PLEASE HELP!!!!!! I NEED TO WRITE AN ESSAY ON ROMANTICISM DUE NOV.20

greenspun.com : LUSENET : The Work of Edgar Allan Poe : One Thread

WELL, I REALLY NEED HELP WITH THIS ESSAY. I FINISHED THE INTRO, BUT I AM LOST WITH THE BODY AND CONCLUSION...PLEASE FIND OUT AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. THANX I REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR HELP:

CAN YOU PLEASE TELL ME THE FOLLOWING ABOUT POE:

1)WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT POE AND ROMANTICISM?

2)WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING TRAITS OF ROMANTICISM ARE SHOWN IN -"THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM"? ~PROFOUND LOVE OF NATURE? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~FOCUS ON THE SELF AND THE INDIVIDUAL? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~STRESS ON EMOTION, NOT REASON? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~FASCINATION WITH THE SUPERNATURAL, THE MYSTERIOUS, AND THE GOTHIC? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~YEARNING FOR THE PICTURESQUE, THE EXOTIC, AND THE MISTY PAST?EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~DEEP-ROOTED IDEALISM? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~PASSIONATE NATIONALISM, OR LOVE OF COUNTRY? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~VALUE SPIRITUAL SUCCESS OVER MATERIAL SUCCESS? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

CAN YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING ON NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE?

1)WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT HAWTHORNE AND ROMANTICISM?

2)WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING TRAITS OF ROMANTICISM ARE SHOWN IN -"YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN" AND "RAPPACHINI'S DAUGHTER? ~PROFOUND LOVE OF NATURE? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~FOCUS ON THE SELF AND THE INDIVIDUAL? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~STRESS ON EMOTION, NOT REASON? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~FASCINATION WITH THE SUPERNATURAL, THE MYSTRIOUS, GOTHIC? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~YEARNING FOR THE PICTURESQUE, THE EXOTIC, AND THE MISTY PAST?EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~DEEP-ROOTED IDEALISM? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~PASSIONATE NATIONALISM, OR LOVE OF COUNTRY? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~VALUE SPIRITUAL SUCCESS OVER MATERIAL SUCCESS? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

CAN YOU ANSWER QUESTIONS #2 ON WASHINGTON IRVING?

1)WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT IRVING AND ROMANTICISM?

2)WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING TRAITS OF ROMANTICISM ARE SHOWN IN -"THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER"? ~PROFOUND LOVE OF NATURE? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~FOCUS ON THE SELF AND THE INDIVIDUAL? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~STRESS ON EMOTION, NOT REASON? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~FASCINATION WITH THE SUPERNATURAL, THE MYSTRIOUS, GOTHIC? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~YEARNING FOR THE PICTURESQUE, THE EXOTIC, AND THE MISTY PAST?EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~DEEP-ROOTED IDEALISM? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~PASSIONATE NATIONALISM, OR LOVE OF COUNTRY? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY ~VALUE SPIRITUAL SUCCESS OVER MATERIAL SUCCESS? EXPLAIN, GIVE CLUES FROM STORY

P.S. SORRY ABOUT THE HAWTHORNE AND IRVING QUESTIONS, I KNOW THIS IS A POE MESSAGE BOARD BUT I AM DESPERATE...

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2002

Answers

abt poe n romanticism? he did not believe in romanticism, he was beyond that, he believed in craft/witchcraft.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2002

I hate to add but Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and her preface explain much about Poe's type of romanticism, at once gothic yet rational. Poe was a fan of her father(Godwin) but inexplicably had little to say about the contemporary and controversial Shelleys. Poe's use of nature is the misty dark November for haunting melancholy, the vast seas and landscapes for exalted, excited visions. But in "The Pit...." nature is cut off and nightmarish artificiality of confinement and grinding torture obscenely replaces it in the cells of the Inquisition. The wierd diabolic settings and torments match the extreme effects upon the soldier's mind who nonetheless struggles to reason and escape in themidst of exagerrated horror. His mind slowly rouses back from madness to discern the courseof the pendulum and calculate his doom. Then, devising a plan using the rats to bite him free he msu control himself to stillness while the race against time unfolds. His stillness is probably the deepest agony even as the first blade cuts strike. This story is reduced therefore to the wildly portrayed symbolical torments a la Dante and the mind's fight against horror as much as against time and the instruments. Althoug Poe foregoes supernaturalism the pageantry of the Inquisition, voiceless and based on sensual deprivation and anticipation teases the resisting prisoner with more terror after each escape until he can only choose between two deaths. But in that choice, that will of reason triumphant he can still beat madness. At this great climax of despair mixed with dark victory his deus ex machina rescue comes anticlimactically. So in this extreme exotic, historical setting(Napoleonic wars in Spain)Poe makes his dramatic statement about the greatest agonies of experience and will, that reason can endure while time gives hope. yet individually the physical man IS weak and doomed in the power struggle itself.

Hawthorne too emphasizes the inner spiritual conflicts faced with evil invading and attacking the innocent. I don't know Irving's story but I would suspect his is more story and color oriented, reveling in color over character itself. The Amemrican brand of Romanticism is new world without the hoary history of Europe or picturesque ruins to overwhelm the psyche. The psyche overwhelms itself and the awsome pristine power of frontier nature and the vastnesses to explore,the future progress with the panic of progress destroying beauty are different expepriences entirely. Poe uses European settings but sketches them briefly only as they serve the interior mood and crisis within the protagonist. You won't find long Poe elegies like "The Ode to a Skylark"(Shelley)or long anti-establishment treatises(America was new and independent)because I fear even the second generation after 1776 took these things too naturally for granted. The shock on these once Eurpoean Americans seems to typify the Romantic exploration for self in our early nation's literature.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2002


I hate to add but Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and her preface explain much about Poe's type of romanticism, at once gothic yet rational. Poe was a fan of her father(Godwin) but inexplicably had little to say about the contemporary and controversial Shelleys. Poe's use of nature is the misty dark November for haunting melancholy, the vast seas and landscapes for exalted, excited visions. But in "The Pit...." nature is cut off and nightmarish artificiality of confinement and grinding torture obscenely replaces it in the cells of the Inquisition. The wierd diabolic settings and torments match the extreme effects upon the soldier's mind who nonetheless struggles to reason and escape in themidst of exagerrated horror. His mind slowly rouses back from madness to discern the courseof the pendulum and calculate his doom. Then, devising a plan using the rats to bite him free he msu control himself to stillness while the race against time unfolds. His stillness is probably the deepest agony even as the first blade cuts strike. This story is reduced therefore to the wildly portrayed symbolical torments a la Dante and the mind's fight against horror as much as against time and the instruments. Although Poe foregoes supernaturalism the pageantry of the Inquisition, voiceless and based on sensual deprivation and anticipation teases the resisting prisoner with more terror after each escape until he can only choose between two deaths. But in that choice, that will of reason triumphant he can still beat madness. At this great climax of despair mixed with dark victory his deus ex machina rescue comes anticlimactically. So in this extreme exotic, historical setting(Napoleonic wars in Spain)Poe makes his dramatic statement about the greatest agonies of experience and will, that reason can endure while time gives hope. yet individually the physical man IS weak and doomed in the power struggle itself.

Hawthorne too emphasizes the inner spiritual conflicts faced with evil invading and attacking the innocent. I don't know Irving's story but I would suspect his is more story and color oriented, reveling in color over character itself. The Amemrican brand of Romanticism is new world without the hoary history of Europe or picturesque ruins to overwhelm the psyche. The psyche overwhelms itself and the awsome pristine power of frontier nature and the vastnesses to explore,the future progress with the panic of progress destroying beauty are different experiences entirely. Poe uses European settings but sketches them briefly only as they serve the interior mood and crisis within the protagonist. You won't find long Poe elegies like "The Ode to a Skylark"(Shelley)or long anti-establishment treatises(America was new and independent)because I fear even the second generation after 1776 took these things too naturally for granted. The shock on these once Eurpoean Americans seems to typify the Romantic exploration for self in our early nation's literature. The haunted house or fantasy prison are more supernatural than the numberless ancient villas ancd castles that disturbed Mary Shelley's dreams.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2002


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