The Ambivalence of Americanness in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
1
조회
0
다운로드
1
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This paper aims at revealing the ambivalence of Americanness as portrayed in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket(1838). Americanness is a product of history and functions as a nationalistic rhetoric that aims to integrate America as a unity and reshapes the way Americans think and talk about themselves, most of which is optimistic like the concept of Edenic America. Poe’s only novel, The Narrative was written during the renaissance of American literature, a time of rising nationalism. However, the national consciousness that dominated this period of history was parochial, to the extent that it was merely a reflection of the white man’s society, alienating Native Americans, slaves and women. So, the narration by Pym, who enjoys the privileges of a white male southerner, betrays an ambivalence and tension between Pym’s America and its future in an ambiguous tone. The self-contradiction of American society is caused not only by the fact that immigrats from England were so thoroughly steeped in their own traditions, but also by the fact that their liberal democracy and Calvinism were in shameful contrast with the sacrifices of native Americans and slaves. Americanness and its ambivalence in The Narrative are seen in the American will to be free from European tradition, as well as in America’s attempt to partake of that tradition through its liberal democracy and protestantism, both of which run parallel with the ideology of racial discrimination. As a writer in the middle of the romance tradition in the period of American Renaissance, Poe reveals the ambivalence of Americanness through Pym’s narratives and his unconsciousness. This fact alone prompts us to rethink those easy literary assumptions that place artificial walls between our so-called romantic and realistic writers and to see Americanness as an ideological discourse.
Abstract
This paper aims at revealing the ambivalence of Americanness as portrayed in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket(1838). Americanness is a product of history and functions as a nationalistic rhetoric that aims to integrate America as a unity and reshapes the way Americans think and talk about themselves, most of which is optimistic like the concept of Edenic America. Poe’s only novel, The Narrative was written during the renaissance of American literature, a time of rising nationalism. However, the national consciousness that dominated this period of history was parochial, to the extent that it was merely a reflection of the white man’s society, alienating Native Americans, slaves and women. So, the narration by Pym, who enjoys the privileges of a white male southerner, betrays an ambivalence and tension between Pym’s America and its future in an ambiguous tone. The self-contradiction of American society is caused not only by the fact that immigrats from England were so thoroughly steeped in their own traditions, but also by the fact that their liberal democracy and Calvinism were in shameful contrast with the sacrifices of native Americans and slaves. Americanness and its ambivalence in The Narrative are seen in the American will to be free from European tradition, as well as in America’s attempt to partake of that tradition through its liberal democracy and protestantism, both of which run parallel with the ideology of racial discrimination. As a writer in the middle of the romance tradition in the period of American Renaissance, Poe reveals the ambivalence of Americanness through Pym’s narratives and his unconsciousness. This fact alone prompts us to rethink those easy literary assumptions that place artificial walls between our so-called romantic and realistic writers and to see Americanness as an ideological discourse.
참고문헌 (16)
- Arnold, Armin, "The Symbolic Meaning: The Uncollected Versions of Studies in Classic American Literature" (1962), Centaur P
- Berkhofer, Robert, "The Americanness of American Studies", American Quarterly, 31, pp.340~345 (1979)
- Bercovitch, Sacvan, "The Problem of Ideology in American Literary History", Critical Inquiry, 12, pp.631~653 (1986), The U of Chicago P
- Boorstein, Daniel, "Hidden History" (1987), Harper & Row
- Carringer L.. Robert, "Circumscription of Space and the Form of Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym", Modern Language Association, 89, pp.506~516 (1974)
- Fiedler,Leslie, "Love and Death in the American Novel" (1966), A Scarborough Book
- Gates,Henry Louis, "Writing ‘Race’ and the Imagination" (1989), John’s Hopkins UP
- Kaplan,Sidney, "Introduction" (1960), Hill and Wang
- Kercheville, F. M., "Americanity", American Speech, 14, pp.70~73 (1939)
- Lewis,R.W.B, "The American Adam" (1955), The U of Chicago P
- Nelson, Dana, "The Word in Black and White: Reading Race in American Literature" (1992), UP
- Poe,Edgar Allan, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" (1938), Penguin Books
- Rowe, John Carlos, "At Emerson’s Tomb: The Politics of Classic American Literature", Nineteenth-Century Literature, 52(4), pp.521~525 (1998)
- Rowe, John Carlos, "Poe, Antebellum Slavery, and Modern Criticism", pp.117~138 (1992), Duke UP
- Rudoff, Shaindy, "Written in Stone: Slavery and Authority in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym", The American Transcendental Quarterly, 14(1), pp.61~83 (2000)
- Whalen,Terence, "Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses: The Political Economy of Literature in Antebellum America" (1999), Princeton UP