Optics and Visual Perception in the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe Satwik Dasgupta A disser

263 Pages·2009·12.63 MB·English

"It was open—wide, wide open":
Optics and Visual Perception in the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe
Satwik Dasgupta
A dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Middle Tennessee State University
2009
UMI Number: 3370184
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'It was open—wide, wide open': Optics and Visual Perception in the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe
Abstract
Reception of Edgar Allan Poe's work in the past few decades has been either overtly
critical or grudgingly appreciative, mainly due to the author's peculiarly dark, unfathomable, and
unreal world view. This reception has been guided primarily by readings of Poe's famous tales
and poems, such as "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Black Cat," "The Raven," and
"Ulalume, " works that have been frequently read, taught, critiqued, serialized, and even filmed
around the world. Recent scholarly efforts have also ventured to position Poe's socio-political,
philosophical, and psychological preoccupations with regard to the marketplace of contemporary
periodicals and journals in which he struggled to fashion a career. This re-contextualization of
Poe in nineteenth-century American literary history has been quite informative and insightful,
but has done little to reveal the full potential of those lesser-known tales in Poe's armory that
share a common denominator with his more popular works.
This dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary approach interpreting various works of Edgar
Allan Poe against the backdrop of other cognitive and aesthetic discourses dealing with the topoi
of sight and perception. Both in and out of his time, Poe produced works that locate him in his
immediate environs as well as transcend nineteenth-century sensibilities to embrace and
anticipate visual mechanisms of a later era. This project aims to fill a two-fold gap in Poe
scholarship; it focuses on those tales that have been accorded little attention in the past fifteen
years, and presents a book-length study on elements of ocularity and perception in Poe's oeuvre
that have been explored only in isolated articles and not through a holistic treatment spanning the
author's works. Through application of the working principles of the microscope, panorama,
phenakitoscope, panopticon, surveillance cameras and other visual disciplines to Poe's works,
this study reveals Poe as a timeless cultural signifier, an author who explored diverse nuances of
vision and perception in ways that transcend immediate historical and geographical limitations to
apprehend certain universal conditions of human existence.
"It was open—wide, wide open":
Optics and Visual Perception in the Tales of Edgai; Allan Poe
Satwik Dasgupta
Approved
Graduate Committee:
Dr. Cu*J C^CH^OI
Dr. Carl Ostrowski, Director
Dr. Philip Phillips, Reader
i
Dr. Tom Strawman, Reader/Chair of the Department of English
yU»)l& On**/
Dr. Michael D. Allen, Dean of the College of Graduate Studies
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."
- Sir Phillip Sidney, "Loving in Truth"
11
DEDICATION
This work is dedicated to my parents, Salil Dasgupta and Bithika Dasgupta, and my
brother, Sagnik Dasgupta; their continued moral support helped me to complete this
project on time. I cannot thank enough my committee members, Dr. Tom Strawman, Dr.
Carl Ostrowski, and Dr. Philip Phillips, for their unqualified support and guidance
throughout the period of formulating and writing this dissertation. I am deeply indebted
to Dr. Allen Hibbard and Dr. Marion Hollings for their encouragement and support
during the initial years of my Ph.D. program. Finally, I am sincerely grateful to Dr. Kevin
J. Hayes for graciously answering my queries pertaining to various topics central to this
dissertation.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Re-envisioning Edgar Allan Poe 1
Chapter One: (T)ERROR of the Soul:
Optical Illusion "with what foresight" in
"The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Sphinx," and "The Spectacles" 19
Chapter Two: Poe, Panorama, and the Panoptic Sublime:
Sovereign View in "Morning on the Wissahiccon" and
"The Island of the Fay" .. .69
Chapter Three: Surveillance Camera Players and Discontent:
Anonymous Role Playing in "The Man of the Crowd" 108
Chapter Four: The Anthropocentric Vision:
Aesthetics of Effect and Terror in Poe's "Hop-Frog" 146
Chapter Five: Poe and the Pointe Sublime:
Surrealistic Meditations in "Berenice," "The Angel of the Odd,"
and "Three Sundays in a Week" ...195
Conclusion: The Vision Beyond 229
Works Cited ....233
1
Introduction: Re-envisioning Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe—what's in this name? What does it bring to our minds? For a
moment, if one withdraws from the platform of academia and re-adjusts one's viewing
lens to look through the eyes of a layman not cognizant with the majority of Poe's works,
it can be argued that his themes problematize his reputation as a serious literary artist. His
tales have the most gruesome visions of violence, terror, and cruelty that have made
horror movie franchises proud, but are disturbing to most due to their graphic content and
lurid images; his world view is devoid of morality and character judgments; his
Machiavellian figures proudly flaunt their evil designs and get away with criminal
perpetrations; there is no consistency or control in his protagonists' actions or the way his
plots unfold; his hoaxes are over the top, and the comedy is loaded with fierce irony; his
poetry is monotonous and arguably labored in design and purpose; and his most popular
theory of poetic composition is widely considered to be ludicrous. These probably
constitute the major reasons for Poe's reputation as a stringer of sensational ideas rather
than a respectable writer. Despite scores of books and articles being published on Poe
every year and despite the fact that average Americans will have studied Edgar Allan Poe
at some point in their high school years, Poe is primarily perceived as a sensational
author along the lines of Stephen King rather than a writer of notable repute. The problem
here is not that an average person ought to know more about Poe, but that the author has
somehow been set up as an icon and his larger-than-life persona has gained precedence
over his works. Poe equals alcoholism, mania, depression, and even dementia, and this
•2
partly has to do with the limited perspective of critical studies focusing only on those
tales and poems that are popular and consistent with the current tide of academic fashion.
Poe is one of the most popular literary artists America has ever produced and, at
the same time, arguably the least understood of her men of letters. He continues to be
popular,1 and major book-length studies published (specifically in the past ten years)
have successfully demonstrated how Poe was connected to his contemporary literary
marketplace and actively involved in tapping extensive resources of American culture
and drawing them into his works. En route, these works also have pointed out how Poe
was not a crazed alcoholic out of his time and should be considered as a serious artist
responsibly and crucially engaged in the critical discourses of his era. Whalen's Edgar
Allan Poe and the Masses: The Political Economy of Literature in Antebellum America
(1999) started the trend of contextualizing Poe within the economics of printing and
publishing of the early-nineteenth century, and so did Kevin J. Hayes' Edgar Allan Poe
and the Printed Word (2000), which traced Poe's involvement with the books and print
culture of his era. Gerald Kennedy's Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe (2001) brought
fresh perspectives on the socio-historical conditions prevailing during Poe's time through
a collection of essays, and, in the same year, Romancing the Shadow. Poe and Race
brought together nine essays on race and slavery issues, prompted by Toni Morrison's
observation that "no early American writer is more important to the concept of African
Americanism than Poe" (Morrison 79). Among others, this volume included Joan
1 According to a source on the IMDB (Internet Movie Database), the latest news on Poe is
that Sylvester Stallone is set to write and direct a movie titled Poe (2009) with Viggo
Mortensen in the lead.