LITR 4232:
American Renaissance
University
of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2002
Student Presentation Summary
Reader: Val Harpster
Recorder: Angie Rau
March 14, 2002
Ligeia
and The Fall of the House of Usher
Poe helps to create an image in the reader’s mind using vivid
descriptions. This carries over and makes some descriptions seem like more
detail is given than exists. Example:
Lady Madeline’s death in The Fall of the House of Usher is only about
two lines. On p. 2403, the reader feels the depths of despair which the narrator
is suffering.
Obj. 2 Poe’s gothic:
Readers are never given Lady Ligeia’s last name, this makes the reader
ask:
“What is
being hidden from us?” (mystery
aspect of gothic) Page 2390
In Usher , the letter received stresses “natural” leading the
reader to consider the supernatural, a gothic influence. Page 2401
In Ligeia, the description of the curtains: creating a pattern.
The curtain description is both sublime and surreal. Page 2396
Insinuation of reincarnation may exist in the lives of the characters, at
least Ligeia. Her amount of
knowledge leads you to believe she may have been around before. The quote, “…but for life” reinforces the idea that
Ligeia has been around before. Page 2391 and 2393
Bridges both British and American gothic. Page 2395
Obj. 3 Poe’s Representative
problems / subjects:
Social commentary by Poe of his view of the world/society. Page 2404
The illness,
present in Usher, represents the moral decay of society.
The decay of the house itself represents the economic instability of
society/slavery. The destruction of
the house, at the end, could be a representative of the problems that were
predicted to occur for the nation as slavery issues were to be resolved. These
examples seem “almost like classic literature”.
QUESTION 1: Is there a
distinction between popular and classic in Poe’s writings? Why or why not?
QUESTION 2: Is it possible for
literature to endure if it is only popular, romantic, or classic?
Discussion:
Professor White:
Gothic is a popular angle; it reaches out and pulls you into it.
It also meets you where you are, in your already present mental
framework.
Val:
We add details to the images created because of the images we are already
carrying around in our minds. Nostalgia
plays a part in the readers’ reaction to something read.
Being scared of a storm, like the one in Usher, can be a scary
experience or an enjoyable one or both. The
memories from this experience become a part of our memory and effect how we
interpret other experiences whether read in a book or from an actual experience.
Student 1:
Another example of this would be a romantic feeling.
Once the reader has experienced this feeling in the past, they tend to
embellish this feeling in something they read.
Val:
Just like in Ligeia, Poe embellished the romance here probably
based on some experience of his own life.
Student 2:
I see Poe as being more popular than classic.
He would not have to sacrifice being popular to reach us by being
classic. I think Poe is more
interested in the beauty of writing.
Val:
Poe really writes on the edge though.
He speaks of things like premature burial and incest without using the
direct words.
Professor White:
That’s what popular culture is. It
goes somewhere without actually using the words.
It insinuates something while letting the reader decide what is meant.
Student 3:
Well, most humans are drawn to the grotesque, although Poe is not always
gross. It is natural to be
interested in Poe’s type of stories.
Student 4:
Well, you either love Poe or hate him.
Professor White:
In terms of scholars, it is divided on those who love/hate Poe.
Another angle in Poe’s works is the struggling writer.
In real life Poe was a working writer and struggles to survive.
Val:
By hitting on things that are “out there” it pulls us in.
Poe would often speak of opium although it was not a problem for Poe
himself (alcohol was). He struggled
with alcohol, married his first cousin, had major health problems, and lost
almost every woman he loved. These
situations are what led to him writing about women and dying.
Poe romanticizes loss of love.
Professor White:
The women Poe loved were taken away from him.
Passage on page 2453, Poe felt “melancholy” was important.
Discussion followed that Poe gets “too
detailed”. Robin feels this
sometimes causes the plot to get lost.
Professor
White: Like Cooper, Poe builds
stuff up dramatically, then finally you get to the action.
Connected
both “Ligeia” and “Usher” with gothic detail, romanticism, and women.
underlying
theme…maybe oppression in women’s lives
Description as the focus, creates atmosphere
Use of contrasts: Ligeia-dark
Lady Rowena-fair (2396)
Language used: incubus,
phantasmagoric, cataleptical, miasma
Though elaborate descriptively, he could be brief: 2408 the story line of
lady Madeline Usher’s death is handled in only a line or two.
“wildest and least
frequented portions of fair England” like the American frontier in Mohicans.
“Remote and unsocial region of the country” like Mohicans
2395 3rd line from bottom.
2393 top “those eyes which at once so
delighted and appalled me …”
2394 middle of 1st full
paragraph “How had I deserved to be so blessed …so cursed
with the removal of my beloved”
2400 final paragraph
The whole thing (This is the transcendence also)
2390 first paragraph
“memory” as opposed to “now” in the next line, “my beloved”,
“remotely ancient date”, “deaden impressions of the outward world”,
“her who is no more” and the
elevation of the loved one: final 2 lines on 2390 and top line of 2391
2397 1st full paragraph 6th
line and last three lines…. “My
memory flew back, (oh, with what intensity of regret!)…. “consuming ardor of
my longing for the departed, […] ah, could it be forever? – upon the
earth.”
2393
¾ way down page description
of Ligeia: duller than Saturnian lead (her eyes/darkness), wild eyes blazed,
pale fingers …transparent waxen hue
2395
the abbey in disrepair combines the forest “castle” of America’s gothic
(“wildest and least frequented portions of fair England”) with the
“abbey” of England’s gothic
“gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building”
“savage aspect” “melancholy” “time-honored memories”
2396
Bridal chamber: “regal” “castellated” see all highlights
on 2396 and couple this with “Phantasmagoric” on 2397
2391 all last paragraph…Ligeia of
another race … “otherworldly” aspect
Romanticism
perhaps in his
memory of Roderick as a friend in youth…
2405 5th line from bottom
(when talking about Roderick’s painting) “an intensity of intolerable
awe…”
2410 last paragraph (storm) “a tempestuous
yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and
its beauty”
2412 paragraph about ½ way down page
“Oppressed….by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which
wonder and extreme terror were predominant”
2401 top paragraph
first line “shades of the evening”, 7th line “eye-like
windows”, 8th line “white trunks of decayed trees”, “black
and lurid tarn”, “vacant and eye-like windows”
2403 “black oaken floor”,
“encrimsoned light”
2404half
way down page “To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave.
“ I shall perish,” said
he, “I must perish in this deplorable folly.
Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost.
I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their
results.”