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Topic:- Critical Analysis of Poe's short stories.
Name:- Ekta Jayswal
Class:- M.A.[SEM:- 3]
Roll No:- 11
Paper No.10:- The American Literature
Enrollment No:- PG2069108420180027
Batch:- 2017/19
Email Id:- ektajayswal12@gmail.com
Submitted to:- Dr. Dilip Barad
S.B.Gardi English Department [M.K.B.U.]
Words:- 1838
Plagiarism:-
#About Edger Allan Poe:-
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.
Edgar Allen Poe was a talented writer that used his personal struggles and suffering to fuel his writing. It was through this suffering that he was able to create such dark characters, and give the reader a look into his own dementia.
Poe’s psychologically thrilling tales examining the depths of the human psyche earned him much fame during his lifetime and after his death. His own life was marred by tragedy at an early age (his parents died before he was three years old) and in his oft-quoted works we can see his darkly passionate sensibilities—a tormented and sometimes neurotic obsession with death and violence and overall appreciation for the beautiful yet tragic mysteries of life.
*Short Stories written by Edgar Allan Poe:-
"The Angel of the Odd" (1844) Comedy about being drunk
"The Balloon Hoax" (1844) Newspaper story about balloon travel
"Berenice" (1835) Horror story about teeth
"The Black Cat" (1845) Horror story about a cat
"The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) A story of revenge
"A Descent Into The Maelstrom" (1845) Man vs. Nature, Adventure Story
"Eleonora" (1850) A love story
"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (1845) Talking with a dead man
"The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) An old house and its secrets
"The Gold Bug" (1843) A search for pirate treasure
"Hop-Frog" (1845) A midget seeks revenge
"The Imp of the Perverse" (1850) Procrastination and confession
"The Island of the Fay" (1850) A poetic discussion
"Ligeia" (1838) A haunting supernatural tale
"The Man of the Crowd" (1845) How to follow someone
"Manuscript Found in a Bottle" (1833) Adventure at sea
"Mesmeric Revelation" (1849) Conversation with a hypnotized dying man
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) A detective story
"Never Bet the Devil Your Head" (1850) A comedy with a moral
"The Oval Portrait" (1850) A tragic love story
"The Pit and the Pendulum" (1850) A torture chamber
"The Premature Burial" (1850) About being buried alive
"The Purloined Letter" (1845) A detective story
"Silence - A Fable" (1838) A dream
"Some Words With a Mummy" (1850) A mummy speaks
"The Spectacles" (1850) A great little comedy about love at first sight
"The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether" (1856) Inside an insane asylum
"The Tell-Tale Heart" (1850) A murderer's guilt
"William Wilson" (1842) Identical twins or something else?
Here I am going to analysis the short stories which are part of our syllabus:-
1) "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) An old house and its secrets
2) "The Purloined Letter" (1845) A detective story
3) "The Gold Bug" (1843) A search for pirate treasure
4) "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1850) A murderer's guilt
5) "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) A story of revenge
1) "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) An old house and its secrets
#Introduction of Story:-
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a narrative short story, its first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine before being included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The short story is a work of detective fiction and includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities.
#Analysis:-
“The Fall of the House of Usher” possesses the quintessential -features of the Gothic tale: a haunted house, dreary landscape, mysterious sickness, and doubled personality.
For all its easily identifiable Gothic elements, however, part of the terror of this story is its vagueness. We cannot say for sure where in the world or exactly when the story takes place.
Instead of standard narrative markers of place and time, Poe uses traditional Gothic elements such as inclement weather and a barren landscape.
We are alone with the narrator in this haunted space, and neither we nor the -narrator know why. Although he is Roderick’s most intimate boyhood friend, the narrator apparently does not know much about him—like the basic fact that Roderick has a twin sister. Poe asks us to question the reasons both for Roderick’s decision to contact the narrator in this time of need and the bizarre tenacity of narrator’s response.
While Poe provides the recognizable building blocks of the Gothic tale, he contrasts this standard form with a plot that is inexplicable, sudden, and full of unexpected disruptions.
The story begins without complete explanation of the narrator’s motives for arriving at the house of Usher, and this ambiguity sets the tone for a plot that continually blurs the real and the fantastic.
Poe creates a sensation of claustrophobia in this story. The narrator is mysteriously trapped by the lure of Roderick’s attraction, and he cannot escape until the house of Usher collapses completely.
Characters cannot move and act freely in the house because of its structure, so it assumes a monstrous character of its own—the Gothic mastermind that controls the fate of its inhabitants.
Poe, creates confusion between the living things and inanimate objects by doubling the physical house of Usher with the genetic family line of the Usher family, which he refers to as the house of Usher.
Poe employs the word “house” metaphorically, but he also describes a real house. Not only does the narrator get trapped inside the mansion, but we learn also that this confinement describes the biological fate of the Usher family.
The family has no enduring branches, so all genetic transmission has occurred incestuously within the domain of the house. The peasantry confuses the mansion with the family because the physical structure has effectively dictated the genetic patterns of the family.
2) "The Purloined Letter" (1845) A detective story
#Introduction of Story:-
"The Purloined Letter" is a short story and It is the third of his three detective stories featuring the fictional C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt". These stories are considered to be important early forerunners of the modern detective story. It first appeared in the literary annual The Gift for 1845 (1844) and was soon reprinted in numerous journals and newspapers.
#Analysis:-
This short story, “The Purloined Letter” establishes a new genre of short fiction in American literature: the detective story.
Poe considered “The Purloined Letter” his best detective story, and critics have long identified the ways in which it redefines the mystery genre—it turns away from action toward intellectual analysis, for example.
As opposed to the graphic violence of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which features bodily mutilation and near decapitation by a wild animal, “The Purloined Letter” focuses more dryly on the relationship between the Paris police and Dupin, between the ineffectual established order and the savvy private eye.
When the narrator opens the story by reflecting upon the gruesome murders in the Rue Morgue that Dupin has helped to solve, Poe makes it clear that the prior story is on his mind. Poe sets up the cool reason of “The Purloined Letter” in opposition to the violence of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
The battered and lacerated bodies of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” are replaced by the bloodless, inanimate stolen letter. However, just as the Paris police are unable to solve the gory crime of passion in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” they are similarly unable to solve this apparently simple mystery, in which the solution is hidden in plain sight.
Poe moves away from violence and action by associating Dupin’s intelligence with his reflectiveness and his radical theories about the mind. This tale does not have the constant action of stories like “The Cask of Amontillado” or “The Black Cat.” Instead, this tale features the narrator and Dupin sitting in Dupin’s library and discussing ideas. The tale’s action, relayed by flashbacks, takes place outside the narrative frame. The narrative itself is told through dispassionate analysis. The intrusions of the prefect and his investigations of the Minister’s apartment come off as unrefined and unintellectual.
Poe portrays the prefect as simultaneously the most active and the most unreflective character in the story. Dupin’s most pointed criticisms of the prefect have less to do with a personal attack than with a critique of the mode of investigation employed by the police as a whole. Dupin suggests that the police cannot think outside their own standard procedures.
They are unable to place themselves in the minds of those who actually commit crimes. Dupin’s strategy of solving crimes, on the other hand, involves a process of thinking like someone else. Just as the boy playing “even and odd” enters his opponent’s mind, Dupin inhabits the consciousness of the criminal. He does not employ fancy psychological theories, but rather imitates the train of thought of his opponent. He succeeds in operating one step ahead of the police because he thinks as the Minister does.
This crime-solving technique of thinking like the criminal suggests that Dupin and the Minister are more doubles than opposites. The revenge aspect of the story, which Dupin promises after the Minister offends him in Vienna, arguably derives from their threatening similarity. Dupin’s note inside the phony letter, translated “So baneful a scheme, if not worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes,” suggests the rivalry that accompanies brotherly minds.
In the French dramatist Crébillon’s early-eighteenth-century tragedy Atrée et Thyeste (or Atreus and Thyestes), Thyestes seduces the wife of his brother, Atreus. In retaliation, Atreus murders the sons of Thyestes and serves them to their father at a feast. Dupin implies here that Thyestes deserves more punishment than Atreus because he commits the original wrong. In contrast, Atreus’s revenge is legitimate because it repays the original offense. Dupin considers his own deed to be revenge and thereby morally justified.
#Conclusion:-
Poe's writing reflects his literary theories, which he presented in his criticism and also in essays such as "The Poetic Principle".He disliked didacticism and allegory,though he believed that meaning in literature should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface.
He believed that work of quality should be brief and focus on a specific single effect.To that end, he believed that the writer should carefully calculate every sentiment and idea.
Poe describes his method in writing "The Raven" in the essay "The Philosophy of Composition", and he claims to have strictly followed this method.
#work Sited by:-
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe
Thank You ...
Click here...
Topic:- Critical Analysis of Poe's short stories.
Name:- Ekta Jayswal
Class:- M.A.[SEM:- 3]
Roll No:- 11
Paper No.10:- The American Literature
Enrollment No:- PG2069108420180027
Batch:- 2017/19
Email Id:- ektajayswal12@gmail.com
Submitted to:- Dr. Dilip Barad
S.B.Gardi English Department [M.K.B.U.]
Words:- 1838
Plagiarism:-
#About Edger Allan Poe:-
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.
Edgar Allen Poe was a talented writer that used his personal struggles and suffering to fuel his writing. It was through this suffering that he was able to create such dark characters, and give the reader a look into his own dementia.
Poe’s psychologically thrilling tales examining the depths of the human psyche earned him much fame during his lifetime and after his death. His own life was marred by tragedy at an early age (his parents died before he was three years old) and in his oft-quoted works we can see his darkly passionate sensibilities—a tormented and sometimes neurotic obsession with death and violence and overall appreciation for the beautiful yet tragic mysteries of life.
*Short Stories written by Edgar Allan Poe:-
"The Angel of the Odd" (1844) Comedy about being drunk
"The Balloon Hoax" (1844) Newspaper story about balloon travel
"Berenice" (1835) Horror story about teeth
"The Black Cat" (1845) Horror story about a cat
"The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) A story of revenge
"A Descent Into The Maelstrom" (1845) Man vs. Nature, Adventure Story
"Eleonora" (1850) A love story
"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (1845) Talking with a dead man
"The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) An old house and its secrets
"The Gold Bug" (1843) A search for pirate treasure
"Hop-Frog" (1845) A midget seeks revenge
"The Imp of the Perverse" (1850) Procrastination and confession
"The Island of the Fay" (1850) A poetic discussion
"Ligeia" (1838) A haunting supernatural tale
"The Man of the Crowd" (1845) How to follow someone
"Manuscript Found in a Bottle" (1833) Adventure at sea
"Mesmeric Revelation" (1849) Conversation with a hypnotized dying man
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) A detective story
"Never Bet the Devil Your Head" (1850) A comedy with a moral
"The Oval Portrait" (1850) A tragic love story
"The Pit and the Pendulum" (1850) A torture chamber
"The Premature Burial" (1850) About being buried alive
"The Purloined Letter" (1845) A detective story
"Silence - A Fable" (1838) A dream
"Some Words With a Mummy" (1850) A mummy speaks
"The Spectacles" (1850) A great little comedy about love at first sight
"The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether" (1856) Inside an insane asylum
"The Tell-Tale Heart" (1850) A murderer's guilt
"William Wilson" (1842) Identical twins or something else?
Here I am going to analysis the short stories which are part of our syllabus:-
1) "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) An old house and its secrets
2) "The Purloined Letter" (1845) A detective story
3) "The Gold Bug" (1843) A search for pirate treasure
4) "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1850) A murderer's guilt
5) "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) A story of revenge
1) "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) An old house and its secrets
#Introduction of Story:-
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a narrative short story, its first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine before being included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The short story is a work of detective fiction and includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities.
#Analysis:-
“The Fall of the House of Usher” possesses the quintessential -features of the Gothic tale: a haunted house, dreary landscape, mysterious sickness, and doubled personality.
For all its easily identifiable Gothic elements, however, part of the terror of this story is its vagueness. We cannot say for sure where in the world or exactly when the story takes place.
Instead of standard narrative markers of place and time, Poe uses traditional Gothic elements such as inclement weather and a barren landscape.
We are alone with the narrator in this haunted space, and neither we nor the -narrator know why. Although he is Roderick’s most intimate boyhood friend, the narrator apparently does not know much about him—like the basic fact that Roderick has a twin sister. Poe asks us to question the reasons both for Roderick’s decision to contact the narrator in this time of need and the bizarre tenacity of narrator’s response.
While Poe provides the recognizable building blocks of the Gothic tale, he contrasts this standard form with a plot that is inexplicable, sudden, and full of unexpected disruptions.
The story begins without complete explanation of the narrator’s motives for arriving at the house of Usher, and this ambiguity sets the tone for a plot that continually blurs the real and the fantastic.
Poe creates a sensation of claustrophobia in this story. The narrator is mysteriously trapped by the lure of Roderick’s attraction, and he cannot escape until the house of Usher collapses completely.
Characters cannot move and act freely in the house because of its structure, so it assumes a monstrous character of its own—the Gothic mastermind that controls the fate of its inhabitants.
Poe, creates confusion between the living things and inanimate objects by doubling the physical house of Usher with the genetic family line of the Usher family, which he refers to as the house of Usher.
Poe employs the word “house” metaphorically, but he also describes a real house. Not only does the narrator get trapped inside the mansion, but we learn also that this confinement describes the biological fate of the Usher family.
The family has no enduring branches, so all genetic transmission has occurred incestuously within the domain of the house. The peasantry confuses the mansion with the family because the physical structure has effectively dictated the genetic patterns of the family.
2) "The Purloined Letter" (1845) A detective story
#Introduction of Story:-
"The Purloined Letter" is a short story and It is the third of his three detective stories featuring the fictional C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt". These stories are considered to be important early forerunners of the modern detective story. It first appeared in the literary annual The Gift for 1845 (1844) and was soon reprinted in numerous journals and newspapers.
#Analysis:-
This short story, “The Purloined Letter” establishes a new genre of short fiction in American literature: the detective story.
Poe considered “The Purloined Letter” his best detective story, and critics have long identified the ways in which it redefines the mystery genre—it turns away from action toward intellectual analysis, for example.
As opposed to the graphic violence of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which features bodily mutilation and near decapitation by a wild animal, “The Purloined Letter” focuses more dryly on the relationship between the Paris police and Dupin, between the ineffectual established order and the savvy private eye.
When the narrator opens the story by reflecting upon the gruesome murders in the Rue Morgue that Dupin has helped to solve, Poe makes it clear that the prior story is on his mind. Poe sets up the cool reason of “The Purloined Letter” in opposition to the violence of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
The battered and lacerated bodies of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” are replaced by the bloodless, inanimate stolen letter. However, just as the Paris police are unable to solve the gory crime of passion in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” they are similarly unable to solve this apparently simple mystery, in which the solution is hidden in plain sight.
Poe moves away from violence and action by associating Dupin’s intelligence with his reflectiveness and his radical theories about the mind. This tale does not have the constant action of stories like “The Cask of Amontillado” or “The Black Cat.” Instead, this tale features the narrator and Dupin sitting in Dupin’s library and discussing ideas. The tale’s action, relayed by flashbacks, takes place outside the narrative frame. The narrative itself is told through dispassionate analysis. The intrusions of the prefect and his investigations of the Minister’s apartment come off as unrefined and unintellectual.
Poe portrays the prefect as simultaneously the most active and the most unreflective character in the story. Dupin’s most pointed criticisms of the prefect have less to do with a personal attack than with a critique of the mode of investigation employed by the police as a whole. Dupin suggests that the police cannot think outside their own standard procedures.
They are unable to place themselves in the minds of those who actually commit crimes. Dupin’s strategy of solving crimes, on the other hand, involves a process of thinking like someone else. Just as the boy playing “even and odd” enters his opponent’s mind, Dupin inhabits the consciousness of the criminal. He does not employ fancy psychological theories, but rather imitates the train of thought of his opponent. He succeeds in operating one step ahead of the police because he thinks as the Minister does.
This crime-solving technique of thinking like the criminal suggests that Dupin and the Minister are more doubles than opposites. The revenge aspect of the story, which Dupin promises after the Minister offends him in Vienna, arguably derives from their threatening similarity. Dupin’s note inside the phony letter, translated “So baneful a scheme, if not worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes,” suggests the rivalry that accompanies brotherly minds.
In the French dramatist Crébillon’s early-eighteenth-century tragedy Atrée et Thyeste (or Atreus and Thyestes), Thyestes seduces the wife of his brother, Atreus. In retaliation, Atreus murders the sons of Thyestes and serves them to their father at a feast. Dupin implies here that Thyestes deserves more punishment than Atreus because he commits the original wrong. In contrast, Atreus’s revenge is legitimate because it repays the original offense. Dupin considers his own deed to be revenge and thereby morally justified.
#Conclusion:-
Poe's writing reflects his literary theories, which he presented in his criticism and also in essays such as "The Poetic Principle".He disliked didacticism and allegory,though he believed that meaning in literature should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface.
He believed that work of quality should be brief and focus on a specific single effect.To that end, he believed that the writer should carefully calculate every sentiment and idea.
Poe describes his method in writing "The Raven" in the essay "The Philosophy of Composition", and he claims to have strictly followed this method.
#work Sited by:-
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe
Thank You ...
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