Gothic soundscapes and rhythm in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 127-143
Author(s):  
Lucie Ratail

Poe’s tales, though set in decaying, gloomy and silent places, are particularly sonorous. While several sound patterns are prototypical of the gothic (gusts of wind, shutting doors, absolute silence…), others denote Poe’s interest in uncanny sound perception and illusion. Acuteness of the senses is taken to an extreme, and the sounds of death take on a new dimension. Hearing the dead as well as the living, narrators are perpetually on the brink of insanity and draw their readers into a world rhythmed by sounding clocks, hissing pendulums and unstoppable heartbeats. Binary and ternary rhythms alternate, and it is ultimately in their composition that the tales show Poe’s mastery of rhythmic patterns and of their impact on the reading experience. Self-interruptions, refrains and other rhythmic strategies give the tales a dizzying quality, keeping the reader in a perpetual state of suspense.

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-280
Author(s):  
Hannah Scott

In Maupassant's short stories, as psychologically distressing events proliferate and his protagonists descend into madness, polychromatic modernity fades away to reveal a stark world of black and white. Such monochromism also engenders an anxiety-ridden reading experience. Black and white draw our attention beyond intradiegetic events to the diegesis itself, where Maupassant's play on textual shape and punctuation gestures towards the non-signifying white page beneath the comfortingly signifying black-ink words. This article explores Maupassant's dissolution of the spectrum, as he moves beyond the nineteenth-century's fascination with colour towards the bleak, monochromatic realm at the very edges of the symbolic.


2017 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 289-300
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Tyszkowska-Kasprzak

Old people in novels of Yuri Mamleyev The End of the CenturyThe purpose of the article is an examination of the images of old men and women in The End of the Century — aseries of short stories by Yuri Mamleyev. Elderly characters in the series are almost always presented in the context of the end of their lives and are apretext to present the author’s philosophical views on the nature of existence, death and immortality. Images of reality in The End of the Century are combined with the mystique, the belief in the immortal soul and its journey. Mamleyev’s philosophical views are based on Vedanta and Advaita Vedanta. Hence, his considerations do not fit into the mainstream of the Russian religious-philosophical tradition. Old people in The End of the Century combine the world of the living with the world of the dead, they are capable of crossing the border — death — in both directions. The characters are often accompanied by acat — which in different beliefs is associated with the ability to communicate with other worlds — and achild, abeing close to the border separating the mortal world from the amorphous underworld, arecurring symbol of rebirth. Старики в рассказах Юрия Мамлеевацикл Конец векаВ статье анализируются образы пожилых людей в цикле рассказов Юрия Мамлеева Конец века. Старые люди почти всегда представлены здесь в контексте конца жизни, ивта­кой контекст вводятся философские рассуждения писателя о природе бытия, смерти ибес­смертия. При этом изображение реальности сочетается с мистикой, верой в бессмертие души и ее переселение. Поскольку свои философские взгляды писатель основал на учениях веданты и адвайта-веданты, то они не вписываются в русло русской религиозно-философ­ской традиции.Старики/старухи в произведениях Мамлеева объединяют мир живых и мир мертвых, они способны пересекать границу, которой является смерть, в обоих направлениях. Ча­сто этих персонажей сопровождают кошки, которым в разных верованиях приписывают способность общаться с другими мирами, а также дети, находящиеся близко к границе, разделяющей мир смертных и аморфную преисподнюю, и являющиеся символом повторя­ющегося возрождения.


QOF ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nur Sholihah Zahro'ul Isti'anah ◽  
Zaenatul Hakamah

Generally the miracles of the Prophets are understood to be something sensory, just as the Prophet Musa parted the sea with his staff; Prophet Ibrahim did not feel burning on heat in the embers; Prophet Isa healed the sick and raised the dead. However, according to KH. Bahauddin Nur Salim (Gus Baha'), this understanding needs to be improved, as he conveyed in the Darusan Menara Timur study on May 29, 2019 and published on Youtube. This article will outline the study with content analysis methods using reconstruction theory. From the results of the analysis, it was concluded that from the perspective of Gus Baha', understanding i'ja>z as something sensory is wrong, especially understanding the miracles of the Qur'an that can be witnessed not by the five senses, but by reasoning and the eyes of the heart (bas}i>rah). Understanding miracles as something unusual and unmatched also needs to be clarified. Because, God's creations are considered ordinary as mentioned in the QS. Al-Baqarah verse 26- mosquitoes are also Allah's qudrats that cannot be imitated by humans. Its miracle lies in the ability of reason to understand its awesomeness. The mistake of understanding the concept of i'ja>z can have an impact on the value of faith, because the faith that grows from the ability to witness miracles through prayer will be of higher quality and more lasting than the faith that grows from the ability to witness in the senses.


Author(s):  
Begüm Eken

Today, when the future of the book is discussed, the main question is whether it has one. Information age transformed ongoing traditional features of a book. It has been foreseen by the critics that printed books, libraries and book stores are doomed to lose their values on the ground of developing technologies. As James O’Donnel cited from Pulitzer winner author E. Annie Proulx in his paper, “Nobody is going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever." (Nunberg, 1996). Although printed books are less popular in this digital age, there are still readers and book lovers who always get fascinated by the feeling of flipping pages of a book. According to a research done with readers, they would prefer to have a reading experience with a printed book rather than a screen especially if it is a classic literature book. Two of the main components of verbal and visual dimensions of imagination are illustration and literature. Aim of this paper is to try and find a way to maintain the tradition of a printed book and to explore the relation between these principals in one medium through narrative illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe literature. Also the purpose of this paper is finding the similarities of the two disciplines, as both reveal ideas in unexpected and innovative ways in one’s mind. A selection of his short stories and poems will be illustrated and designed to engage the two areas, literature and illustration to reach readers in a more different way than usual in order to communicate with them more effectively.Keywords: Edgar Allan Poe, book as an object, illustrations, conceptual narrations, book design


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (S-1) ◽  
pp. 132-137
Author(s):  
Lalitha Y

The article Post Modernism, written by writer Kumaraselva, examines the emergence of postmodernism in the short stories Nagamalai, Karatam, Ukilu, Vidalu and Uyirmaranam, and then modernity does not see anything as universal and analyses everything separately. It is also expanding beyond the limits of art and literature to philosophy, politics, lifestyle, technology, architecture, drama, cinema. Postmodernism created myths with a mystery that distorts language, distorts stories and expresses the poetry of the language. It also attracts the attention of the readers and gives them a happy reading experience. It is noteworthy that postmodernism is not theory but also in life.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 73-89
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Görtschacher

This article examines sound and the sonic aspects of voice and silence in two short stories by David Constantine – ‘Tea at the Midland’ and ‘Under the Dam’ – to show that they are not only relevant for an analysis of his poetry but also for his short stories. Employing Jonathan Sterne’s definition of sonic culture as a theoretical starting point, the phonotextual (Garrett Stewart) multiplicity of patterns in each text is seen as an alternative to the protagonists-focalizers’ ‘silenced’ situation and is associated with their desired joys in life. In ‘Tea at the Midland’ the withheld soundscape (R. Murray Schafer) of the bay can only be watched but not heard. In the opening of ‘Under the Dam’ the auscultator (Melba Cuddy-Keane) Seth is completely oblivious of his sonic surroundings and effaces sound on the story level, but the narrator reintroduces sound on the level of discourse. Sylvia Mieszkowski’s distinction between the sound of the text and the sound in the text constitutes one of the fundamental concepts of the analysis. The findings and conclusions are interpreted in the context of Constantine’s own poetics as regards the writing of short stories. The sounds of the two short stories reinforce, through metrical, rhythmic, syntactic and sound patterns, the scenes’ withheld sonic qualities that are only perceived visually and sensed emotionally by the protagonists. These soundscapes represent alternative worlds desired by the protagonists in ‘Under the Dam’ and by the woman in ‘Tea at the Midland’.


Slavic Review ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Young

From recurring characters to the retelling of stories, repetition plays a central role in Varlam Shalamov'sKolymskie rasskazy(Kolyma Tales). Sarah J. Young examines how repetition functions in Shalamov's collections of short stories as an indicator of trauma, by foregrounding the tensions created by the erosion of identity in the labor camp and its connection to the gulag survivor/narrator's problematic relationship to memory. At the same time, repetition also becomes a means of drawing the uncomprehending reader into the text to act as witness to that trauma. Comparing Shalamov's mode of testimony to Giorgio Agamben's theorization of the nonsurvivor as the true witness to Auschwitz, drawn from Primo Levi's conception, Young argues that Shalamov's stories bear witness to the trauma of Kolyma and to those who did not survive it, not through a transformation of the writer, but through a reciprocity between writer and reader.


1879 ◽  
Vol 24 (108) ◽  
pp. 509-517
Author(s):  
William W. Ireland

The condition of uneducated deaf mutes often nearly approaches that of a being destitute of language. It is true that even if they are not taught signs they contrive a few of their own invention; but these signs are of a very simple kind, and neither fitted nor intended to express any abstract notions, so that the deaf and dumb are in a much worse condition for obtaining knowledge than the blind. The deaf mute sees everything, but understands nothing; whereas in using the senses still remaining to him the blind man is guided by the words of others into true interpretations. We thus find that the deaf and dumb in the narrow circle of their own cogitations are in a very benighted condition, but it would be absurd to say that they do not possess or exercise reason. After they have become educated and are able to communicate by signs or writing, deaf mutes sometimes detail what they remember of the bounded state of their intellect before being sent to school. They record accidents and events which have made an impression on their mind; but it is clear that their speculations upon the nature and causes of things have never gone below the surface. In the Reports of the American Asylum at Hartford, there are a number of answers to questions put with a view to find out what were the thoughts of uneducated deaf mutes. One of them when asked, What did you formerly think when you saw a person die ? replied that he thought “he was deceiving the people, and that he would rise up.” He thought that “a man that was died was buried alive, and wondered that he did not rise from the dead in a few days.” Other deaf mutes by observing that the dead bodies of animals rotted away, arrived at a nearer idea of death. They rarely thought that they would die themselves, and an existence beyond the grave occurred to none. Many attended public worship for years without knowing what was the object of it.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
I Nyoman Yasa

The ability of students to analyze literary works is very weak. An important effort to improve students’ abilities in analyzing literary works is to introduce the CDA approach as an analysis tool for literary works. This study aims to describe, interpret, and explain (1) the ability of students to identify words/phrases/sentences that are praxis in short stories, (2) the ability of students to identify the form of praxis in short stories, and (3) the ability of students to interpret the socio-cultural short stories that have been analyzed. This research uses a three-dimensional technical analysis of Fairclough discourse. The result of this study show that students able to (1) choose praxis words/phrases/sentences, such as adjectives that support binary opposition and words of denial, (2) find the form of short story praxis, such as stereotypes and discrimination, and (3) the socio-cultural dimension of the short story interpreted by students is discursive Balinese ritual tradition of the dead.


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