【正文】 her of detective story ? 3. father of psychoanalytic criticism ? Alcohol addiction ? Gambling Addiction ? Guilt of Incest (亂倫） ? Emotional Instability ? Social ―Misfit‖ ? Financial Failure IV. Works ? Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque 《 奇異怪誕故事集 》 ? The Murders in the Rue Mue 《 毛格街殺人案》 ? The Fall of the House of Usher 《 厄舍古屋的倒塌 》 ? The Masque of the Red Death 《 紅色死亡的化妝舞會 》 ? The Cask of Amontillado 《 一桶酒的故事》 ? The Raven 《 烏鴉 》 ? Annabel Lee 《 安娜貝爾 ?李 》 ? To Helen 《 致海倫 》 ? The Poetic Principle 《 詩歌原理 》 ? The Philosophy of Composition 《 創(chuàng)作哲學(xué) 》 V. Poems 1. Theory Poems should be short, concise and readable at one sitting. The aim of poem writing is beauty。 the most beautiful thing described by a poem is the death of a beautiful woman。 the desirable tone of a poem is melancholy. He opposed didactic poems. He stressed the form of poem, especially the beautiful and neat rhyme. 2. Famous Poems: The Raven, Annabel Lee, To Helen（ P59） VI. Short Story ? 1. Features ? Gothic elements: Gothic is generally applied to literature dealing with the strange, mysterious, and supernatural designed to invoke suspense and terror in the reader. Gothic literature invariably exploits ghosts and monsters and settings such as castles, dungeons, and graveyards, which impart a suitably sinister and terrifying atmosphere. ? deep analysis of human psychology ? precursor of detective stories and science stories ? style: ordinary, traditional ? language: mannerism ? 2. Sample: The Cask of Amontillado (P11) Comments on Poe ? most controversial and most misunderstood literary figure in the history of American literature ? enjoyed respect and wele in Europe ? the majority of critics have recognized him as a great writer of fiction, a poet of the first rank, and a critic of acumen and insight Characteristics of Poe‘s detective stories ? Poe places veiled clues before the reader. ? The writer/narrator strives to appear objective. – Poe would have liked to solve everything by the mind. – He was disturbed by what he could not solve by reason. ? The climax of the story is the narrator‘s explanation of the crime. Poe and the Gothic ? Poe did not want to write gothic stories。 he started his career spoofing the Gothic. ? He said that he wrote, ―Tales of terror, not of Germany, but of the soul.‖ ? He transformed tales of terror into psychological stories。 he delved into the mysterious recesses of the human mind. Elements of Gothic in Poe‘s Fiction ? Grim setting – Landscapes are often reflections of character‘s mind. – Unusual buildings, extremes of nature, eccentric works of art – Very few of his stories take place in America。 most take place in Europe or Neverneverland. Other elements of the Gothic ? Hidden evil: Unspeakable, mysterious crimes, including incest and parricide(殺長輩） ? Obsession with Death – Ghosts, blood, body parts ? Maniacal Laughter ? Deformity – the grotesquepeople who don‘t look right are capable of activity beyond the norm Themes 1. death – predominant theme 2. horror “Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everything in Poe?s writings is dead.” thoughts of science An element of Poe?s style： Poe uses vocabulary to create setting, for rhetorical effect, rather than for information. Modern horror films use music to create atmosphere。 Poe used vocabulary. 1. The reasons for the ing of American realism: 1) The Civil War which broke out in 1861 taught men that life was not so good, man was not and God was not. The war marked a change, in the quality of American life, a deterioration, in fact, of American moral values. It led people to question the assumptions: natural goodness, the optimistic view of nature and man, benevolent God. 2) In America increasing industrialization and mechanization of the country in full swing produced soon extremes of wealth and poverty. Wealth and power were more and more concentrated in the hands of the few ―captains of industry‖ or ―robber barons‖, but life for the millions was fast being a veritable struggle for survival. 3) The frontier was about to close and the safety valve was ceasing to operate, a reexamination of life began. Disillusionment and frustration were widely felt. 4) The age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was by and large over. Meanwhile younger writers appeared on the scene, such as William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain, and so on, which means the ing of new literary age, American realism. I. Introduction 2. What is American realism? 1) As a literary movement realism came in the latter half of the nieenth century as a reaction against ―the lie‖ of romanticism and sentimentalism. It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of the monplace, and for the familiar and the low. 2) The American realists advocated ―verisimilitude of detail derived from observation,‖ the effort to approach the norm of experience —— a reliance on the representative in plot, setting, and character, and to offer an objective rather than an idealized view of human nature and experience. 3) The schools of American Realism: Regionalism (local color) Naturalism 1. The concept: ? The style of writing derived from the presentation of the features and peculiarities of a particular locality and its inhabitants. Simply it means The use of regional detail in a literary or artistic work. The name is given especially to a kind of American literature that in its most characteristic form made its appearance just after the Civil War and for nearly three decades was the single most pop