Anti-traditional Gothic Factors

Edgar Allan Poe is traditionally considered as a writer of Romanticism. But a real master of literature is never confined in any specific school in some narrow sense. In order to fully present his ideas and innermost feelings, Poe dares to use any possible artistic form. Among his grotesque writings, absurd thoughts, and unbounded imagination, we are always conquered by his unique genius, as if we have suddenly entered a strange and illusory world permeated with the atmosphere of death, illusion, nightmare, and melancholy. But behind the dark and hazy surface, almost every sensible man can perceive the violent undercurrent through Poe's seemingly paranoia works which are painted by his great artistic soul with blood and tears.Poe's strong addiction to macabre fantasy, monomania, and alcohol is largely due to the great trauma he gets from this vulgar world. In Poe's view, the world we have is extremely absurd and bizarre, everything is a ripple which appears and disappears all in a short while. Tragically, however, Poe fails to realize that his own life cannot last longer than the ripple, and that if one goes against it, he is likely to be swept into the unfathomable whirlpool. Poe makes a refuge for himself by literature, while, at the same time, is dipped in the endless sadness brought by life. In this illusory world of literature, his unbounded imagination soars up to the infinite universe, or sometimes flies around the earth, by the wing of his extravagantly beautiful language.This thesis will first make an outline for the origin and development of Gothicism and then for its main traits. In Chapter Two, there will be a discussion on the relationship between Poe and traditional Gothicism, besides, his innovation on the basis of the traditional. Chapter Three will first have a generalization on Poe's poetical view, from which it will have a research on the undercurrent behind the words in Poe's wok. Chapter Four will probe into the prototype of modernism in Poe's works and its influence on the modernist writers. From these chapters above mentioned, this thesis will have a generalization that Poe's works reveal a mysterious world hidden behind the ordinary things which cannot be expressed by ordinary rational language, but by extraordinary artistic methods.