03.10.12

Classics of American Literature

Lecture 10-12

Topics for Further Consideration:

1. Discuss the implications of "the poet as maker" vs. "the poet as seer." Summarize which vision of artistic creation you subscribe to.

Poe's great contribution to literary theory is his conception of Poet as Maker vs. Poet as Seer; in this we see a drastic calling-into-question of Romantic assumptions. "The Philosophy of Composition" or "How I Wrote the Raven" is the famous account of Poe's poetic practice. Poe is splendidly technical in his essay; he shows us exactly how and why the refrain and metric scheme of "The Raven" are as they are. The seer-poets are of supreme heights. A seer is he who envisions the present, the past and the future all at once. But the poetry that has a universal appeal is the creation of a seer-poet. A vision of artistic creation is when an art – a work of art – is a part of something which is not reducible to an artistic determination.

2. Poe is accused of being shamelessly sensationalist and superficial; defend the case that he provides us with a meaningful representation of human feeling.

Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the best-known American Romantic whose poems and stories explore the darker side of the Romantic imagination. Poe rejected the rational and the intellectual (of America's previous writers) in favor of the intuitive and the emotional, a dominant characteristic of the Romantic Movement. One of Poe’s distinctive concerns is that of separating head and heart, intellect and soul. Some critics think that Poe was only a marketer of Gothic horror borrowed from the German models popular during his time. I see Poe as an author who "plays for us the evil keys of human emotion," so to say. Thinking of the range of human emotions and levels of experience as a piano keyboard, not too many authors can really identify evil like Poe can. I think all humans are capable of extremely evil deeds and Poe enables the reader to feel this through his literature.

American Passages Unit 3

What characteristics of a literary work make it influential over time?

The suitable orientation of the American literature has close ties to what is commonly believed to be a constituent of the identity of the Native American. American literature bears reference to the written as well as the literary work that has been produced in the context of United States area as well as the colonial America. The literary tradition of the United States has its origin to the traditions in a broader sense of the English literature. This is according to the assertion of Thomas Jefferson, It is however agreeable that the unique characteristics of the Americans and its broader production are currently the reason as to why it is taken to be a separate path as well as a tradition. The Native Americans are associated with a tendency for the creation of highly rich tradition that is developed in the field of America oral tradition. The major focus of the stories is some particular characters and the inclusion of the some elements as well as some standard events. The most conspicuous stories include the gambler, the trickster, the creation, the abduction, as well as the legends of migration. These types of tales are at the disposal of the contemporary authors for application in the cause of their duty.

How are American myths created, challenged, and reimagined in the literature of this period?

As a term, myth is much misunderstood; hearing it, many people take the word to mean "lie," when in fact a myth is a story, a narrative, that explains individual and national realities--how a person or a country came to be, why certain things happen in the course of a life or of history, and what fate may have in store for us. Myths are a peculiar hybrid of truth and falsehood, resentments and ambitions, dreams and dread. We all have personal myths running through our heads, and some chapters would withstand fact checking while others would fail miserably. All nations need myths to understand crises that shock, the wars and riots, assassinations and natural disasters that wrench history. The American myths, as far as we know them, form simply a series of accounts of the conflicts, happenings, and various methods by which the first world was changed into the world now existing. This change was effected in various ways. In the myths of certain tribes or nations, it is mainly by struggles between hostile personages.