爱伦坡的死亡观在《乌鸦》中的体现英语毕业论文.doc

爱.伦坡的死亡观在乌鸦中的体现【关键词】埃德加?爱伦?坡；死亡观；乌鸦；美.IntroductionEdgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is one of the most controversial literary figures in American history. For a long time after his death, Poe didn't get the recognition he deserved, but his talents in literature has been gradually rediscovered and appreciated by now. Contemporary critics consider him as a pioneering aesthetician and psychological investigator, and his reputation with the reading public is more secured than that of any other major American writer of his time.Many critics have expressed their amazement regarding the relative paucity of Poes poetic output in relation to his status as a great poet. T. S. Eliot once noted, “He wrote very few poems, and of those few only half a dozen have had a great success: but those few are as well known to as large a number of people, are as well remembered by everybody, as any poems ever written.” 1 Of all the poems many agree that The Raven is Poes finest poems. Ever since The Raven was first published on 29th January 1845, in N. P. Williss “New York Evening Mirror”, it brings Poe national and international fame.In the poem, the first person narrator confines in his chamber and try to ease his pain for his lost love Lenore with old books of forgotten lore. Weak and weary, he is nearly napping. Then he hears a tapping on the door and then on the window lattice, which brings the narrator both fear and a mood of expectancy. When he opens the shutter, the bird of ill-omen, a stately raven steps in and perches on the bust of Pallas, which is the goddess of wisdom in Greek mythology. When the narrator is confronting the raven and takes it as a speaker, he asks questions about the destiny of his dead love Lenore but is frustrated by the single-word response: “Nevermore”, which drives the narrators mood to permanent despair.Edgar Allan Poe illustrates his view on death and poetry in “The Poetic Principle”. He puts his theory into practice in his poems. This thesis takes The Raven as an example, explains this poem in detail from the prospects of phonetic elements and imagery elements, which reflect his poetic principle. In this way, readers can witness Poe's creation of “death of beauty” and fully appreciate his aesthetic principles. The death of beauty reveals Poes infinite inspiration, and through which he makes, the perfect combination of death and beauty achieved.A General Account of Poes View on DeathAllan Poe is regarded as the progenitor of both the symbolic literature in the schools of western contemporary novel and detective or psychological analysis novels in the history of literature all over the world. He is also the founder of American short-story novelist who focuses on the theme of death. His works are full of horror, mystery and romance. For nearly one and half a century, the critics from different countries have taken great interest in his works. Though there are variety of comments on his works, the theme of death is widely focused on accordingly, in order to know the great novelist well, it is essential for us to pay more attention to the content, the cause and the profound significance of his works.A. The Connotation of the Theme of DeathPoe's writing reflects his literary theories, which he presented in his criticism and also in essays such as “The Poetic Principle”. He disliked didacticism and allegory, though he believed that meaning in literature should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface.2 “Works with obvious meanings”, he wrote, “cease to be art.”3 He believed that quality work should be brief and focus on a specific single effect.4 To that end, he believed that the writer should carefully calculate every sentiment and idea. According to the famous principle of effort, the works focusing on the theme of death can be classified into 4 categories:Horrible stories that occurs a considerable number of time, even appears in deeper heart of the people, which approves the fact that Allan Poe uses is not the formal one but poetry and comes from the fact that the horrible method comes from the depth of our human consciousness. The Raven is the most topical work which is about horrible reading. The whole poem is as if a terrible scene. The poem tells the horrible topic through the following three factors: the scene background, the music and the light. The raven is chosen by the author to describe a terrible scene. It's every “never return” answer perfectly to actor's each question and “never return” echoes actor's sorrow mood. The theme of terrible death not only appears in his poetry but also in his short stories. In the story “The Black Cat”, the actor who lost consciousness finally killed his cat and his kind-hearted wife. The whole story appears the horrible topic by the clue, the effect and the discussion to man's kindness. Following the rules of consistency of effect, the theme of Allan Poe's short stories primarily chose something strange never happens. In his short story, Allan Poe writes it well and he doesn't focus on discussing if it is true, but concentrates on revealing people's deeper feeling. Therefore, his short stories make people fell the scene of the art as well. In the book A Tale of the ragged Mountains and The facts in the case of M. Valdemar, Allan Poe uses the main method in psychological analysis-hypnotism and he approves its magical function. “The fact” Allan Poe describes is just something inexistent and “the fact” is the author's demand to write seriously as if stating one's own experience. Love knot is the conscious trend which is consisted of unconscious concepts, emotion, and memory in psychology. It affects one's thinking and the emotion, including revenging mood which is something stressed in one's deeper heart. Allan Poe experienced unpleasant time in his whole life, therefore he revealed his unpleasant mood in his revenging stories, and the most typical ones are “Hop-Frog” and “The Cask of Amontillado”. The latter is the most representative and the most successful one to represent the theme of revenge. The revenge plans the trick, sets place and time, and applies the method of symbol.  In his opinion, death equals to happiness. Allan Poe praises death and ideal love. He said “Happiness in their death-death means happy life to them.”5 The topic about death is also mentioned in “The Assignation”. However people never fed unpleasant or horrible about death; on the contrary, they feel romantic. Allan Poe uses death to reveal the desire of beyond life and it is one of the most influential concepts in the theme of death.B. Death of Beauty, as the Most Poetical MotifBeauty is most typically demonstrated in Allan Poes obsession with the death theme, his appeal for morbid beauty and atmospheric effect, and his innovation and exploration of beauty in poetry. Be it death, morbidity or aesthetic forms or verses, they all serve to create a unified effect of “the excitement of the soul”, thus enabling the readers a special aesthetic experience in an excitement of the soul. “Death of the beauty” as a poetic effect is first raised by Poe in his critical article “The Philosophy of Composition”, “The death, then, of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world”.6 Death is chosen by the poet as the ideal subject to produce the poetical effect in his poetry-a melancholy and sublime mood.“Now never losing sight of the object supremeness, or perfection, at all points, I asked myself of all melancholy topics, what according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?' Death was the obvious reply.”7For the poet, Death as the most melancholy topic, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is most suitable for his pursuit of Beauty with supremeness and perfection. It is obvious that the immediate purpose of the death theme is to produce an effect that is related to the sense of beauty. The most eye-catching characteristic of Poe's poetry is that it sets a close relation between Death and Beauty. And the poet's attitude towards death under artistic treatment in his poetry best demonstrates his aesthetic conceptions. Poe has his peculiar ideas about Death and Beauty which have their own metaphysical meanings related to the aesthetic effect the poet pursues in his poems.The poet has his own unique perception of poetical beauty, as he claimed:“When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect-they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of the soul-not of intellect, or of heart-upon which I have commented, and which is experienced in consequence of contemplating the beautiful.”8In this very article, Poe uses the word “effect” twenty-one times in both single and plural forms to describe the way he believes how beauty in a poem should be created. For the poet, the poetic beauty could only be possibly created in the excitement aroused by a poem in readers' soul; the perception of beauty is rather subjective. And Poe, whose special taste of beauty was cultivated by his miseries in life, appeals to the morbid and terrible things for this very effect of “poetical excitement”.The presentation of Death scene will get the readers shocked as well as fascinated. This effect brought by Death belongs to what Burke called the sublimity in aesthetics. According to Burke, the effect brought by the sublime things is greater than the common sense of beauty:Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime: that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I say the strongest emotion; because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure. But as pain is stronger in its operation than pleasure, so death is in general a much more affecting idea than pain. 9Actually, there are several references to Burke in Poe's works. And in a review published in The Southern Literary Messenger in 1836, Poe quotes the author and exclaims: “What a moment!” and “what a spectacle for the lover of the sublime and beautiful!” And this chapter will be unfolded in the examination of the aesthetic value of the theme of Death and especially the “death of a beautiful woman “respectively in accordance with Burke's aesthetic theories as well as Poe's own “philosophy” of composition. C. The Motives of Originating the Theme of Death, and SignificanceAllan Poe's theory of consistency and effect is the gist to classify his works. Its also the principle he pursues through his whole life. In order to fully embody the theory, he sets the basic tone of his writing, accordingly, takes topics and materials into account. In addition, another famous theory is the emphasis of beauty, excitement and implication. Allan Poe not only inherits but also excels the original writing style of Gothic novels. His perfect designing and profound connotation in writing make his works more reliable. Allan Poe lost his parents when he was quite young. He didn't get along with his adopted father, his beloved wife passed away too early. He was also looked down upon in career. As an unlucky youngster from the south, he experienced too many troubles, he hated reality and looked forward to the future, as a result, he attempted to get rid of the trouble from the realistic world by describing death.   Allan Poe gives considerable influence over the aestheticism in Britain, the symbolism in France, even LuXun, the great writer in our country. Allan Poe's works characterizing "from fun to ridicule, from scare to horrification, from wit to irony, from specialty to mystery," generate a contrastable writing style and makes remarkable achievement, its still popular till now.   Among Poe's various representations of death and dying, we can discern that, for Poe, death was indeed gigantic, not in crude bodily terms but as a phenomenon that is present everywhere and hard to bear. Personal experience, popular culture, and intellectual history silently plan to make it so.  As Bacon, the great English philosopher says, “He (One) that dies in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood; who, for the time, scare feels the heart; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolours of death.”10. Poes View on Death from the Perspective of Phonetic ElementsRhyme is defined in Concise Oxford Dictionary as “identity of sounds between words or verse lines extending back from the end to the last fully accented vowel and not further.”11 The general function of rhymes is to get the texts more organized and to bestow “music” to the texts. But rhyme is also used to bind lines which are closely associated in content to serve as an important device for literary effects. End -rhyme, internal rhyme and alliteration are widely used in Poes The Raven. A. The Use of End Rhyme and Internal RhymeIn each stanza of the poem, the second line, the fourth line and the fifth, and the sixth lines are rhymed with /o:/, such as “nothing more”, “nevermore”, ”evermore”. / o：/ is repeatedly used to strengthen the inner connection, and touches readers from time to time. It is like the painful groaning of a patient, who is suffering great pain, and can not express it to others, only swallowing into his heart. As time goes on, the pain shall occur more frequently and become sharper, until the patient dies forlornly. Here the narrator in The Raven, due to the / o：/ sound, is like a dying person, asking information about his dead lover. He dies to get some information of his beloved. But all answer he gets is “nevermore”, which even worsens his miserable situation. Like a knell, “nevermore” renders an extreme forlorn scene, evoking a tragic sense in readers inner heart. We are almost sharing his sorrow until the narrator breaks his heart in the end and becomes almost insane. Under the effect, readers are so close to having experienced a crisis in their lifetime. Internal rhyme is also distributed at every place in the poem, which actually is an       end-rhyme located within a line. For example: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping.12 In the first line, “dreary” and “weary” is a pair of internal rhyme. In the third line, “napping” and “tapping” is a pair of internal rhyme. Of the eighteen stanzas in the poem, internal rhyme is located in the first and the third line of each stanza with the exception of the eleventh stanza, such as “remember” and “December”, “morrow” and “borrow” in the second stanza, “beating” and “repeating” in the third stanza, “shutter” and “flutter