“The Masque of the Red Death” (Poe) – 1842
“Hills Like White Elephants” (Hemingway) – 1927
“A Rose for Emily” (Faulkner) - 1930
“A Goodman is Hard to Find” (O’Connor) – 1955
“Cathedral” (Carver) - 1983
American Gothic Tradition
Rooted in European Gothic tradition (think weird settings, macabre plots, monsters &
gargoyles… Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein & Bram Stoker’s Dracula) and the Romantic movement
(a reaction to the rationalism of the Age of Reason), imagination led to the threshold of the
unknown…
• 19th century
• Edgar Allan Poe (born Boston, Massachusetts, 1809)
• Dark medieval castles; decaying ancient estates
• Weird, terrifying events: murder, live burials, physical & mental torture, retribution from
beyond the grave
• Male narrators, insane
• Female characters, dead or dying
• Shows people revealing their true natures; explores the human mind in extreme situations
arriving to an essential truth
• Haunting tales exploring darkness of human mind
Edgar Allan Poe
born Boston, Massachusetts, 1809
•
•
•
•
•
Flair for language, Latin & French – “ambitious to excel” 16 years old writing poems
Well-read
Morbidly sensitive nature, sadness & depression = basis of writing
Critics = strong response (love/hate)
1 novel, 50 poems, 70 short stories
“The Masque of the Red Death”– 1842
Edgar Allan Poe
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Allegory
Symbolism
Foreshadowing
Mood (Atmosphere) – feeling conveyed through words
Detailed descriptions of setting – imagery (see, hear, smell, taste, touch) – Gothic settings
Precise words & phrases
Narrator who observes & participates in event recounted
Complex sentences: pile detail upon detail to describe scene or emotion
Complex sentences & inverted word/idea orders
• Original: “In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence --an inconsistency;”
• Reorder Rewrite: I was at once struck with an incoherence --an inconsistency - in the manner of my
friend;
Edgar Allan Poe
“The Fall of the House of Usher”
Author’s Style - Examples
The room in which I found myself
was very large and lofty. The
windows were long, narrow, and
pointed, and at so vast a distance
from the black oaken floor as to be
altogether inaccessible from within.
Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light
made their way through the trellised
panes, and served to render
sufficiently distinct the more
prominent objects around the eye,
however, struggled in vain to reach
the remoter angles of the chamber,
or the recesses of the vaulted and
fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung
upon the walls.
From that chamber, and from that
mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still
abroad in all its wrath as I found myself
crossing the old causeway. Suddenly
there shot along the path a wild light,
and I turned to see whence a gleam so
unusual could have issued; for the vast
house and its shadows were alone
behind me. The radiance was that of the
full, setting, and blood-red moon which
now shone vividly through that once
barely-discernible fissure of which I have
before spoken as extending from the roof
of the building, in a zigzag direction, to
the base. While I gazed, this fissure
rapidly widened --there came a fierce
breath of the whirlwind --the entire orb
of the satellite burst at once upon my
sight --my brain reeled as I saw the
mighty walls rushing asunder --there was
a long tumultuous shouting sound like
the voice of a thousand waters --and the
deep and dank tarn at my feet closed
sullenly and silently over the fragments
of the "HOUSE OF USHER."
“ During the whole of a dull, dark,
and soundless day in the autumn of
the year, when the clouds hung
oppressively low in the heavens, I
passed alone, on horseback, through
a singularly dreary tract of country,
and at length found myself, as the
shades of the evening drew on, with
view of the melancholy House of
Usher.”
“The Imp of the Perverse”
“William Wilson”
“Ligeia”
We have a task before us which must be
speedily performed. We know that it will be
ruinous to make delay. The most important
crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for
immediate energy and action. We glow, we
are consumed with eagerness to commence
the work, with the anticipation of whose
glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It
must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet
we put it off until to-morrow, and why?
There is no answer, except that we feel
perverse,… I have said thus much, that in
some measure I may answer your question
— that I may explain to you why I am here
— that I may assign to you something that
shall have at least the faint aspect of a
cause for my wearing these fetters, and for
my tenanting this cell of the condemned.
Had I not been thus prolix, you might either
have misunderstood me altogether, or, with
the rabble, have fancied me mad.
But the house! — how quaint an
old building was this! — to me
how veritably a palace of
enchantment! There was really no
end to its windings — to its
incomprehensible subdivisions. It
was difficult, at any given time, to
say with certainty upon which of
its two stories one happened to
be.
I trembled not — I stirred not —
for a crowd of unutterable fancies
connected with the air, the
stature, the demeanor of the
figure, rushing hurriedly through
my brain, had paralyzed — had
chilled me into stone. I stirred not
— but gazed upon the apparition.
[page 468:] There was a mad
disorder in my thoughts — a
tumult unappeasable.
Dashes and other
interrupters
Strong rhythm &
Repetition
Figurative language
Formal language, diction
& syntax, long complex
sentences
Rhetorical questions
1st person
• more personal and real
Modernism 1900-1950
Overview
“Make it new!” – Ezra Pound, modernist poet
•
•
•
•
•
•
Rejection of traditional themes and subject matter
A focus on alienated individuals rather than heroes who stood for the values of the society
Frequently themes of impermanence and change
Use of understatement and irony to reveal emotions and ideas
Use of symbols and images that suggest meanings rather than statements that explain meanings
Use of stream-of consciousness techniques to show what’s going on both inside and outside the
characters
• Stream of consciousness (coined by American philosopher William James) = waking mind’s flow of
thoughts; narrative technique to show mind at work by mimicking the mind’s thought process; use of
ungrammatical construction, snippets of incoherent though, free association of ideas, images and words at
the pre-speech level to show concept
Additional Resource
• http://www.slideshare.net/mburdett10/introduction-to-modern-literature-19001950
Modernist… like Ernest Hemingway
• The writers of Hemingway’s generation are often termed “Modernists.”
• Disillusioned by the large number of casualties in World War I
• Turned away from the nineteenth-century, Victorian notions of morality and propriety and
toward a more existential worldview.
• Hemingway reflected Americans’ shifting attitudes about the violence and upheaval
of the modern world
“Hills Like White Elephants” – 1927
Ernest Hemingway
• Cub reporter for the Kansas City Star, short sentences and energetic English
• Uncomplicated technique: plain grammar, easily accessible language.
• Hallmark: clean style, eschews (avoids) adjectives, uses short, rhythmic sentences that concentrate on
action rather than reflection.
Simple writing does not = “simple” plots, characters, or themes
• Characterized by spare description and dialogue
• Master of dialogue: characters’ conversations demonstrate communication AND its limits.
• captures the complexity of human interaction through subtlety and implication as well as direct discourse.
• The way they speak is sometimes more important than what they say, what they choose to say (or leave unsaid) illuminates
sources of inner conflict.
• Sometimes characters say only what they think another character will want to hear.
• Very little explanation about the relationships between characters
• Often 3rd person (distances reader, alienation)
• Clipped direct dialogue adds to mood (lack of character connection, cannot express true feelings, sense
of tension and alienation
• Omission of explanation and connection to events
Hemingway’s well-known concept of the iceberg structure:
• “If a writer of prose knows enough about
what he is writing about he may omit
things that he knows and the reader, if
the writing is writing truly enough, will
have a feeling of those things as strongly
as though the writer had stated them.
The dignity of movement of an iceberg is
due to only one-eighth of it being above
water.”
Death in the Afternoon (Scriber’s, 1932),
p. 192.
• “I always try to write on the
principle of the iceberg. There is
seven-eighths of it under water for
every part that shows.”
After horrors of Civil War, Realism replaced
Romanticism and Gothic writing, but Gothic
writing returned…
American Gothic
• American South, 20th century
• William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor
• Faulkner crumbling, medieval castles of 19th century became decaying plantations
with fallen aristocratic family isolated in time and place
• O’Connor saw pressures of modern life making grotesques of us all; interested in
human heart & its potential for evil; felt old moral, religious order was crumbling
(criminals, con mans, fools)
William Faulkner
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
William Faulkner Quick Facts
NAME: William Faulkner
OCCUPATION: Author
BIRTH DATE: September 25, 1897
DEATH DATE: July 06, 1962
EDUCATION: University of Mississippi
PLACE OF BIRTH: New Albany, Mississippi
PLACE OF DEATH: Byhalia, Mississippi
Full Name: William Cuthbert Faulkner
AKA: William Faulkner
Originally: William Cuthbert Falkner
AKA: William Falkner
Additional Resource:
• http://www.biography.com/people/william-faulkner-9292252
• 3:53
“A Rose for Emily”- 1930
William Faulkner
• Dark side of individualism
• Flashbacks
•
•
•
•
shuffles order of events
unusual approach to sequencing events
heightens shocking revelations to tell out of order
based on his notion of fluidity of time, past and future seem to merge
• sentences begin with when, after, during help reader
• Foreshadowing
• Other Technical Innovations
•
•
•
•
stream of consciousness
temporal shifts
multiple voices
Invented portmanteau words (words formed by merging two existing words), for example,
“fecundmellow,” “Allknowledgeable.” “droopeared.”
Faulkner: associated with exceedingly
long, unwieldy sentences
• Used opposite tactic from Hemingway (who stripped down style to intimate what
could not be precisely named)
• Faulkner used a superabundance of words
• dramatized that his language is, like characters, evocative but imprecise
• overwrought sentences are oratorical—suggesting a narrator who speaks freely and
grandiloquently.
• Faulkner said of Southerners: “We need to talk, to tell, since oratory is our heritage.”
• Interview - wrote long sentences for two reasons:
1. writing with “a foreknowledge of death,” = pressure “to put the whole history of the human
heart on the head of a pin.”
2. “a character in a story at any moment of action is not just himself as he is then, he is all that
made him, and the long sentence is an attempt to get his past and possibly his future into the
instant in which he does something.”
Faulkner, a Southerner
• Strong sense of belonging to a tradition, separate from the Northern mainstream
• aristocratic families
• great plantations
• slave labor
• Concerns with history—representing how time passes, blends, and recurs. (see
flashbacks)
• Characteristics of time period
• 1880s socially unacceptable for Southern “lady” to associate with “Yankee”, class division
• “A Rose for Emily” - interest in arranging layers of history (vs. telling a sensational
tale)
“A Goodman is Hard to Find” – 1955
Flannery O’Connor
• Who is Flannery O’Connor?
•
•
http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=170488
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2009/11/20/november-20-2009-flannery-oconnor/5043/
Quick Facts
• NAME: Flannery O'Connor
• OCCUPATION: Author
• BIRTH DATE: March 25, 1925
• DEATH DATE: August 03, 1964
• EDUCATION: University of Iowa
• PLACE OF BIRTH: Savannah, Georgia
• PLACE OF DEATH: Milledgeville, Georgia
Best Known For
• Flannery O'Connor is considered
one of the best short story authors of
the 20th century. She wrote about
religious themes and southern life.
• Intense Catholic faith
Southern Gothic Tradition
Southern Gothic tradition =
• genre, or “type” of literature within the American literary canon
• emphasizes the supernatural or the grotesque
• reflects socio-cultural decay and evokes brooding sense of evil
Characters
• almost comic absurdity
• insincerity & base motivations evoke a dark side of human nature
• grotesque characters obsessed with sin and salvation
• unsympathetic characters= individualism consist of bizarre assortment of peculiarities, calling
to mind our own idiosyncrasies and imperfections
Irony
• Story Title
• O’Connor quoted: “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by
the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”
Additional Resource
• Jamie Kornegay The Evolution Of Southern Gothic
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-kornegay/the-evolution-of-southerngothic_b_6987510.html
“Cathedral” – 1983
Raymond Carver
• [Raymond] Carver is widely seen as the writer who introduced the minimalist style to
American fiction in the 1970s. In doing so, he, like Hemingway decades before, influenced an
entire generation of young writers-a group of whom, Jay McInerney among them, became
known as the literary Brat Pack. Their very contemporary and very minimalist stories filled
the pages of the best magazines and journals in the United States in the early 1980s-and so
began a renaissance of the short story. . . .Carver greatly admired Hemingway's writing and
saw it as an influence on his own work. He called "Cat in the Rain" "one of my favorite stories
by Ernest Hemingway" (Pope and McElhinny 17)
• “Minimalism" in fiction.
• “You're leaving room for the readers, at least for the ones who like to use their imaginations.“
(Frederick Barthelme)
• Carver stories show both the power of the so-called minimalist approach and its limits.
Basic Qualities of Minimalist Fiction
• Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs, leading to a very short story
• Easy vocabulary
• Simple sentence structure
• Little figurative language
• Minimal description of characters and setting
• Minimal background information
• Use of brand names to quickly characterize/describe
• Very little action
• Often written in the present tense
• No resolution
• Nihilistic tone
Some Reasoning Behind Minimalist
Fiction
1. A changing culture with less time to read and less interest in reading because of:
• a broader array of leisure time activities due to the growth of such things as malls, multiplex theatres,
social groups/organizations, etc.
• increased mobility with the rise of two- and three-car families.
• the impact of new technologies (i.e., computers, videos, cell phones, cable television, etc.) and the
activities they offer.
• the increased number of women in the workforce.
2. A decline in the general reading ability of Americans.
3. A desire for the truth, the “tell it like it is” attitude that is the trademark of minimalist writing:
• The rise of the popularity of minimalism is often connected to the disillusionment Americans felt in the
face of the 1960s assassinations, the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, etc., leading to a desire for “cold,
hard truth.” (This continues with events through the past few decades with such things as the Iran-Contra
affair, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the Iraq War, etc.)
• A reaction against the hyperbole of American advertising that began in the 1970s and continues today
** An interesting (if somewhat improbable) theory connects the gas
“Cathedral” – 1983
Raymond Carver
•
•
•
•
Diction – language is clear, simple, repetitious at times
Irony
Paradox (seeming contradictions)
Thematic Topics: obsessions, love (marital), epiphanies (or are they?), silence,
working class, alcoholism
• Characters – struggling with finding a way to articulate problems, words are
inadequate
• issues of class (most, if they have jobs, are marginally employed)
• Understatement – understated climaxes & inconclusive conclusions (hence,
questionable epiphanies)
• Narrative strategy of omission – what is not there as important as what is there –
dialectical relationship between unsaid and the spoken
Raymond Carver
• Critics = characters are too ordinary, under perceptive, and despairing to experience
the philosophical questions of meaning into which they have been thrust.
• Defenders = characters demonstrate that people living marginal, routine lives can
come close to experiencing insight and epiphany under pressure of intruding
mysteries, such as the death of a loved one.
Raymond Carver: An Interview
Additional Resource:
• The Paris Review, Interviews: Raymond Carver, The Art of Fiction No. 76
• Interviewed by Mona Simpson, Lewis Buzbee
• http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3059/the-art-of-fiction-no-76-raymondcarver
Sources
•
•
•
•
The Language of Literature: American Literature, McDougal Littell, 2002.
THE BIG READ National Endowment for the Arts
Murphy, Joseph C. “William Faulkner: An Introduction”
Susanne Rubenstein, “When Less IS More—Understanding Minimalist Fiction,”
National Council of Teachers of English, 2015.
• 2015 FamousAuthors.org
• Jones, Paul. Contributing Editor: Raymond Carver (1938-1988)
http://faculty.georgetown.edu/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/carver.html
• Trussler, Michael, “The narrowed voice: Minimalism and Raymond Carver, Studies in
Short Fiction”; Newberry; Winter 1994;