhetorical flourishes are turned by [Poe] into a rhetoric of revelation (132). I referred a great deal to this essay to gain a better understanding of Poe’s transcendent moments and reality.
Self-afflicted and self-victimized (so to speak, their own executioners), Poe’s characters must perform a persistently downward journey, sinking further and further into voluble wonderment at themselves, until they arrive at one of those shattering silences with which their narratives customarily end. And yet, even as they descend, they are granted a kind of glory which no hero of the earlier Gothic could ever have matched… During a single, transcendent moment, however, they have had the privilege of calling up out of their very beings a totally new order of reality. They are Romantic heroes without peer, for they have been the masters, because of the creators, of all that they survey (131).
Griffith examines Poe’s language in his tales, and analyzes how he compares as a Gothic writer: going into detail how he is similar and different to his contemporaries. I would recommend this book to anyone doing research on Poe – it has been invaluable to me.
Hutchisson, James M. Poe. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2005.
James Hutchisson examines Poe’s writing style in this book. He details Poe’s short stories, novels and poetry. He gives good references and explanations on the various techniques Poe incorporates into his writing. I used his examinations of Poe’s critiques on societal issues through his story plot in “Ligeia.” He explains how the real issues of poor medical technology and low life expectancies during Poe’s time were used in his story plots. He also examines Poe’s mentality on death; his “unwillingness to accept the finality of death” is a central theme in his works. Hutchisson also explains the “recurring paradox of the character making a strong effort to forget, an act which actually conceals the stronger need to remember” (52). I would recommend this reference to anyone who wants to really understand Poe’s psyche and the psychology involved in understanding Poe and his works.
May, Charles E. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1991.
This book was the main source for my research. May analyzes Poe’s short stories in great length and detail. The majority of my research on “Ligeia” came from his book. He explains that “Ligeia” is considered one of Poe’s “Beautiful Woman stories” – which are concerned with the “body/spirit dichotomy, for they all deal with the transformation of the female character into a metaphoric function – usually embodiment of the bodiless Idea” (62). He explains how “Ligeia” is considered to be an allegory of this “Idea;” this story’s development is that the “body means life and thus death.” Since this is a central theme in Poe, she is “an allegorical representation of either German idealism, the Platonic ideal, or the Jungian anima” (62). He further explains that “Ligeia” has “no source in the real world: narrator cannot remember when he first met her, nor does he know her paternal name; she is less a physical reality than a metaphoric vehicle for that which has no name or presence” (62).
May also expands on the ideas of “expression” and “consciousness of expression.” He compares “expression” to common objects found in nature: “a rapidly growing vine, a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water, certain sounds from stringed instruments, and from some passages in books – all of which suggest that Ligeia is a metaphoric embodiment of intangible and inchoate experience” (62). He explains that “consciousness” is based on the idea that “[w]ill and consciousness are synonymous in the story, for Ligeia represents the desire for sustaining life as consciousness, as form, as aesthetic reality…The ultimate human desire is for life as consciousness, which would be possible if it were not for life as physical reality” (63). May also compares the settings in the story and explains how it has Romantic elements to it. He gives further comparison of Rowena and Ligeia, and explains the narrator’s consciousness and mind-set within the plot development. I would highly recommend this book to anyone doing research on “Ligeia” or any of Poe’s short stories. May gives good insight and explanations on Poe’s stories, plot developments, writing styles, and biographical information pertaining to his stories.
Shanks, Edward. Edgar Allan Poe. New York: MacMillan, 1937.
Shanks's book gives detailed biographical information on Poe’s life. I used this book to complete some of my biographical research on Poe. His book is a good reference for those interested in Poe’s life. The book is a little old, and somewhat outdated; there are plenty of more current issues available in the reference sections of libraries and on online resources. However, it does give good information, and I would still recommend its use.
Wilbur, Richard. “The House of Poe.” Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Robert Regan. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1967. 108.
Wilbur’s critical essay is on “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and the duality between the narrator and Roderick Usher. His essay examines the short story in great detail, examining the story’s plot structure and Poe’s writing styles. I used this story to examine the ideas of the narrator’s “state of mind” in regards to his imagination and dreams. Wilbur explains that the story is a “journey into the depths of the self,” and how the narrator “leaves behind him the waking, physical world and journeys inward toward his moi inte`rieur, toward his inner and spiritual self” (108). He explains how Roderick Usher is part of the narrator’s self – as the “narrator’s imagination, or his visionary soul” (108). This book gives useful information on Poe’s short stories, and has numerous critical essays. I would recommend studiers of Poe to use this book in their catalogue of resources.
Online Resources
This website is what I referenced for half of my biography on Poe. No author’s names are given, so I’m listing the website as reference. This is a good website – one of the better ones I searched. I would recommend researchers at least checking it out for interesting tidbits on Poe’s life.
This is a cyber site connector – that is, it connects students, teachers, and Poe fans with other Poe-related links. The good thing about this site is that it connects by topic (or subject). It covers biographical information, literary criticisms, and a “How To” guide on writing about Poe. It is rich in resources, and is a good website. I didn’t use it personally, but I would recommend it for others – especially those having trouble getting started on Poe-related paper topics.
This site makes literary criticism on Poe available on the World Wide Web to everybody – for free. The essays found on this website are written by credible people (e.g. professors and literary experts). This is a good reference source for research paper. The topics that were related to what I wrote on I already had enough research on, so I didn’t personally use it, but I would for future research on Poe. I would recommend this site as a first-stop for those researching Poe.
http://island-of-freedom.com/POE.HTM
This site is another cyber site connector – it links to other Poe-related websites. It does give a good, but brief, biography on Poe. I would recommend this site if someone is having trouble finding resources on Poe, but any good search engine can do the same thing this website does.
Conclusion
In my research of the “sublime” in Poe, I discovered that there are whole ideas that I was not fully aware of that are “sublime” in meaning and enhance the Gothic elements of Poe’s works. In order to better understand what the “sublime” is, especially in Poe, I had to further understand the ideas of the mind, consciousness, the supernatural and spiritual, and the expression of the consciousness and reality. I also had to equate these to their importance to the “sublime,” as well as connect them to the ideas of the imagination, dreams, and reality - and how they are all inter-related to the “sublime.” What I discovered is that they are all linked to the “sublime,” but they are all different in meanings, connotations and uses.
Poe uses the sub-consciousness of the mind to create a duality in “House of Usher” between the narrator and Roderick Usher. The narrator’s imagination links his state of mind into a dreamlike state – which connects him to Roderick – as his dreams progress. The first person narrative not only links the narrator to Roderick, but it also creates doubt on the part of the reader on the narrator’s believability. In “Ligeia,” Poe uses figurative language to “conceive supernatural events” (De Shell 58).
I also learned that these elements are also linked to the Romantic Movement by their connections to Nature. Poe’s description of the house, bog, and surrounding estate, in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” is a good example of incorporating Nature into a “sublime” moment. Poe combines all these attributes in his tales to complete the Gothic feel; this style of writing creates “sublime” moments that are subtle, realistic and eerie – thus giving the tales a wholeness quality to them. The Gothic would not work well without giving the reader these feelings of eerie horror that plays on one’s own mind and consciousness.
If I were to continue writing my paper, I would expand more on these ideas and how they relate to Poe, his writing style, and to the “sublime.” I would also expand my research on the “sublime” to include more of his prose pieces, and his poetry. I think “The Raven” would be an excellent addition to that research, due to its form, function and content. This poem is Gothic in genre, and it contains numerous elements of the “sublime.” The fact that the raven speaks the word “Nevermore” is sublime. I could probably do an entire paper on just this one poem, but I would like to expand its meaning and interpretation to include comparisons with his other work. These comparisons could be applied to the course objectives through the aspects that they are classical texts, as well as being Romantic literature. The Gothic genre could be easily explained and incorporated into poetry – which is often difficult to find and do – through examining “The Raven.”
Overall, I learned a great deal about Poe, his life, his works, and his writing styles. I started the semester off barely even knowing about – and not being able to recognize – the “sublime.” Now I see it in almost every piece of literature I read. I am able to understand and appreciate its significance and importance in literature, and I am able to identify it and recognize it even in contemporary literature. Because of this new-found knowledge and understanding, I will never read Dean Koontz the same again – or any other piece of literature I pick up.
