Hello Goths and Scholars!

​

Welcome to another Recorded Gothic video!

​

So when I decided it was time to do another Recorded Gothic video, I asked around to see what people thought I should do it on. A lot of you responded to me telling me to do it on The Raven. This put me in a bit of the bind, because Recorded Gothic is concerned with short stories and Gothic chapter books, and not poems. However, I decided to compromise. Don't get used to it, it doesn't happen often! Poe wrote ‘The Philosophy of Composition,’ which is an essay about how to write a poem, and he based it around his writing of The Raven. So that is what this video is going to be about!

​

So, let's get into it. “The Philosophy of Composition,”  was first published in Graham’s Magazine in April, 1846. This essay was published following the amazing success of The Raven. Kent Ljungquist summarises the essay very well stating, “he countered the Romantic assumption that the poet works in a “fine Frenzy” of pure inspiration. Offering a painstakingly deliberate account of the stages of composition of his most celebrated work.”[1] So to translate, in this essay Poe goes against the Romantic tradition of writing due to inspiration, and instead writes using very deliberate theories.  

 

The Unity of Effect is basically defined as the set of rules Poe set out for writers to ensure that the correct impression is made upon the reader. For one to ensure the readers finish the story feeling how the author wants them to feel, Poe suggests these steps:

 

1.   It must be short enough to read in one sitting: “The initial consideration was that of extent. If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression.”[2] In other words, you can’t say what a reader will feel at the end of a piece, if that piece is read over a few days, weeks, or months. “if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and every thing totality is at once destroyed” (p. 432). So basically, Poe is saying the readers have to be able to read it in one go, otherwise they will get distracted and they will start thinking about other things.

​

2.   Choose your impression. Poe states that this part of the essay “concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed, and here I may as well observe that, throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work universally appreciable" (p. 433). In other words, Poe wanted to choose a topic that everyone knew and could relate emotion to. Poe eventually chose the concept of beauty.

​

3.   The Tone. This is very short part of the essay, and Poe simply states that a reader must make a definitive choice regarding how they would write about their topic. Poe’s tone was to be sadness. Poe states, “beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones" (p. 434). Everyone has felt sad, everyone has seen beauty, put them both together and that's a universal poem.

​

4.   The Structure. This section is about Poe’s choices regarding the actually construction of the narrative. Poe states, “the pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity — of repetition. I determined to produce continuously novel effects, by the variation of the application of the refrain — the refrain itself remaining, for the most part, unvaried” (p. 433).

​

5.   The next section is all about how Poe decided on what word he wanted to use in his refrain. He states, the topic “inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous vowel, in connection with r as the most producible consonant” (p. 435). This is what caused him to eventually choose the now famous 'nevermore.' It has been suggested to me that Poe may be being sarcastic at this point in the essay, but I disagree. I feel this fits entirely with what we know about Poe.

​

6.   What characters? Poe had decided that there would be a bird of ill-omen that would repeat the word 'nevermore.' Poe writes, “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” (p. 436). Here, Poe is stating that death is something we can all relate to, he will focus on that in this piece. Poe incorporates the main Gothic themes; death, beauty, melancholy, and a bird. Okay, maybe not the bird, but the rest is pretty Gothic. Due to Poe knowing that he wanted the poem to be about Death, in true Poe fashion, he writes a poem about the death of a beautiful young woman, and thus was born Lenore.

​

7.   He then decided how the poem would begin and where it would end. The rest of this section involves Poe talking about how he decided how the raven would enter the room. Poe states,“I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also for the effect of contrast between the marble and the plumage — it being understood that the bust was absolutely suggested by the bird — the bust of Pallas being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the scholarship of the lover, and, secondly, for the sonorousness of the word, Pallas, itself” (p. 436). Here, Poe really reveals himself to be a poet. The imagery is so strong here that Poe creates a very strong picture in the minds of his readers.

​

So that is today's video. I really hoped it helped your understanding of Poe. Let me know if you enjoyed this essay summary video, and if you would like me to do more of these, as I really like doing them. As the essays are a bit harder to read than his texts, I enjoy translating them for you.

 

But for now,

Remember to read more Gothic, and make the nightmares fear you!

 

Sadie B, signing off.

​

​

​

Footnotes

[1] Kent Ljungquist, ‘The Poet as Critic’, in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, ed. by Kevin J. Hayes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 7-21 (p.18).

 

[2] Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Philosophy of Composition', in The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writing, ed. by Tatiani Rapatzikou (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2003), pp. 430-442.

​

​

Word Count: 1,125

​

​

​

Bibliography

​

Ljungquist, Kent, ‘The Poet as Critic’, in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, ed. by Kevin J. Hayes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 7-21

 

Poe, Edgar Allan, 'The Philosophy of Composition', in The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writing, ed. by Tatiani Rapatzikou (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2003), pp. 430-442

​