[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Tombleson locates theplace of the story both its traditional and innovative elements within the traditiondating to Walpole s The Castle of Otranto, A Gothic Story (1764).Also helpful is Stephen180John H.TimmermanDougherty s Dreaming the Races: Biology and National Fantasy in The Fall of theHouse of Usher (Henry Street 7.1 [Spring 1988]: 17 39).Of particular interest, and witha revealing twist on interpreting the story, is Mark Kinkead-Weekes Reflections On, andIn, The Fall of the House of Usher. Kinkead-Weekes argues that the story is notmerely Gothick, but rather a Gothick which at every turn signals a consciousness of itsown operation (17).This pattern includes, furthermore, an awareness of the writer of theGothic.2.See, for example, Cynthia S.Jordan s Poe s Re-Vision: The Recovery of theSecond Story (American Literature 59.1 [Mar.1987]: 1 19).Jordan sets forth the ways bywhich Poe differs from Hawthorne and pays close attention to such stories as Berenice, Morella, and Ligeia, in addition to The Fall of the House of Usher. In Sympathiesof a Scarcely Intelligible Nature : The Brother Sister Bond in Poe s The Fall of theHouse of Usher (Studies in Short Fiction 30 [1993]: 387 396), Leila S.May discusses theissue of the female persona with an interesting twist, arguing that the story representsPoe s vision of social destruction with the breakup of family structures in mid-19thcentury.That the relationship between Roderick and Madeline is aberrant goes withoutsaying, but May provides insufficient evidence of a social meltdown at this time or supportfor Poe s holding this view.3.It is nearly impossible to keep track of all the articles and dissenting opinions that Ligeia has engendered.In Poe s mind, at least, the story was his best to date.To PhilipPendleton Cooke he wrote, Ligeia may be called my best tale (9 August 1846 Letters2:329).Readers don t always agree with authors on such matters.The story is, nonetheless,a fascinating document for Poe s revision process.In The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe,volume 2, Thomas Mabbott discusses these at some length.4.Technically, a cosmogony, the term Poe uses, is concerned with the origins andthe evolution of the universe.A cosmology, the more fitting term here, deals with theuniverse in total relativity from the origin to the acts and consequences of all life in theuniverse.As we will see, Poe s theory clearly points in the latter direction.5.For helpful discussion of the relationship between the lecture and Eureka seeBurton R.Pollin s Contemporary Reviews of Eureka: A Checklist (Poe as LiteraryCosmologer: Studies on Eureka A Symposium.Hartford, CT: Transcendental Books,1975.26 30) in addition to standard biographies.6.Frederick Conner demonstrates the plethora of contradictions and fallacies in thethird section in his Poe s Eureka (Cosmic Optimism: A Study of the Interpretation ofEvolution by American Poets from Emerson to Robinson.New York: Octagon, 1973.67 91).7.Quotations from Eureka are from volume 16 of the Harrison edition of TheComplete Works.Page numbers refer to this volume.More recently, Richard P.Benton hasedited a new edition of Eureka with line numbers, a compendium essay, and a bibliographicguide (Hartford, CT: Transcendental Books, 1973).The text is quite difficult to find,however, while the Harrison edition is in nearly every library.8.Poe made this point in a number of places, perhaps most forcefully in his 2 July1844 letter to James Russell Lowell: But to all we attach the notion of a constitution ofparticles atomic composition.For this reason only we think spirit different; for spirit, wesay, is unparticled, and therefore is not matter.The unparticled matter, permeating andimpelling all things, is God.Its activity is the thought of God which creates.Man, andother thinking beings, are individualizations of the unparticled matter (Letters 1:257).Humanity is a part or extension of God.Since it is the nature of God to create, humanity s181Edgar Allan Poe s The Fall of the House of Usherclosest affinity to the Deity lies in its creativity
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]