American heritage

A LOOK AT AMERICAN HERITAGE

EDIGAR ALLAN POE,EMILY

DICKINSON, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE,

J.D. SALINGER, RALPH ELLISON

EDGAR ALLAN POE

• The inventor of two kinds of fiction:

detective and fantastic• The first tries to reduce the crime, a break in

social order, into the realm of normal life• The second represents a crisis in reality

with a lot of possibilities in the range of stories

• A large display of themes concerning death, the presence of supernatural creatures, occult phenomena

EDGAR ALLAN POE

• In his conception science (detective fiction)

was not able to solve all mysteries of human nature (fantastic fiction).

• A pessimistic view of life seems to prevail and gives rise to a quite large stock of stories characterized by the sense of

• Macabre and perverse.• All his characters seem to be afraid and

fascinated at the same time by some mysteries with no solution at all

EDGAR ALLAN POE

• Madness and reason can coexist • Descent into a pit or whirlpool, symbolizing

self-investigation and probing into the unconscious

• Terror as annihilation and nothingness• Utter anguish generated by a sort of masochism• The clock having a physical and symbolic

meaning• Four colours prevail: black, red, gold and white

EDGAR ALLAN POE

• Destructive passion leading to the death of

the loved ones• Hallucinations• Self-destruction• The life-death equation• Descriptions with realistic meticulous

details

EDGAR ALLAN POE

• The image of the vortex or of the spiral is one of

the most evocative metaphors, handed down from archaic religions and ancient philosophy. It represents the everlasting process of death and rebirth. The spiral, and particularly the double spiral, is in fact a decoration that was often used in prehistoric art to give the idea of the combination of opposites, like evolution and involution, as well as becoming and dying.

• It is a dynamic system made of two contrary forces, one centrifugal and one centripetal, which produce two opposite movements: winding and unwinding

EDGAR ALLAN POE

• The image of the vortex or of the spiral is one of

the most evocative metaphors, handed down from archaic religions and ancient philosophy. It represents the everlasting process of death and rebirth. The spiral, and particularly the double spiral, is in fact a decoration that was often used in prehistoric art to give the idea of the combination of opposites, like evolution and involution, as well as becoming and dying.

• It is a dynamic system made of two contrary forces, one centrifugal and one centripetal, which produce two opposite movements: winding and unwinding

A Descent into the Maelstrom

• A meaningful recurrence of synonyms such

as vast, smooth, prodigious, shining/gleaming, jet back/ebony black;

• Terrific, speeding/bewildering rapidity.• The image of vortex is that of a deep chasm

gaped under the sky, so as to open a communication route between the earth and the underworld; a pathway which changes the inner nature of those who venture through it.


• An allegoric epic deed in which the hero, the

fisherman, tries to reveal the mysteries of the unknown, even if this implies risking his own life.

• Time seems to have stopped down the funnel, and terror which we would expect from any man in such a desperate situation.

• It is as if the hypnotic circular motion of the vortex has sent the fisherman in a trance and

death looks desirable, because it represents the moment of the man’s complete fusion with Nature and its divine spirit.


• The contemplation of a superior power. • As the narrator comes back to reality he realizes that

it is impossible to predict the moment when whatever is spinning round will be dissolved at the bottom of

the abyss, so he understands that it is also impossible

to foretell his own fate. The ecstasy of the mystic contemplation is inevitably

lost, while anxiety and • fear of the impending death finally prevail.


• By taking us inside this fearful chasm, Poe

leads us to a supernatural dimension of space

and time. In fact, as soon as we get in touch

with the inner nature of the vortex an

overflow of ancestral images sediment in our mind start flowing and we momentarily perceive the divine power of Nature


• A unique poetic voice• Magnificent personal confession• Individual use of imagery• Off-rhyme and unconventional syntax• A foretaste of Modernism• Her subjects are in nature, her relation to God or her

perception of death

EMILY DICKINSONEMILY DICKINSON

• A unique poetic voice• Magnificent personal confession• Individual use of imagery• Off-rhyme and unconventional syntax• A foretaste of Modernism• Her subjects are in nature, her relation

to God or her perception of death

EMILY DICKINSON

• Mirroring her own withdrawal from

society, she wrote of the soul that ‘selects her own Society’. Her inner life was intense.

• Her poetry displays portraying aspects of a unified experience.

• Nature is drawn in its circle of death and life and in the reflection upon immortality.

EMILY DICKINSON

• The poet of the American Sublime • Sequestered life in her Amherst family

home Transfiguration which all material objects undergo through the passion of the poet

• Determined individualism • Victorian literary predecessors (Barrett

Browning, the Brontes, etc.), to Victorian photographs, and to paintings by English and American artists

EMILY DICKINSON

• Multiple levels of meaning. • Poetry as a form of communication in which words are

never simple equivalents of experience or perception. The words themselves, the words as words, have a life as sounds, as images, as the means for generating a series of associations.

• She draws on most of the sciences. She must have regarded science as a basis for testing the outer boundaries of human understanding and experience. On the one hand science was transforming the world around her in astonishing ways. On the other hand science was fast becoming civilization's new Holy Grail in the quest for certainty and seemed to be undermining the validity of religious and aesthetic modes of knowing.

EMILY DICKINSON

• The epistemological dilemma--the struggle

between certainty and uncertainty--is central to her poetic vision. She uses poetry to perform, in effect, experiments in language, her counterpart to scientific experiments, which she accepted as equally valid efforts for apprehending essential Truth

• Dickinson's poetic equations perform the opposite function to that of their scientific counterparts: they are designed to heighten mysteries, not solve them, They work to counteract scientific reductionism, which tempts us into thinking that science can present reality whole and undistorted.

EMILY DICKINSON

• By simple elision, most of which is licensed by

syntactic recoverability rules, she creates indeterminacy.

• She uses no recoverable deletion to mask logical links between consecutive statements and stanzas. This has the effect of placing abstract and narrative statements together and of juxtaposing metaphorical contexts..

• Her compression could be seen as an attempt to disrupt the microlinguistic consciousness and thereby force readers to re-examine their preliterary reality;

EMILY DICKINSON

• Filled with odd images, eccentric rhyming,

and an often playful tone, Dickinson's poetry penetrates into the depths of the human soul and mind with infinite insight.

• Miniaturist, since most of her poems have fewer than 30 lines, yet she deals with the profoundest subjects in poetry: death, love, humanity's relations to God and nature.

• She makes nouns serve as verbs, adjectives as nouns, and abstractions as concrete objects.

EMILY DICKINSON

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

• The ghost of New England • Writing as a dark necessity• Haunted chamber where he spent his years

secluded• Sin means to have ice in one’s blood • World subdued to evil

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

• Narrative with a markedly symmetrical structure to create unity of action

• Narrative organized around a set of symbols• Characters represent moral qualities• The language is extremely formal and ‘literary’

with occasional use of archaisms• All details are pertinent to the essential theme

The Scarlet Letter

• A moral fable or a symbolic romance centred on the contrast between good and evil, guilt and innocence

• A literary form that emabraced both the real and the imaginary

• The Puritan conception of sin was a perversion lacking in charity

• Esther is the most charitable character in the book

The Scarlet Letter

• Romantic elements as adventure action, the

recovery of past history, secret sinful actions, heroic characters, mysterious and remote events, curses and witchcraft, crimes and punishments, picturesque landscape, a blend of real and unreal, the use of symbolism

• Gothic elements as the presence of a manuscript, a prison, a scaffold, ghosts, physical deformity, blood

• Sin, remorse, revenge and expiation as the main themes

The Scarlet Letter

• The problem of guilt and responsibility both in individuals and in communities

• The study of evil and morality gives the novel an American touch

• Each section of the book is dominated by a symbol• Esther represents love, Dimmersdale spirit,

Chillingworth intellect divorced from moral sense• The novel does not offer a solution to moral

conflicts

The Scarlet Letter

• The novel weighs the different claims of love and conscience exploring the implications of social and personal values, revealing the inhumanity of Puritan morality but focusing the importance of living as a part of a community

• A marked pessimism• No possible redemption

The Scarlet Letter

J. D. SALINGER

• The deep dissatisfaction of the young with the selfishness, corruption and hypocrisy of the modern world around them

• Oversensitive boys or girls as main characters facing the superficiality and vulgarity of a world where success and money are the only goals

• the search for moral values, friendship and love

J. D. SALINGER

• Loneliness and incomprehension as their only conquest

• The repressed rebellion of the young • He writes with humour, using the language of

teenagers, slang, swear words giving rise to a sort of teenage dialect

• A warning against the risks of modern life

J. D. SALINGER

• The search for identity• Every human being must realize the capacities

and possibilities he is endowed with in spite of any race prejudice

• He used a great variety of styles and literary devices: the vivid language of Harlem people, puns, humour, symbolism, allegory, folklore, the rhythm of Black music

J. D. SALINGER

Ralph Ellison

• A kind of picaresque work with many

adventures and a crowd of extraordinary characters

• The protagonist discovers that the way to reach his identity and grow closer to the knowledge of his inner self is to develop his education, help others and acquire mature moral principles.

Invisible Man

• He is invisible to the whites as they refuse to

see him, but this invisibility also gives him freedom and teaches him that education and morality will be the values that can bring him and his people to visibility and social life.

• The narrator avoids classifications or categories, because he exists ouside them

Invisible Man

Education

American heritage