1. 美国文学史及作品选读 Unit 5 Romantic Poets: Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson

2.  A critic, poet, and short story writer: important in all three aspects  fountainhead of aestheticism (art for art’s sake);  Great writer in the tradition of Gothic novel  Forerunner of science-fiction  The first to combine Gothic and detective tradition, actually the founder of the detective tradition  The first major critic and theorist in America Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

3.  “isolated”, divorced from society; more interested in redeeming and refining language; called the “great literary engineer”  The first writer in America to give so much concern to the form and art in literary works; The central belief: all literary work is the creation of beauty. [the heresy of the didactic]  wrote over 1,000 essays, most of which were literary criticism Poe As a Critic

4.  poetic theories (“The Philosophy of Composition” and “The Poetic Principle”)  The poem should be short, readable at one sitting. Its chief aim is beauty; to create a feeling of beauty in the reader. Art does not lie in its message; poetry does not have to inculcate a moral; it has only to be; the artistry of the poem lies not in what is being said but in the way it is said. Poe stresses rhythm, defines true poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty.”

5.  Principles for short stories:  Nobody before Poe has put so much emphasis on the effect of the work. Ideal length of a work is to be read at one sitting (brevity); should produce “totality of effect” on the reader, “single effect”, “finality”; carefully structured and carefully designed unity; organic whole of the story in which “no part can be displaced without ruining the whole.” [cf. Chang, 147-8][Shirley Jackson, Lottery]

6.  Beauty aims at “an elevating excitement of the soul,” and “beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Thus melancholy is the most legitimate of all the poetic tones” and “the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” (Cf. Chang, 149)

7. Poe’s Writings: Poetry and Short Story  Poe’s poetry is a good illustration of his theory. His poems are all well-structured around one central theme [very often the death of a beautiful woman]. He turns the images into symbols to enrich the meaning. He is the first American writer to write so many symbols; the most famous “Raven”.  “To Helen”; “Annabel Lee”: tormenting sadness

8.  His short stories also well illustrated his theory; well-structured; every detail and event is well- designed and worked to achieve the unity and achieve the effect.  Founder of the detective story tradition: induction and deduction; ratiocination, ratiocinative: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”“The Purloined Letter”.

9.  He tried to reveal what he saw as the dark sides of human nature; abnormality of human psychology (“a master of exploring and employing psychological abnormality”); interested in moral exploration (close to Puritan tradition): a sense of terror or phobia: tales of mystery and the macabre: “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Cask of Amontillado.”

10. To Helen Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore.

11. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.

12. Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand, Ah! Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land!

13. ANNABEL LEE It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of ANNABEL LEE; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea; But we loved with a love that was more than love I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.

14. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me- Yes!–that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

15. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we- Of many far wiser than we- And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling–my darling–my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.

16. Walt Whitman (1819-1892)  Most consciously expresses the American spirit/national consciousness in poetry; greatly influenced by Emerson’s concept of the poet as well as by his Transcendental beliefs. Whitman materialized Emerson’s principles for poems. “It was almost as though Walt had stepped out of the pages of Emerson’s essay on ‘The Poet’, so exactly did his conceptions of the role of the poet and of the nature of poetry in general tally with the theory there laid down” (Spiller 75).

17.  The first publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855 (12 poems): common daily American life, confidence, nationalist enthusiasm, vibrant emotion; free verse (instead of iambic pentameter), parallelism, long and rolling rhythms: a catalogue of things; a free-spirited and passionate persona  The longest in this first collection is “Song of Myself.”

18.  Whitman was ignored (negatively reviewed) at the beginning; (“It broke with the poetic tradition, and its sexuality and exotic and vulgar language brought harsh criticism on it”) it was Emerson who wrote and praised him as a poet “at the beginning of a great career.” He is different from traditional poetic standards and so far the most American of all the major American poets.

19.  He also expresses the Transcendentalist ideas such as everything is equal for the Oversoul is in everything (foundation of the idea of democracy); the new nation’s desire and struggle for spiritual freedom  Virtually all of Whitman’s poems are in Leaves of Grass, which was published in his lifetime in nine expanded and re-arranged editions (from 1855 till 1892).

20.  “a catalog of American and European thought”  Embraces idealism, relies on insight and intuition; his poetry became a happy medium for communicating his views on the cosmos and on man.

21.  His innovations in diction and versification, his frankness about sex, his inclusion of the commonplace and the ugly and his censure of the weaknesses of the American democratic practice -- - these have paved his way to a share of immortality in American literature.

22.  Whitman’s influence over modern poetry is great in the world as well as in America. His best work has become part of the common property of Western culture.  T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Carl Sandburg (probably the only great poet who carried, in his Chicago poems, the Whitmanesque tradition into the 20 th century in a whole-hearted way), the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.  Excessive 0ptimism

23.  Together with Whitman the greatest in the 19 th century; both heavily influenced by Emerson (though stronger and more obvious in Whitman); both experimental in poetic techniques; Dickinson: pioneer of Imagism (with Stephen Crane, the precursor of the Imagist movement) Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

24.  In attitude, Whitman was more in the optimistic trend of Enlightenment spirit while Dickinson was more pessimistic and more in the Puritanical tradition; in content, Whitman wrote more about the external world, society, democracy, nature, man’s unity with nature while Dickinson withdrew into herself and the internal world, explored deep into the soul and wrote a great deal about death (a third of her poetry is on death); in style, Whitman was passionate, powerful and all-embracing (wanted to embrace everything in it) while Dickinson was calm, focused and profound.

25.  常耀信， 133 ： Dickinson differs from Whitman in a variety of ways. For one thing, Whitman seems to keep his eyes on society at large; Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual. Whereas Whitman is “national” in his outlook, Dickinson is “regional” (because I see New-Englandly”). In formal terms the two poets are vastly different: Whitman’s endless, all-inclusive catalogs contrast with the concise, direct and simple diction and syntax which characterize Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson denied having read Whitman.

26.  Dickinson was the second child of a prosperous lawyer family with strong Puritan tradition. She lived most of her life in her house. Her education was strongly Puritanical. She was strong-willed and tried to resist the religious fanaticism and to maintain intellectual independence. However, she was all the same strongly influenced by Puritanism: lifelong interest in moral exploration and study on the soul and the fascination with death (about 600 poems on death).

27.  Altogether she wrote 1775 poems. In 1890, the first collection of poems was published. 1955 edition of her complete works was published and her reputation was finally established.  Her poems are often deceptively simple, with simple diction (language) but profound ideas. She is economical in the use of language.  Her poems are short, with short lines. She is essentially a philosophical poet. Her use of metaphors, symbols is clearly in the metaphysical tradition. She treats everlasting problems: human nature, man’s fate, immortality, meaning of life, morality, esp. death, not concerned with contemporary problems.

28.  Dickinson influenced Pound, Eliot, William Carlos Williams (who calls her his “patron saint”); essentially, she’s a modern poet. Her contemporaries could not appreciate her poems.  Rebellion to traditional poetic convention, break from prosody control