...PREFACE This major project examines the indispensable desiderata of Transcendentalism in comparison to the Dark Romantics background and how these technicalities prepare this work of art as an influential synthesis of human imagination incorporated with mystic facts. Transcendentalism and Dark Romanticism were two literary movements that occurred in America during roughly the same time period (1840—1860). Although the two had surface similarities, such as their reverence for Nature, their founding beliefs were quite different, enough to make one seem almost the antithesis of each other. Moreover one’s genesis is ventured out from other; i.e. Dark Romanticism from the roots of Transcendentalism or precisely the lacunae are best determined for raising up the term called Dark Romanticism. Contents S. No. Page no. Chapter 1.........................................................................................................4-14 Chapter 2.........................................................................................................15-23. Chapter 3..........................................................................................................24-27 Resolution.........................................................................................................28-29 Work Cited................................................................
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...Humans have, for a long, long time, acknowledged that there is a good side, and a bad side to each and every person. The better side of human nature brings out compliments, support, and encouragement to others and to oneself. Unfortunately, people do not always act that way. The darker side of human nature is one that people like to keep quiet and hidden from sight. In the short stories, “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor,o and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, this dark side is shown through various people and situations. In “The Veldt”, two children turn on their parents in anger. In “Good Country People”, a young man is not who he says he is and robs one of the main characters, and in “The...
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...The Cask of Amontillado by: Edgar Allan Poe In The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allen Poe manipulates the story to be the way he wants it to be by using the point of view of the narrator, the setting, and a common monotonous sentiment throughout the story. Poe is successful in maintaining a spirit of perverseness. The point of view plays a very important role in influencing the reader's perception of the story. The first line of the story is a good example of how the narrator attempts to bring the reader to his side, right from the start. “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge” (101). Montresor, the narrator of the story, immediately tries to win the reader to his side, by telling him/her that Fortunato has “ventured upon insult,” and apparently crossed the line. This attempt is clever, but the reader never gets a sense of what Fortunato has actually done to the narrator, or whether Montresor is creating it in his own mind. The point of view of the story can also affect the emotional attachment that the reader gets, or fails to get, in this case, for a given character. When a reader is involved in a story, the point of view from where the story is being told is crucial to the feelings the reader has. In this story, Montresor dominates the progression of the story in every regard. This being the case, it is difficult for the reader to develop a liking for another character, unless Montresor...
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...emotionally distant from others. In the poem “Alone”, Edgar Allan Poe most directly relates alone with being emotionally distant and describes alone in terms of not being able to experiences things as others do, most significantly during his childhood. Poe looks back upon his childhood, and with his dark and disturbing writing style he creates the image of fear and loneliness that he felt as a child within the reader. Poe establishes in “Alone” that the true definition of alone is to be emotionally distant from the world. This idea comes from his childhood influences, his search for the unexplainable and his philosophy...
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... Woolston English 102 15 February 2014 Catacombs and Floorboards. Edgar Allan Poe is considered one of the founding father of the Gothic Society and great horror short stories. These writings were about people on the cusp of events that were grotesque to his audience. It is a known fact that his short stories were on the dark impracticality side of the mind, with characters that were pathological killers. In “The Cast of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Poe portrayed exceptional acts of madness, murders, and decay. In the case of “The Cast of Amontillado,” Poe’s character Montresor seemed mentally disturbed over a thousand injuries and an insult, obsessed with revenge. (1238). This demonstrated the instability or madness of Montresor mental well being. The individual here shows he was committing insanity by letting his emotions rule and not thinking logically. “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the person starts the story stating he is not mad which makes the reader sure of his mental illness. Eight nights he visits the bedroom of the old man, on the eighth night the eye opens; he grows furious as he looks at it and kills the old man. At the end of the story, his madness manifests into the form of the old man’s heart sounds. Illustrating he was insane before and after his killing of the old man. Montresor’s murder is careful calculated, and was illustrated with the trowel. Poe wrote he pulled a trowel from under the folds of his cloak, and he had stone and mortar...
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... April 22, 2011 Edgar Allan Poe To most people, Edgar Allan Poe was a troubled soul that had many psychological issues. Some people think that his works mimicked his own mental torment and torture; others thought that he was an American writer romantically doomed to failure by events and emotions too great for him to handle. His writings reflect each theory, and his style was very unique and unusual for the time period in which they were written. The artistic liberties and risks that Poe took in his works sparked the beginning of what we call the Romanticism Period. The hardships and tragedies which Edgar Allan Poe faced throughout his life played a big part in influencing his writing, how his writing influenced the period, and how it affected his mental stability (Life 240). Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, to David and Elizabeth Poe. He had two siblings, a younger sister named Rosalie and an older brother named Henry. When Poe was just one, his father abandoned his wife and children. At two his mother died of tuberculosis and the children were split up into different homes (Tragedies 240). Poe was taken in by John Allan and his childless wife Frances, giving him his middle name. Having experienced many tragedies at an early age, he, starting at the age of six, developed a great fear of death and this influenced how and what he would later write (Jordan np). The Allan couple lived in Richmond, Virginia, and Poe was moved to their home very shortly...
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...The Misunderstood Poe It is amazing on how one man’s darkness and tragedies have made so many differences in the way we write today. His writings have kept us on the edge of our seats and giving us the ability to enter and be part of his dark and tragic world. He has filled our minds with curiosity. How could a man have written such dark works and been considered happy at one point in his life, and had us believe that his life was always full of misery and tragedies? I think that the misunderstanding of Edgar Allen Poe came from the undermining hardship of his life. The artist blood ran in Edgar Poe’s veins, Edgar Poe’s parents were a traveling family they were both actors. His mother Elizabeth Hopkins and his father David Poe fell in love got married and gave birth to three children. Edgar Poe was the middle child and was born in 1809 in Boston Massachusetts. Edgar Poe family was becoming poor. His parents were struggling actors in which they traveled looking for work. Life back then had to be a struggle especially with three children and becoming poorer by the day. Now on top of all that suffering the family gets another blow, the father then decides to leave. The abandonment that this family was feeling must of have taken a toll on Elizabeth Hopkins Poe, not soon...
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...Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” (Poe 83). This means that Fortunato has done things to Montresor before that he could handle, but when he insulted Montresor, Montresor wanted revenge. He wanted revenge due to the insult and the saying of his family motto, which is “Nemo me impune lacessit”. Which means “No one attacks me with impunity” in Latin. The disturbing mood is something that can send a chill through the reader’s spine, or give them a thrill. Specific details can create the disturbing mood, like when Poe describes the catacombs. The specific details that Poe gives can also give the reader a visualization of what the catacombs look like, even if it’s only literature, and leave the reader with questions. Key details that create this is the clothes that Fortunato and Montresor are wearing, the period of time the story takes place, and the setting. The actions of characters can also affect the mood and tone of the story. One of the...
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...Literature Comparisons Between Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne Kimberley Prescott LIT/210 08/01/2012 Sherry Salant Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne Popular literature is incomplete without the names of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both of these authors lived in the same time period, yet lived very opposite lives. In fact, Poe received notoriety for criticizing Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Poe, 1847) In his career, he wrote several critiques of Hawthorne’s work. On a personal level, Poe often disagreed with how often Hawthorne used allegory. As a literary element that many people use, Poe was not a fan. He once stated that: “I allude to the strain of allegory which completely overwhelms the greater number of his subjects, and which in some measure interferes with the direct conduct of absolutely all.” (Poe, 1847) It seems as though Poe regarded Hawthorne’s work as works of allegory. To say that this was the only literary element he employed, however, would be false. Throughout history, authors have endeavoured to master other forms of literary elements, to become the master of those elements, and equal to none in them. By comparing “The Cask of Amontillado” with “Young Goodman Brown”, is to study two masters, at odds with their specific forms of writing, but each a master in his own right. Each story shows how two people that can be so far apart on a scale, can use the same literary elements in similar and different ways...
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...March 2, 2016 Word Count: “Annabel Lee:” A Tragic Love Poem Analysis "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe is a true love story ending with tragedy, and the author set the poem step-by-step with a logical sequence known as a narrative poem. He wrote this poem immediately after the death of his first wife Virginia Clemm. He married his thirteen year-old cousin, and he also faced financial difficulties. He writes down this romantic and tragic poem to remember his childhood love, and the poem tells us that Poe still has a very strong feeling in his heart for his dead wife. The young Poe is the speaker of this poem; he tells us about his true love with his sympathetic, heartbroken and sorrowful feeling. The poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe tells us about his childhood love, the love ending with a painful tragedy. Poe uses imagery, symbolism, and repetition to tell us the memory of his love, the one he has lost, known as Annabel Lee. The narrator is the speaker in the poem "Annabel Lee;" he explains his true love using his imagination throughout the entire poem. He uses vivid imagery to tell us how he lost his beloved one, Annabel Lee. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker mentions his personal feeling and appreciation about his childhood love: "She loved me no other thought, / Than to love and be loved by me" (5-6). Additionally, the poem’s third and fourth stanzas show Poe uses his mental imagination to explain how he lost his lover and how much he loves her: "That the wind...
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...I prefer reading tales of horror and Mystery. I however did not enjoy Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” I found most of the first few paragraphs lengthy with descriptions of the castle. This made it really hard for me to immerse myself in the story. The vocabulary was complicated at times and I found myself pausing to look up their meanings. This interruption furthered my confusion. I had to write the definitions in my text book and then re-read the passages. Once I did, I was able to grasp what Poe was actual trying to convey. The story is set in a gloomy deserted country side. The outside of the house was dark, and gloomy. As I read further I wanted to take refuge inside the home of Roderick. I was quick to find that...
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...read Edgar Allan Poe stories and poems? You are going to give a simple answer along the lines of, “I like dark stories” or “he is my favorite writer”. That however, doesn’t truly answer my question of why. We all have a personal literary aesthetic, what we enjoy reading and what we don’t. What makes for a good read? A bad read? We all as readers have differing opinions on these concepts. I would like to discuss my personal literary aesthetic, addressing what’s of literary quality and what isn’t, what I consider good and what I consider bad, and what’s worth reading and what isn’t. There are many characteristics of what I consider good work. There are the basics such as grammar, good plot, good characters, language, etc. Then there are the particular things about the stories that I read that either enticed me or deterred me from reading further, which I will mention as I go through the different types of reading materials. The first thing I would like to discuss is what I consider of literary quality and a pleasure to read. Edgar Allan Poe's work is something I find pleasurable and it has great literary quality. I find his work pleasurable because it delves into the psychologically dark recesses of our minds and forces us to think about the dark side of humanity. I find this interesting because we all would like to think we would never do the things the characters in Poe’s work would do, but when you really think about it you may be surprised. Poe has an ability to...
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...Throughout history, mankind has always found a need for answers and to express such answers through stories. Although influenced by nineteenth century Transcendentalism, dark romanticism showed a more realistic, dark side of humanity than regular romanticism. Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne are the backbone of dark romantic literature, as illustrated through underlying meanings. As opposed to the perfectionist beliefs of Transcendentalism, the dark romantics emphasized human imperfection and sinfulness and tendency of self-destruction. By using the concept of obsession and exploration of nature, Poe and Hawthorne brought forth evidence that women in 19th century society endure mans judgement(??) while men themselves self-destruct from their own misinterpretation of human nature and a woman's capability to , which still continue to still prove relevant in modern society....
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...Short stories written in different time periods consist of many of the same styles/elements. The authors of these short stories have many hidden meaning behind their words. “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edger Allan Poe, the “Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and, “Cast of Amontillado” by Edger Allen Poe have similar styles such as, using symbolism to enhance and foreshadow the reading. The author in Cast of Amontillado uses symbolism through the meaning of the title its self “ Cast of Amontillado” since Amontillado mean wine, and in the story the plot mainly happen based on the characters drinking wine, I thought the name symbolizes the results/effects in an irony way or drinking wine in this story. Since the character lures the other character...
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...Artist Statement The arts in this time period in America was heavily impacted, and also a reflection of all the political and social changes currently going on. The evolution of an American identity is shown through several poems and paintings, such as the paintings from the Hudson River School, or poems like the Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. My drawing shows America as being a perfect, untouched wilderness, but from a biased point of view, hence the crack. The picture draws from the Hudson River School paintings, showing America as a perfect place, inhabited by plentiful food and water, including some Audubon birds. The birds represent the variety of American culture, so many, yet they all share something among them. The landscape is sort of an Eden-like valley, with a big lake and a giant forest, sort of like a...
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