Chapter Two

1. Chapter Two • Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

2. Born in Boston, the son of itinerant actors who died before he was 3 years old. • Became the ward of a Virginia couple, the Allans, whose name he added to his own. • An editor of a number of magazines and won a number of literary prizes for his poems and fiction.

3. His short fiction, with its effects of terror and its supernatural trappings, made him a household name for American readers. • He is regarded as father of modern American short story. • His poems have been highly appreciated for their aesthetical quality and music is essential in them as it is associated with indefinite sensations.

4. Literary terms • Romanticism • As a literary trend or movement, it occurred and developed in Europe and America at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries under the historical background of the Industrial Revolution around 1760 and the French Revolution (1789 – 1799).

5. Characteristics of Romanticism • It was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. • For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important than reason and common sense.

6. Romantics did not think of the world as a ticking watch made by God. They thought of the world as a living, breathing being. They stressed the close relationship between man and nature. • They emphasized individualism, placing the individual against the group, against authority.

7. They affirmed the inner life of the self, and wanted each person to be free to develop and express his own inner thought. • They cherished strong interest in the past, especially the medieval.

8. They are attracted by the wild, the irregular, the indefinite, the remote, the mysterious, and the strange. • They are interested in variety. They aspired the sublime and the wonderful, and tried to find the absolute, the ideal by transcending the actual.

9. American Romanticism • American romantics tend to moralize, to edify rather than to entertain. • It presented an entirely new experience alien to European culture. • The exotic landscape, the frontier life, the westward expansion, the myth of a New Garden of Eden in America, and the Puritan heritage were just a few examples of the native material for an indigenous literature.

10. Literary theories • Poe preferred the tale to other fictional forms such as novel because it is brief. • The writer must decide the effect first and then determine the incidents.

11. Truth rather than beauty is often the aim of the tale. As beauty can be better treated in the poems, tales can deal with terror, passion, horror, humor, sarcasm, wit, and ratiocination. • The merit of a work of art should be judged by its psychological effect upon the reader.

12. Text study: The Cask of Amontillado • Theme of the story– Revenge of a rich man to another rich man. • Fortunato – the victim. • Montresor – the avenger. • Setting– in Montresor’s dark and damp vaults. • Background country– Italy. • Features of the story– See text book P10 -11.

13. Recitation practice • All the paragraphs on page 16 .

14. Questions to ponder • How do you understand the text? Why? • What twisted mind do you see in Montresor? • How do you like the writing style of the story? • Which part of the story most impresses you? Why?

15. Text study: The Cask of Amontillado • Theme of the story– Revenge of a rich man to another rich man. • Fortunato – the victim. • Montresor – the avenger. • Setting– in Montresor’s dark and damp vaults. • Background country– Italy. • Features of the story– See text book P10 -11.

16. Recitation practice • All the paragraphs on page 16 .

17. Questions to ponder • How do you understand the text? Why? • What twisted mind do you see in Montresor? • How do you like the writing style of the story? • Which part of the story most impresses you? Why?