American Literature: Romanticism Student Midterm Samples 2016 (midterm assignment) 4. Research Proposals

Peter Becnel

The Simulacrum and the Sublime

          As a reader, recently, I’ve been very interested in Postmodernism. One of the questions I ask myself, is to what extent can certain features of earlier periods, like Romanticism, survive in a Postmodern Literary world? Some Romantic features, like the sublime, are not so much literary devices, as they are a way of describing a natural phenomenon that became a representative feature in Romanticism. The question that I hope to explore through my research is: can the sublime can exist in a world of simulation?

          One of the things that made me think about this issue was the appearance of the sublime that occurs as a result of man-made constructs. For example: if I’m watching a video of a plane flying over the Grand Canyon in slow motion, in high definition, is it possible that the experience of watching the simulation is sublime? What is sublime about it?  What of the incomprehensible network necessary to deliver the image to my screen? Is this sublime? If so, do companies create the sublime?

          I apologize for all of the rhetorical questions, but this is something that I find pretty perplexing. I’ve done a bit of preliminary research, and it seems that this is still a contested topic. I’m hoping to clarify my thinking about it, and I think the research posts might be the best way to do this. A survey of available criticism is probably a safer bet than attempting to define and apply to a text at this point. As always, I’m open to suggestions or redirection as need be. Please let me know what you think.

Liz Davis

Research Proposal

          For my research assignment, I am interested in doing the research journal. I have been thinking about topics, and I am having trouble narrowing something down, but I have a general idea. I am very interested in the works of Poe and would like to do more research on his work and possibly how his work and the idea of the gothic has influenced popular culture. This is a very broad topic that would need to be narrowed down. America just has a Poe obsession, and it would be interesting to find out why.

          For my research, I would like to research and find some articles to review about the topic. It looks like there are various comic books about Poe and films. It would be interesting to find maybe some documentaries about the topic as well. I will also keep my eye on any events that pop up in case there is someone to interview to get a first person perspective on anything. 

Stephen Defferari

For my research essay, I will write about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s use of the uncanny in his short stories, “The Minister’s Black Veil” and “Young Goodman Brown.” Mostly I am interested in how the uncanny is used within the context of Puritanism, and what insinuations and ramifications for Puritanical beliefs the author’s use of the topos suggests. As of now I am not entirely certain what my thesis will cover (I need to do a close-reading of “Young Goodman Brown” and do some research afterwards), but the five topics I seem to be most concerned with are narration, perspective, dialogue, Gothicism, and the uncanny.

          My only current secondary source is Freud’s “The Uncanny.” I am interested in Freud’s notions of how the uncanny is enabled more by literature, and how it has more potential within literature than in reality. In my opinion, I need to do more research on the nature and expectations of parsons in the historical context of the period. From here I can develop a more thorough understanding as to how the parson is able to accurately represent an uncanny object in “The Minister’s Black Veil.” For “Young Goodman Brown,” I plan to see if it is possible to purpose the idea of doubling or the doppelgänger to a kind of spiritual likeness – the common denominator being original sin.

Caryn Livingston

Emily Dickinson’s Yearning: Desire and Loss in Lyric Poetry

I plan to complete a research essay on the cycle of desire and loss in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Barbara Lazear Ashcher’s take on the cycle, that “Romance is structured yearning,” and that “In the romantic moment, we gather and focus that yearning in order to connect with something outside ourselves, believing against all odds that such connection is possible, knowing paradoxically that romance is born in the space between our reach and our grasp” was demonstrated in Dickinson’s poem “I cannot live with you,” which we read in class. Even as lyric poetry, Dickinson’s writing frequently features a romance narrative comprised of desire and loss either for love or for a more transcendent goal.

I am interested in both the narrative of desire and loss in Dickinson’s poetry and the potential for connecting the romance narrative to Transcendentalism in the Romantic era. However, I am aware that extending analysis to Transcendentalism may take the assignment beyond a realistic scope for this class and expect to focus primarily on the romance narrative of desire and loss. Since Dickinson’s poems are untitled, I plan to focus on her poems beginning with “I cannot live with you,” “I gave myself to him,” Heart, we will forget him,” “For each ecstatic instant,” and “Each life converges to some centre.”

Ashcher, Barbara Lazear. Dancing in the Dark: Romance, Yearning, and the Search for the Sublime. NY: Cliff Street, 1999, p. xiii.

Jessica Myers

Research Proposal

Hawthorne complicates the traditional expectations of a Romantic writer. Although he utilizes most Romantic tools such as communion with nature and the pursuit of the sublime, he does not follow the typical pattern of depicting man as basically good. I have noticed his struggle to accept man’s basic goodness when he sees so much of man’s corruption and hypocrisy. Hawthorne utilizes his Calvinist background to create a unique tension between man’s capacity for both good and evil. I hope to better define whether he is depicting man as essentially good or evil and explore why he chooses to complicate this foundational facet of Romanticism through a research journal.

          I will focus my analysis on the short story, “Young Goodman Brown,” and supplement with excerpts from “The Minister’s Black Veil” and The Scarlet Letter. Specifically, I plan to read “Young Goodman Brown” as an allegory of the struggle between faith and temptation. I am most intrigued by Goodman Brown’s rejection of temptation which leads to his dissatisfaction with life due to his realization that everyone is a hypocrite. To support this reading, I will also be examining the scene from “The Minister’s Black Veil” when the minister speaks on his deathbed. Here, he discusses how his veil is both a reflection of the hearts of others and a protection from those hearts. It is a symbol of their wickedness and their blindness to their own innermost evil. Whereas, in The Scarlet Letter, the Reverend Dimmesdale is the hypocrite who slowly collapses under the weight of his unconfessed adultery. It is only through confession of both his sin and his hypocrisy that he is able to find peace and a place in eternity.

Michael Osborne

From the Dark Shadows of the Mind to the Dark Corners of the Earth

          I hope to base my Research Project on H.P. Lovecraft and the use of the Gothic in his work.  I would like to do two Research Posts, but considering my current workload, I may have to do a Research Journal instead.  This decision would not be based upon the fact that I believe that the Journal requires less work, but I’m just not sure I can make the first Post deadline.

          I am currently reading a collection of Lovecraft’s stories entitled The Watchers out of Time.  After I discovered the ubiquitousness of the romance narrative (see essay 2, above), I realized that many of Lovecraft’s stories do not fit the romance narrative model, and yet, elements of the Gothic are rampant in his work.  Some of the many Gothic features Lovecraft regularly uses include: the interplay of light and darkness, death and decay, haunted houses, and the plight of characters suffering for the inherited taint in their blood.  Interestingly, I also see an odd connection between Lovecraft’s isolated and dilapidated village of Dunwich (the site of many of his stories), and Irving’s isolated and antiquated village of Sleepy Hollow.

The seeming contradiction between the presence of so many gothic elements and the absence of romance narrative led me to want to explore the prevalence of Gothic (and Romantic) elements in Lovecraft’s work and to what extent he conforms or rejects the criteria of Gothic (Romantic) literature.

          Additionally, of particular interest to me is the way that Gothic writers seek to create horror by corresponding the darkness in the mind with the environment.  Lovecraft does not appear to follow this trend.  He moves the darkness out of his character’s mind and into the world.  In many of his stories, the horror is out there already, lurking in the dark corners of the world, waiting for the characters to discover it, and often, ignorantly unleash it upon themselves and upon the world at large.

Umaymah Shahid

I will be working on the research posts as part of my research option. One of the areas of this class which truly baffles me is the Gothic, especially Edgar Allan Poe. When reading Poe, I wonder why his writings are saturated with gothic elements to the point where they are both terrifying and hilarious. In my first research post I will explore the intention behind Poe’s gothic narrative; is he writing to make fun of the Gothic or does he truly feel his writing is a model of the Gothic narrative? Discovering what Poe’s intentions might have been when writing is important to me because Poe seems to be a complex writer and it does not satisfy me that he wrote only to create a more exaggerated form of the Gothic. I’m not sure exactly what my second research post will be about but it might be related to the Gothic.

Some of my preliminary research has resulted in a variety of resources. I found books that simply address Gothic America or Poe’s Gothic writing in particular, an article analyzing the psychological reasoning behind Poe’s writing, and several articles looking closely at the humor and culture of Poe’s writing. With several resources at hand, I hope to find a satisfactory answer to the question: Are Poe’s Gothic narratives simply Gothic or are the narratives being used to poke fun of the genre? How does Poe’s narrative fit with the Romantic narrative? Is Poe deeper than we take him to be? Are there political or social messages underneath the darkness and exaggeration within his narrative?

Victoria Webb

Research Proposal:
Conference Proposal & Presentation w/ Commentary

          The aim of my conference proposal/research paper is to take a stance among the great debate regarding Poe as a transcendentalist. In order to do so, I will utilize the library database and other databases to find information regarding Poe’s life and any comments he may have been known to make about the transcendental movement. Using Poe’s lesser known short stories,  Never Bet the Devil Your Head, I will find connections between this satire and other works that had been published and are more widely known. I will also research what is known about Poe’s life in order to gain a better understanding of why he chose to oppose the idea of transcendentalism. I feel that this will give a better foundation on which I can build my argument.

          From the research that I have done so far, I can see that there are strong arguments that support both sides. Since I have already formed an opinion from prior classes and essays I’ve written, I would like to find as much research as I possibly can to support my case, as well as analyze his work with that stance in mind.

Brittney Wilson

Research Proposal

For the research part of the midterm, I choose to come up with the two research posts or adventures in learning. I remember reading some of Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly in your Early American Literature course a couple of semesters ago and I also remember it being one of the few things that I genuinely enjoyed reading because it introduced the gothic in America as the wilderness gothic or wilderness narrative. After reading that, I went to Half-Price Books and picked up the few things I could find by Charles Brockden Brown.

I know that I missed the due date for the first research post so I will have to get caught up there but I’d like to do one post on Edgar Huntly and how it fits into the mold of the Romantic. Then, maybe for the second post if I choose to stick with Brown, I’d like to look at Wieland and do the same thing with applying my understanding of Romanticism there and seeing what I find.