Poe 2-“Ligeia”
Unreliable narrator—makes you question what is “reality”—objective or subjective basis?
Is there ultimately a “reliable” narrator?
What was the difference in the narrator’s relationship with Ligeia and Rowena?
He worshipped Ligeia, shunned Rowena (problem with R was that she wasn’t L)
“It might have been midnight . . . .” as a storyteller why say this? Doesn’t add any objective information, but instead provides a window on the narrator’s subjective state Subjective outweighs/overshadows the objective.
Subjective: relates to interpretation or re-creation (Romanticism) of external sensory perception within the mind—impressions differ for each individual in each different moment—MIND AS LAMP (Romanticism—late 1700s, early 1800s, mind transforms perception—Wordsworth—“Tintern Abbey”—‘what perceives/and half creates’)
Objective: relates to an externally provable world encountered by the senses; transpersonal—what’s true for me is true for you, etc.—MIND AS MIRROR (Enlightenment—Locke; Bacon, More, Voltaire)—mind reflects external reality
Do his “visions of Ligeia” demonstrate the power of the mind to create reality (MIND AS LAMP)?
“mad disorder” “tumult unappeasable”—what’s happening to the narrator’s senses, mind? Rationality has broken (the MIND AS MIRROR is shattered)—his mind now creating reality (MIND AS LAMP)
Arthur Rimbaud—derangement of the senses in order to write poetry—to perceive a reality beyond the four-wall box that reason has constructed
Suspense—Poe skillfully builds to the unveiling of Ligeia—the hair, then the black hair, then the face, eyes, Ligeia
Why does Ligeia appear? What’s going to happen next? Ultimately we can’t know—unreliable, subjective narrator
Poe doesn’t need to go any farther? Why is this a good ending? Why not go back to the Rhine with Ligeia and live happily ever after? Lack of resolution, reader as co-creator, the reader is put in the position of being either MIND as MIRROR or MIND as LAMP—
From “Ligeia” to “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Literary style of “Ligeia”—setting: Europe/Gothic/unreal landscape; word choice/diction: sophisticated—for literary elite audience; paragraph and sentence structure—long, periodic sentences that are almost chant-like or like prose-poetry—not much dialogue, per se—interior monologue; high culture/literature/elite—dragging out the narrative; reminiscent of the polyphonic prose of de Quincey (“Confessions of an English Opium-Eater”).
“The Tell-Tale Heart”—narrative is crisp and moves quickly; still interior monologue; setting: in an ordinary room in boarding house in an American city (not an exotic location—not going after that Gothic effect of ancient ruins, decayed mansions, etc.); word choice: much more simple, to the point—for a general audience, not elite (newspaper audience, mass audience—written at 7th grade level)—explosion of newspapers and new literate audience (not educated in elite fashion); even the fiction has to read like fact (like news stories)—concision, brevity; incorporate exposition and dialogue/scene skillfully. Shortened simple sentences instead of periodic constructions. Active verbs.
Jules Dassin: “The Tell-Tale Heart” short film—made the old man mean—to make it reasonable for the murder to happen; justify—sympathize with murderer; this doesn’t get the audience out of the traditional rational pov—cause-and-effect world