Anti-Transcendentalist Themes in Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher

Romanticism "In spite of its representation of potentially diabolical and satanic powers, its historical and geographic location and its satire on extreme Calvinism, James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner proves to be a novel that a dramatises a crisis of identity, a theme which is very much a Romantic concern." Discuss. Examination of Romantic texts provides us with only a limited and much debated degree of commonality. However despite the disparity of Romanticism (or Romanticisms) as a movement it would be true to say that a prevalent aspect of Romantic literature that unites many different forms of the movement, is a concern with the divided self. As the empirical Rationalism of the eighteenth century was partially subverted by the subjective metaphysical reflection in the nineteenth artists tended to examine wider issues from an introspective starting point.

Print. Miller, J Hillis. “Should We Read Heart of Darkness” Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Ed. Harold Bloom New York: Blooms Literary Criticism, 2008.

In the “Black Cat” Poe’s use of self-reliance is unique as he challenges it through the narrator’s rational explanation of irrational events. Emerson’s “Self Reliance” is extremely indicative of its title as it emphasizes the reliance in one’s self as essential in the transcendentalist journey to find truth. The romantic literary principle, self-reliance, is present in both works, however, the authors’ representation and use of it differs in both texts according to style, subject matter, and genre. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, “Self Reliance” is a rational argument attempting to persuade readers to rely on oneself for guidance rather than external influences such as religion, philosophy, books and society. Due to Emerson’s belief that God created everyone unique and with a specific purpose, Emerson argues by trusting in one’s intuition, individuals will be rightfully serving God and developing a closer spiritual relationship with him.

Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the best-known American Romantic who worked in the Gothic mode. His stories explore the darker side of the Romantic imagination, dealing with the grotesque, the supernatural, and the horrifying. He defined the form of the American short story. As one might expect, Poe himself eschewed conventional morality, which he believed stems from man's attempts to dictate the purposes of God. Poe saw God more as process than purpose.

Questioning the Value of Literary Realism in Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, and Mother Night In questioning the value of literary realism, Flannery O'Connor has written, "I am interested in making a good case for distortion because it is the only way to make people see." Kurt Vonnegut writes pessimistic novels, or at least he did back in the sixties. Between Slaughterhouse Five, Mother Night, and Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut paints a cynical and satirical picture of the degradation of society using distortion as the primary means to express himself. In Cat's Cradle, the reader is confronted with the story of the narrator, John, as he attempts to gather material to write a book on the human aspect of the day Japan was bombed. As the story progresses, he finds that becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from illusion.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is, at times, a piece that seems intended to drive one beyond any hope of reasoning. Its occasionally overpowering allegorical symbolism or its seemingly eclectic mythology can certainly seem like a purist allegory designed to imbue in one the fear of eternal sin. However, when one takes the time to read beyond the simple story and to realize the true nature of Hawthorne's verbal artistry, it becomes clear that the piece is, as stated by Richard Chase, “a novel with beautifully assimilated allegorical elements” (149). With regards to Hawthorne's mythology, Chase's assertion is, perhaps, less accurate but no less reasonable. Throughout the novel one finds a rich mythology supplemented with allegorical aspects of both characters and settings that indeed encompasses all that Chase presents even as it extends beyond his ideas into a deeper, more meaningful work of art.

The Aesthetic Movement implied that art is only to exist for the idea of beauty, and that the viewer of the art should not look into the meaning behind the art. Oscar Wilde believed this theory, and he used ideas from the Aesthetic Movement in many of his pieces, including The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Picture of Dorian Gray was an incredibly controversial novel, especially with its added aesthetic ideas. David A. Upchurch emphasizes the impact that the novel had on Victorian society in his article, “The Picture of Dorian Gray: Overview”. Upchurch declares: The novel was immediately controversial because of the ethics of the aesthetic doctrines it seemed to embrace.

Edgar Allan Poe and Romanticism ​Edgar Allan Poe, an archetype of the Romantic writer, was one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature. Poe focused mainly on the effect the style of the piece had on its readers. By replacing the technical side to the written word, Poe was able to establish a new genre. Frequent themes in Romanticism are: imagination, sensitivity, feelings, spontaneity, freedom, introspection, intuition, individualism, nature, solitude, and emotion. How do examples from texts taken from Poe prove that the most dominant characteristic of the Romantic Movement was the rejection of the rational and the intellectual in favor of the intuitive and the emotional?

They believed that the external world was dependent solely on the conscious. Beverly Voloshin suggests that "Poe presents transcendental projects which threaten to proceed downward rather than upward" (19). Here it becomes obvious that there is a strong connection between John Locke's Empiricism and the resulting ideas of Transcendence, and the powerful effect that they had on Poe and other emerging Romantic writers of that time. In "The Fall of the House of Usher," Poe establishes a new type of literature, one that emphasizes aspects of Empiricism as well as the idea of Transcendence. Poe uses this unique literature to introduce the Usher mansion and its intriguing and very troubled inhabitants.

Defining Self-Awareness in the works of Emerson, Whitman and Poe Literature in the American Renaissance influenced the Romantic sentiment that prevailed during this period: the emergence of the individual. This materialization evolved out of the Age of Reason, when the question of using reason (a conscious state) or faith (an unconscious state) as a basis for establishing a set of beliefs divided people into secular and non-secular groups. Reacting to the generally submissive attitudes predominant in America at this time, nineteenth century writers envisioned "the source of religion within consciousness itself" (Chai, 10). This "secularization of religion" ultimately led to the "isolation of the self from others" (Chai, 10), and manifested the persuasive theme in Renaissance literature that promoted independent thinking. The writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walt Whitman all emanate from this Romantic spirit.