Introduction

This class will give you an opportunity to have an overview of the origins of the
Romanticism and its influence for the North American Literature. Also, how a strong
national feeling made the Americans interpret their own literature.
You will also get to know the importance of well known authors during the 19th
century. These authors were highly influenced by the Romanticism and became unique
voices to understand the American Literature as well as the American Nation.
Among the American authors, Edgar Allan Poe became an icon due to his style, mainly
when writing tales, and poems of horror and mystery. All his work is considered to be a
remarkable cultural and literary legacy.
Besides, the Gothic inspiration turns out to be one of the elements that became a
recurrent feature of Poes work. In fact, his creativity is focused on human fears and
dark emotions. In other words, his poetry is a mix of torment, gloom caused by the
focus on the supernatural with passion and beauty.

The origins of a National Literature and the Romanticism

During the 19th century the Romanticism in the United States appears after their
political and economical independence. That meant the right to be free and search for
happiness. Consequently, the romantic prose reflects the feeling of this young nation
represented by the first generation of American writers. Edgard Allan Poe was among
these important authors who had a huge influence not only America but in the entire
world.
To illustrate the American Romantic Movement and its nationalism, read the following
passage.
Coming to the United States at the moment of an awakening national consciousness,
(the Romantic movement) assumed an even more ardent nationalism than it had in the
older countries abroad. This attitude was expressed in the denial of tradition and of the
European inheritance, a delight in the grand scale and the infinite mysteries of nature
on the unexplored western continent and a pride in the American ideas which had so
successfully created the Republic [] The creation of an American myth out of the new
materials was its first and greatest task. (SPILLER, 1967, p.23)

The Gothic Inspiration and Poes work

As an attempt to find the voice to express a transitional moment in the American
Literature, the writers tended to focus on themes that might not be genuinely American,
so to speak. It so happens that by giving more value to the self and not to the divine
nature, as they used to focus previously, the gloomy side of human nature became the
target of their literary work.
On the other hand, the literary transition of that time led to ambiguity. There was a
paradox between the focus on the self, expressed by fear, terror, insanity, mystery
representing the dark side of the human nature as opposed to the divine nature and
beauty.
By reading the beginning of the prose entitled The fall of the House of Usher, you will
have an example of Poes style by the way he sets the scene. This tale is one of the
authors masterpieces. Pay close attention to the choice of adjectives that reflect the
gloomy atmosphere created by the author. Also, all the creativity used with a wide
range of vocabulary helps us visualize the whole plot and make us read between the
lines.

The fall of the House of Usher

by Edgar Allan Poe
(published 1839)

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 had been passing alone,
on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found
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myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House
of Usher. I know not how it was but, with the first glimpse of the building, a
sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling
was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with
which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or
terrible. I looked upon the scene before me upon the mere house, and the
simple landscape features of the domain upon the bleak walls upon the vacant
eye-like windows upon a few rank sedges and upon a few white trunks of
decayed trees with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly
sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium the
bitter lapse into everyday life the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an
iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart an unredeemed dreariness of thought
which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What
was it I paused to think what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation
of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the
shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back
upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are
combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting
us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It
was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the
scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to
annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined
my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre
by the dwelling, and gazed down but with a shudder even more thrilling than
before upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the
ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some
weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in
boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however,
had lately reached me in a distant part of the country a letter from him which,
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in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply.
The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness
of a mental disorder which oppressed him and of an earnest desire to see me,
as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the
cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in
which all this, and much more, was said it the apparent heart that went with his
request which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed
forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.

Another great opportunity to analyze Poes state of mind and creativity is by some of his
quotes:
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting,
dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive
soul to tears.
We loved with a love that was more than love.