| The representational logic of Poe's fictional morals is actually an echo to a unique visual allegory,which stresses the importance of observing objects with "the exterior portion of the retina," namely a "sidelong glance" as posed by Dupin.As a cognitive motivation camouflaged in literary terms,"sidelong glance" not only stays on the plane of story(cognitive allegory),but more on the plane of discourse(narrative strategy/"secret writing"),meta-language(critical strategy as derived from the authorial audience)and even philosophy(“Southern flanerie").This kind of visual allegory,besides covering the aspect of "Visual Target"(as regards Poe's "intransitive aesthetics")and that of "Visual Distance"(as regards Poe's "holistic aesthetics"),attaches greater importance to a third aspect as evolved from the previous two,namely how this "sidelong glance",on the one hand correlates inherently with"suggestive glimpses," which Poe advocates as the best way of moral reception,and on the other hand transforms into a sort of literary cognitive motivation for "secret writing," which provides Poe with a special trajectory of representing morals in his fictional world.Grounded on the above-mentioned thoughts,this dissertation intends to expound Poe's“sidelong glance" from three perspectives:(1)"sidelong glance" on the aesthetical basis;(2)"sidelong glance" on the critical/compositional basis;(3)"sidelong glance" on the philosophical basis.Specifically,this dissertation falls into the following chapters:Chapter One mainly studies "sidelong glance" on the aesthetical basis.While grounded on the discussion of "visual allegory" in "Introduction," this chapter in the first place excavates and sorts out various ideas of Poe's novelistic aesthetics scattered among his fictional and non-fictional texts,which may fall into four aspects:Truth,Moral,Plot and Reader.Secondly,this chapter analyzes the comprehensive influence of the "sidelong-glance" mechanism upon the practical aesthetic values of the above-mentioned aspects(with the aspect of "Reader",relatively a collateral factor in this group,being studied along with the other three aspects),and make the following conclusions:(1)Poe's fictional "truth" is only "true" in the sense of logical semantics,including the accidental "factual 'truth'"(projected upon the ideal readers' "central portion of the retina")and the necessary "reasoning 'truth'"(projected upon the ideal readers' "exterior portion of the retina");(2)The strategies of Poe's moral representation correspond with the ideal reader's practice of "suggestive glimpses" in his reception of fictional morals,which entails the possibility and necessity of "secret writing";(3)The deviation of plot in Poe's fiction,as a sort of "things external to the game," exerts no detrimental influence upon the texts' holistic aesthetics;rather,it enables the plot to reach the author's presupposed implied moral(s)under the disguise of various meandering pieces and bits,and hence providing the ideal reader with a unique platform for the "sidelong-glance" decoding.Finally,this chapter also expatiates on how Poe adopts in his writing process a comprehensive vision as derived from the "sidelong-glance" strategy,and,in so doing,consummates his"systemic aesthetics" in the inter-textual,inter-thematic and even inter-generic sense.Chapter Two centers round "sidelong glance" on the critical/compositional basis.By employing the authorial audience's critical perspective,this chapter intends to interpret how the visual allegory in question can metamorphose in its practical sense into the literary cognitive motivation behind Poe's "secret writing." For an illustrating purpose,this chapter focuses respectively on four of Poe's most representative texts.The first part of this chapter studies the inherent echoing and textual correspondence between "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe's mostly canonized theoretical text,and Poe's canonical tales of ratiocination("The Murders in the Rue Morgue" in particular),and,based on the above,interpret“The Philosophy" as a "tale of ratiocination," with "the genesis of 'Raven'" being the mysterious case,"discussion of poetics" the narrative process and "logic reasoning" the unravelling methodology.The second part of this chapter studies the "textual unfinishedness" of Poe's most rarely discussed "novel" The Journal of Julius Rodman.In light of the unique features of Poe's fictional aesthetics,this part intends to treat The Journal's unfinishedness as a reasonable extension of the Poesque style,and take the narrative "breakdown" at the crucial point as a forte of ethical criticism:the story's logical orientation is not towards the protagonist's crossing the Rocky Mountains,but towards a reflection upon how the American Indians are deprived of their ethnic identity in the white men's colonizing process;in this sense,The Journal realizes its complete ethical criticism by means of its textual unfinishedness.The third part of Chapter Two studies what Poe claimed as "the best" among his tales,"Ligeia," pointing out that its narrator.is the implied logical center,representing an intellectual(or at least a pursuer)of the orthodox German Romanticism,and that the narrator,faced with the 19th-century German Romanticist transition from the "impulsive epoch"(Ligeia)to the "critical epoch"(Rowena),inevitably assumes a humanistic bewilderment metaphorized as mental pathology.The fourth part of this chapter studies the most frequently discussed revenge tale "The Cask of Amontillado,"and,by metaphorically interpreting "the last stone" in its plot,recovers the implanted literary allegory of "holistic aesthetics" that the story sets on its semantic fringes.Chapter Three intends to associate "sidelong glance" with Poe's geo-cultural identity,analyzing how Poe's fictional "Southernness" bears fundamentally on a sort of "liminality" in philosophical terms.In so doing,this chapter points out that Poe,like his contemporaries in the Old South,experiences an "Otherization" in the domain of "national literature"(first negation)on the one hand;but,by assuming the stance of"going out of the South," he proceeds,on the other hand,to a second "Otherization,"which is active and positive,within his indigenous literary region(a sort of "negation of the negation" on the dialectic basis).With this double negation,Poe obtains an unusual vantage point in social observation,and therefore distinguishes himself from other contemporary cultural aberrations(such as Thoreau)who only withdraw to their retreats within the lococentric regional culture.It can be argued that Poe's engagement in the Southern society paradoxically adopts a "non-Southern" stance.He chooses to wander on the fringes of the South,and accordingly metamorphoses into a veritable"flaneur"(in Baudelaire and Benjamin's sense of the concept),who,by means of his ostensibly grotesque and arabesque fictional world,projects in-depth reflections upon Southern social issues on the part of an intellectual."Sidelong glance" is not only a significant cognitive motivation for Poe's fictional“secret writing,”but more importantly a representation of his flanerie in social observation,whose congenital"liminality" undoubtedly nurtures a philosophical genesis of Poe's fictional"Southernness.”... |
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