A Reader Is Most Likely to Experience Which Emotion While Reading a Work of Gothic Horror?

Advances in Literary Written report
Vol.03 No.01(2015), Article ID:53442,5 pages
x.4236/als.2015.31003

Gothicism in The Autumn of the Firm of Usher

Wenfang Pang, Diqiu Wang, Shanshan Hu

Air Force Logistics College, Xuzhou, China

Email: 1261169804@qq.com

Copyright © 2015 past authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/iv.0/

Received 27 December 2014; accepted 15 January 2015; published 22 January 2015

Abstruse

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most unique writers in America. He stands alone with his aesthetic taste and writing principle, engaged in the morbid theme of nightmare, death, criminal offense and evil. Con- sequently, he adopts Gothic technique in a limerick, taking a full advantage of Gothic subject matter, plot and elements and lingering on violence, murder, insanity and plummet. The Fall of the House of Usher is Poe'due south classical piece of this type. Information technology presents terrifying atmosphere, the dark plot, and man's psychological terror to reveal the process of disintegration and annihilation of human mind, thus offering readers specific aesthetic perception through psychological shocks. This paper borrowing a critical perspective of Gothic tradition and theory of the sublime, tries to analyze the Gothicism in this novel to discover its artful feature.

Keywords:

Gothic, Horror, Sublime, Aesthetic Function

1. Introduction

Gothic Stories are romantic tales of terror and the supernatural, which rely a great deal on scene and setting to convey a sense of horror to the reader. The American author Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) is just ane principal of the literary genre known as the Gothic story, and he makes great contribution to Gothic fiction. He inherits and develops the tradition Gothic fiction, and the American literature forms the groundwork of his horror fictions and gives his fictions unique power and charm. To a certain degree, Poe'due south horror fiction prepares the origin of Southern fiction. In his works, he reveals people's horror towards super nature, nothingness, death, evil and disintegration of personality. He tries to arrive clear that horror comes from our soul. He tries his all-time to state how the evil and horror function in bringing the sublimation and purification to man's inner world.

The Fall of the Firm of Conductor written by Edgar Allan Poe in l839 is regarded as an early and supreme example of the Gothic horror story, and it has the usual Gothic elements found in about works by Poe. Every attribute expected from a Poe'southward piece can be institute inside this story. What's more, just as his other excellent works, Poe not only tells a story, but also clarifies his spirit in this work: Horror is a kind of instinct and i of the strongest feelings of human kind. At the same time, according to the theory of sublime by Longinus, Imanuel Kant and Burke, readers still tin can find beauty from horror in Gothic fiction and experience the aesthetic pleasure.

Through an analysis of related knowledge with Gothic and his works which have fascinated readers of generations with its unique artistic dazzler, this newspaper will highlights Poe's fiction and proves that his works merit our word.

2. Gothic Literature and Edgar Allan Poe

The Gothic literature'south development is very colorful and the influence is bang-up, because the Gothic has devoted itself to many pop genres and influenced many important writers such as Edgar Allan Poe. Poe, as one of the virtually important writers in American Southern literature, makes very of import contribution to the development of the Gothic literature.

2.1. Evolution of Gothic Novel

Commencement, if we were going to focus on the Gothic literature, we should understand the definition of the term "Gothic".

It comes from the give-and-take "Goth", which indicates 1 of several Germanic tribes that was instrumental in the autumn of the Roman Empire in the medieval times. Confirmed by the archaeologists, their early settlement was in the Baltic, and gradually they migrated down to the Black Bounding main. During the third century, the Goths made their incursion into Roman and in AD 410, they took Rome nether King Alaric and established kingdoms in France and Italy. Therefore, the Goths has long left people with the indelible image of truculence, barbarian and gracefulness. What's more, sometimes the word is fifty-fifty used to frighten children.

The Myths well-nigh the tribe are much more important than any history of the actual Goths, who are remembered only as invaders and destroyers of the peachy Roman culture since no literature or fine art of their own has been left. Post-obit the fall of Rome, very fiddling has been known well-nigh the medieval world during the Renaissance, when the idea of the "Dark Ages" expanded to include the period, and "Gothic" (Cavallaro, 2002) became a term applied to all things medieval.

In some dictionary, "Goth" is defined every bit i non civilized, deficient, a barbarian and the medieval or "Gothic" age as a cultural wasteland, primitive and superstitious. The term was outset used in an aesthetic sense, i.eastward. a style of architecture of the Germanic tribe. Its typical characteristics are long and narrow corridor and somber castle always with basement for corpses and and then on. As a result, the fashion has been erroneously identified as barbaric, disorder and irrational opposite to the archetype One.

In literary sense, it is clearly possible to speak of the Gothic equally a historical phenomenon, originating in the late eighteenth century (Mao, 2006) .

From the "Goth" tribe to the special genre "Gothic novel" and with the evolution of "Gothic novel", information technology proves that this kind of literature merits lots of authors to devote themselves to, and it has made and will go on to practice a lot to itself and other genres.

2.ii. Gothic Literature in American Literature

Gothic literature has not bad development in America. What's more, the American Gothic, the exploration of night psychology and the flourishing of Gothic tales tell us that American Gothic is more than than an offshoot of the European Gothic. However, at the beginning, American gothic works but tend to transform European Compages into American landscape every bit material as intriguing.

With the evolution of the Gothic works in America, 3 authors define a black thread in American literature that while not entirely original (borrowing from European Gothicism and certain American precursors) is perfected in their works and continues to show its class in subsequent literature both American and European. These authors are Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allen Poe. At that moment, American gothic had new features. Information technology has the exploration and expression of the different human being psychology, and another contribution to the Gothic literature is to extend it from the dominant form of novel to the short story. We tin get this betoken clearly in the works of Poe and Hawthorne, and this point is inherited successfully and enriched by William Faulkner and Flannary O' Connor who have given a new power of the Gothic.

In the soil of America, Gothic literature is poured into fresh blood and lots of excellent Gothic works sally, and the American literature becomes much more than abundant.

2.3. Poe and His Gothic Novels

In the literature history of America, Poe is i of the near unique writers. His creative technique and literary theories are totally different from the main stream in the field of literature in his times. All the same, Poe had been misunderstood by readers and his contemporaries for quite a long time. Information technology was until 20th century that the importance of Poe'southward literary creations had been recognized by the academic world.

Nowadays, Poe has been recognized by the whole world every bit the precursor of modernistic writings, originator of the brusque stories, forerunner of psychoanalytic criticism and father of mod detective stories. What's more than, he enjoys a very important status in American literary history and achieves great achievement in both pure and popular literature. Poe stands between them to keep the balance and exert some sound influences in both directions.

We can't deny that Poe is a great writer in America and his devotion to the Gothic novels is huge, and his Gothic fiction has a unique position in the literary history.

3. Assay of Gothic Elements in The Fall of the House of Usher

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3.1. Assay of Atmosphere

Gothic atmosphere is very important for representing its night feature for Gothic tales. The traditional Gothic atmosphere is always located in ruined castles and abbeys, and has dark passages and stairwells echoing with howls, groans and dripping charnel houses which come up from the Gothic architecture, which bloomed in the 12th to the 16th century. And the utilize of the atmosphere is very unproblematic, simply the atmosphere emerged in Poe's works is variety.

In The Autumn of the House of Conductor, the atmosphere is used extensively to do many things. The author uses information technology to convey ideas, effects, and images. It establishes a mood and foreshadows future events. Poe communicates truths about the character through temper. Symbols are also used throughout to aid understand the theme through the temper.

Poe creates an atmosphere in the reader's mind. He chose every word in every sentence advisedly to create a gloomy mood. For example, Usher's house, its windows, bricks, and dungeon are all used to make a dismal atmosphere. The "white trunks of decayed trees," the "blackness and pulp tarn," and the "vacant, eyelike windows" contribute to the collective atmosphere of despair and anguish (Edgar Allan Poe, 1982) .

This is done with the words black, lurid, decayed, and vacant. The narrator says that the Usher mansion had "an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven." (Hayes, 2004) . It was no where well-nigh being beautiful, holy, or clean. He uses descriptive words such as decayed, strange, peculiar, grayness, mystic, gothic, pestilent, dull and sluggish to create the atmosphere. Poe'south meticulous choice of words creates a very effective atmosphere in the story.

Through the atmosphere, Edgar Allan Poe is able to foreshadow events, and reveal graphic symbol traits. Although the reader may not notice all the numerous devices used, they contribute to giving the story depth. Noticed or not, Poe utilizes the temper to its full capacity to create the mood, characters and foreshadowing.

3.2. Assay of Label

The Gothic characters portray in Poe's works are unique and excellent. Many of them emerged with a fear for death: someone is already mad or someone wants to be away from the incipient madness just as Roderick Usher in The Fall of the House of Usher. What's worse, some others are striving to come back from the tomb like Madelin, in fact, who is cached alive. Unlike those archetypal hero-villain who are popular in traditional Gothic literature, Poe'south characters are by and large victimized, either past the dark psycho that "do wrong simply for incorrect'south sake'' or the terror that roots in his inner fright. The most victimized character in Poe'southward fiction is no dubiousness Roderick Conductor, and Poe describes him similar this:

A cadaverousness of complexion, an heart big, liquid, a luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, simply of surpassingly beautiful curve; a olfactory organ of a delicate Hebrew mode…, a fine moulded chin, … in its want of prominence… (Chang, 2002)

Every bit someone has said, what the writer described almost the Roderick Conductor is very similar with Poe himself. If this is true, maybe nosotros can judge that the role in the novel still reflects Poe's world. What'south more, the reason that the narrator finds everything within his room in House of Usher, such every bit the blackness oaken floor, the dark drapery and the general furniture which are "profuse, comfortless, antiquarian and tattered", makes an unspeakable sense of familiarity and gives us what the environment like in Poe'due south own inner globe.

He is afraid of this kind of feeling and suffers bitterly by his inner fright for the result which is caused by his inner horror and undercover sin, only the narrator could not demand to consider about these. So, at the outset sight of his always intimate companion in early on adolescence, he connects its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

His special fright affects everything no affair in mind and without, from the guest and the House itself and the tarn beyond. It explains the result of the tale naturally that the collapse of Conductor'due south reason makes the fall of his house. Information technology is the special plummet of character'due south mind that made the realistic things has the aforementioned result.

3.3. Assay of Symbol

As we all know, symbol in literature can be divers as something you tin see that has taken on a meaning beyond itself or a visible object or action that suggests some farther meaning, in improver to itself.

From The Fall of the House of Conductor, nosotros tin can have a determination that the Usher family is the symbol of the final production of the highly sensitive culture, information technology is destined to exist buried under the ground by horror. The tarn and canvas symbolize evil, the malaria symbolizes super nature and illusion, horror lies in evil and madness, death finally defeat goodness, sense and life, and everything vanish in deathly stillness. The house of Conductor can be regarded as the body of Roderick Usher, the gloomy inside of the house symbolize the illusion in his mind, the whole novel can be taken equally "a journey to the depth of self", and the hero Roderick is the metaphor of "hypnosis of the brain" (Xiao, 2005) .

The uncertain symbols cast a veil on Poe's works and leave a huge infinite of imagination for the readers and trap them into the horrible temper when they search for the symbolic meaning of the novel.

4. Artful Part of Gothicism

This part is to discuss the charm of Poe'southward Gothic fictions on aesthetic. Sometimes, Poe'south Gothic fictions show u.s. a method that is non easy and harmful to be accustomed past the readers to adjust their physical and psychological balance. But we have to admit that in Poe's Gothic fictions, horror and ugliness grasp our aesthetical vision. In the parts nigh horror and evil, Poe achieves the aesthetical functions of sublimation and purification of human morality and spirit.

four.1. Horror Brings Sublimity

First, nosotros focus on the assay on sublimation given by Poe in The Fall of the House of Conductor which expresses the beauty of astonishment:

The impetuous fury of the entering gust nigh lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and 1 wildly atypical in its terror and its dazzler…did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all points confronting each other, without passing abroad into the altitude (Chang, 2002) .

Horror, danger, pain and death are the psychological and aesthetic effects that Poe's Gothic fictions always want to accept. Ane besides feels a certain special painful pleasure and beneficial approximate of morality and value from the horror and mercy crusade past them, which always enlighten and educate people and make people face the internal himself.

Poe wants to evidence the states through his stories that at that place should exist a proper identify for the irrational instinct and impulse, merely nosotros should be careful to go on them in harmony with our sense. Conflicts should exist avoided, and if we refuse this kind of ideas, nosotros volition fall into the night globe. When nosotros tin avoid the extreme behavior or adopt the proper method to bargain with it, we tin become some benefit and achieve a collection of liberty. Once the readers continue an aesthetic distance with Poe's Gothic fictions, they tin can experience the "astonishment" produced by horror.

In Poe'south Gothic fictions, the horror is turned into beauty later on the terrible experience, and hurting is turned into peaceful please after aesthetics. This is the biggest artful pleasure brought to us by horror in his works.

4.2. Gothicism Brings Purification of Human Soul

Gothic fiction is a special kind of literature. It can convince people to believe that there is zilch to exist agape of. Information technology wakes up the terror in our soul and so turn it into an pleasance experience. The mixture of horror and pleasance enter our soul and purify u.s..

Gothic fiction exposes various horrible elements hidden in our everyday life: the pain of loss, the mystery of death, the unpredictability and inefficiency of the occurrence of events. Simply because horror is one part of which we usually have in our daily life, though it sounds very foreign to talk well-nigh daily life with the maxim as horror. Although we don't know whether to laugh or cry, this expression on horror is effective to some degree. Considering the daily life looks very natural and it has no low of horror sometimes.

Gothic fictions describe the depressed horror in everyday life through testify united states the frightening elements of horror. This process is much like Freud's theory almost dreams. Gothic fictions are a mixture that provide us charming beauty as well as the frightening horror.

Just every bit dreams can cure the depressed ideas of dreamer, the horror emerged in fictions could make the readers experience some imaginary life. But it should not besides cruel, because if the tales brand them feel too painful and too terrible that they volition close the book.

In the fictions which are total of horror, although we are afraid of the threatening in our mind merely its danger to our bodies, we know it clearly that it will not be met in real life. In other word, nether the condition of no real danger, Gothic fiction creates lots of horrible scenes which bring a stiff thrill to people and make people feel safety while experiencing the extreme danger and death. People are provided with a particular relaxation and pleasure. That is where the endless charm of Gothic fiction lies in.

As we all know, the horror in real life is terrible and tin can not produce pleasure. But in Poe'due south Gothic stories, a horrible frightening will emerge suddenly without any psychological preparation, and at the same time it can produce the huge please or great pleasure. In other discussion, our hearts will be filled with some exaggerated excitement brand by this kind of sudden horror.

This artful pleasure is some kind of pleasure in our internal sense. Simply, maybe nosotros can experience great pleasure from destruction. Anybody will have this experience which can be call "so cruel pleasure". The pain in the procedure of reading brings us the pleasance to validate our power (Yang, 2006) .

To Poe himself, maybe he didn't want to write any external horror, because what he wanted to explore is the horror in everyone's middle. He tried his best to transfer the spiritual ties hidden in our unconsciousness into consciousness, then face them and deal with them. Finally, Poe's Gothic fictions make the courage and strength to defeat horror in the readers' hearts and encourage people to face up the existent self bravely.

We can draw a conclusion that horror can bring people a stronger tragic aesthetic delight, which can urge people to get moral, right mentality and purify morality, and at last make them achieve "goodness" or "virtue". So, the purpose of literature is to arouse people'southward emotion and let out people's horror, pain and mercy. We not only go the artful pleasure from the horror and evil, but also a kind of "purification".

5. Conclusion

Edgar Allan Poe is a genius of imagination and verbal cosmos. He is a chief skilled in manipulating language in his fictions as is the instance of The Autumn of the House of Usher to create the unique aesthetic result he aims to achieve. His purpose for composition is to produce a feeling of beauty to bring "an elevating excitement of the soul". In the given work discussed here, Poe offers different kinds of beauties: the dazzler of horror, the beauty of beloved, and the beauty of death and despair. His pursuit of beauty labels him the first man who keeps to the principle of "Art for Art'southward sake." Throughout his writing career, he pursues his artful upshot steadily at the cost of being ridiculed and wronged viciously by many. Among all the beauties presented in Poe'south works, the beauty with Gothicism is most hit one.

In The Fall of the House of Conductor, everything from atmosphere creation, grapheme portrayal to the employ of symbol shares one single purpose of creating Gothic horror to brings out the sense of sublimity for spiritual purification amongst readers. Kevin J. Hayes, the adept on Poe written report once concludes, "the word 'aesthetic' and its cognates have clung to the proper name of Edgar Allan Poe." This is the right comment for Poe's principle of composition.

To sum up, aesthetic theory about the dazzler of horror is successfully incarnated in Poe's Gothic fictions similar The Fall of the Business firm of Usher and Poe is creditably a behemothic in Gothic literature. An analysis of Poe's utilize of Gothicism is helpful for readers to capeesh the special aesthetic charm of his work.

References

1. Cavallaro (2002). The Gothic Vision Three Centuries of Horror Terror and Fear. London: MPG Books Ltd.
2. Chang, Y. 10. (2002). Selected Readings in American Literature. Tianjin: Nankai University Press.
3. Hayes, K. J. (2004). The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Shanghai: Shanghai Strange Linguistic communication Education Printing.
4. Mao, Ten. D. (2006). A History of American Fiction. Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Printing.
5. Poe, E. A. (1982). The Tell Tale Heart and Other Writings by Edgar Allen Poe. New York: Bantam Books.
6. Xiao, Thou. H. (2005). Selected Gothic Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Chengdu: Sichuan People Printing.
7. Yang, S. G. (2006). Sigmund FREUD. Translated by Psychology Philosophy. Beijing: Jiuzhou Press.

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