Alice's Annotated Bibliography

From English 194 Wiki

· Beebe, Maurice, “The Universe of Roderick Usher”, Robert Regan Ed, Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, (Englewood Cliffs, N. J: Prentice-Hall Inc, [1967])

Although primarily dealing with “The Fall of the House of Usher”, this essay is useful in its discussion of how Poe’s cosmology is related to his theory of the short story. According to Beebe, Poe explains how the universe “derives from a tiny particle of perfect oneness” (121) and has the potential to return to that oneness. In between these two states, however, the particle disperses and its atoms undergo a “continual struggle between attraction and repulsion, contraction and expansion” (122), the energy of which is created by and is part of the Heart Divine, or God. Two things must be noted here: Firstly, it is important that Poe’s cosmos is maintained by this continual movement and energy because he relates this to the creative power of the artistic imagination, “which disperses elements previously ordered by God and reassembles them into new unities and totalities” (122); and secondly, the bond between all the world’s atoms and the potential for the universe to return to its “perfect oneness” highlights the interconnectedness of the universe for Poe, a connectedness which is fundamental to his theory of the short story.

In Eureka, the text in which Poe most explicitly discusses these theories, he states that “In the whole composition there should be no word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design” (122, Eureka p.208). Unity of a story is therefore fundamental to Poe, both in regards to the writer and the reader. The “artist resembles God” (127) and therefore stands for, or is the creative energy, which means that like God’s perfectly unified universe, the short story should be unified. No word or aspect of the plot, therefore, can be superfluous. “The Fall of the House of Usher”, for example, is considered to adhere perfectly to this theory as all “details contribute to the single effect of the story and play a part in the final catastrophe” (123). Thus the reader too is supposed to experience this unity; as s/he “begins at the level of greatest expansion and, linking detail to detail, reaches the climactic oneness which was, for the artist, the beginning of the story” (123).

· Hoffman, Daniel, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, (London: Robson Brooks Limited, 1973)

Hoffman’s chapter, “Disentanglements”, deals with Poe’s detective fiction by taking a fairly descriptive approach. Yet Hoffman subtly draws out some of the most interesting aspects of the tales. Regarding “The Gold Bug”, for example, he highlights how there are two unusual aspects to Poe’s first detective tale; firstly that this is “Poe’s only effort to use an existing folk legend” (125), that of legend of Captain Kidd’s treasure, and secondly, that he then situates this legend in an actual landscape that he knew and had explored.

The discussion then concentrates largely on Legrand’s character, the qualities of which seem to make the tale possible, effective and characteristic of Poe. The interest here, then, lies in the “master ratiocinator” side to Legrand’s character juxtaposed with his potential insanity (126): “I’m intrigued by the whole thing”, Hoffman says, “the plot, the cipher within the cipher, the treasure within the treasure, the richest treasure of all being the intellect which cracked the intricacies of the code. I’m intrigued, too, that…Legrand is given to the reader in such a way that we are likely to agree with the doctor and old Jup in thinking him quite mad” (131). Thus Hoffman considers Legrand’s highly rational and learned mind as well as the chance, the intuition and circumstantial elements of the tale, and then highlights the tension between the two and the necessity of this tension for the tale’s success. In the second half of the tale, for example, all the story’s parts come together in the explanation of the mystery, and this pattern demonstrates the utilisation of Legrand’s extensive learning; his intellect is required in order for the “series of events, accidents really” that constitute the mystery to be noticed (129), and for these “accidents” to be strung together in order for it to be solved. Here, therefore, the accidental nature of the mystery and Legrand’s “intuitive” intellect also become a focal point and necessary, Hoffman suggests, to the deciphering of the cryptogram.

In order to explore this tension further, Hoffman playfully considers the intellectual similarities of Kidd and Legrand and what it would mean were Legrand “also like Kidd in his moral equipment” (132). Supposing this were the case, says Hoffman, and looking at the scene in which Legrand has Jupiter and the Doctor dig the hole – a Kidd-like situation it seems – “By how thin a thread [would] hang the lives of Doctor and old Jup; the thinness of that thread may mark the distinction between the greatest sanity and a madness so horrible…” (132). Does Genius “wear two complementary faces” therefore (132)? Is this an uncertainty in the protagonist or a balance? Whichever, Hoffman considers the uncertainty to be a highly influential aspect to the tone of “The Gold Bug” and Poe’s other detective tales as he goes on to finish his chapter by exploring this in “The Purloined Letter”.

· Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, (MIT Press, 2004)

“The magic circle can define a powerful space, investing its authority in the actions of players and creating new and complex meanings that are only possible in the space of play. But it is also remarkably fragile as well, requiring constant maintenance to keep it intact (98)”.

The part of Salen and Zimmerman’s argument that particularly interests me is that which discusses the magic circle. This is a term they use to denote the frame or boundary that exists around a game, marking out “the space of play [which] is separate in some way from the real world” (94). This is usually a psychological boundary/circle, but is also often created physically, for example by the markings around a basketball court or the railings around a playground. To demonstrate this, a game may be compared to the less formal act of a child playing with a doll where the boundaries are “fuzzy and permeable” and so play can take whatever form and start and stop whenever (94). A game is rather a formal system, a “physical and temporal space of play” (95), that takes on a different kind of nature to that of reality outside the circle.

The world of the game still references the real world, however – it is not entirely distinct – but something different is certainly assumed. Bernard Suits, for example, explains this through what he calls the “lusory attitude” taken when playing a game. He exemplifies this through the game of golf. Here, whoever is playing accepts the irrational ways of achieving the game’s goals, of walking “four hundred yards away from the hole and then attempt[ing] to propel the ball into the hole with a stick” (97). This is not what would happen if one needed to achieve a comparable goal in normal life, but one accepts the rules and tries to achieve the goal according to them. Salen and Zimmerman, then, in fact say that there is “something genuinely magical that happens when a game begins” (95): The players enter into the magic circle, a new world, as their attention becomes fixed and to one purpose; the objects in the game accrue special meanings; and rules are followed that are different to those in the outside world.

· Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four, (London: Penguin, 2001)

Amazon Synopsis: “As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman Mary Morstan, whose father vanished ten years before. Four years later she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl. Now she has had an intriguing invitation to meet her unknown benefactor and urges Holmes and Watson to accompany her. And in the ensuing investigation which involves a wronged woman, a stolen hoard of Indian treasure, a wooden-legged ruffian, a helpful dog and a love affair even the jaded Holmes is moved to exclaim, Isn't it gorgeous!'” (15th May 2007. <http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sign-Four-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140439072>)

The Sign of Four is Conan Doyle’s second detective novel, first published in London in 1890. Beginning with the mystery pearls sent each year to Mary Morston, the novel witnesses Sherlock Holmes and his friend Henry Watson attempting to solve a far more complex murder mystery. From London to colonial India to the Andaman Islands and back to London, the novel weaves together an intricate story of murder, treasure, escape and revenge which can only fully be explained by the murderer himself, Jonathon Small. However, Sherlock Holmes’ extraordinary powers of detection, which combine reason with intuition, are of course utilised to find the murderer in the first place. The reader follows Holmes’ steps and the novel’s events along with the narrator, Watson, whose perspective and intellect can be considered normal in its limitations. This means, therefore, that the reader is required to hold on until the end of the novel for it all to make sense, for all the component parts to come together in the mystery’s explanation.

Link to The Sign of Four website and text

· Patterson, Arthur Paul. The Gold-Bug – Introduction. Watershed Online. 15th May 2007. <http://watershedonline.ca/literature/Poe/goldbug/pogoldbug.html>

This is a website for the Folio Club that includes an assessment of three of Poe’s stories, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Gold Bug” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”. “The Gold Bug” pages are quite broad in what they cover and have some interesting material; moving through the pages, the reader comes across a consideration of the historical content of the story, its biographical context, publishing details, a look into cryptography, landscape, character analyses and themes.

There are two sections of the website that particularly interest me: a short discussion about the tree, the skull and the eye in the Plot overview and the discussion of Jupiter’s character. The tree, the writer says, unites high and low, “the underground with its roots, the existential sphere with its trunks, and the spiritual domain with its branches which reach out into the air” (Link to page), thus showing the universe to be one and spirituality and earthliness to coexist. In this strain, then, the skull and the eye are significant for exploring rationality against spirituality or intuition; the right side of the brain is linked to rationality, whereas the “left sinistra, is believed to stand for the unconscious and unpredictable side of one's being, the side of the heart and of emotions which react to affects.” This continues to discuss Jupiter’s mistake in at first dropping the bug through the right eye, indicating that “without involving the whole of man, without tapping the transpersonal sphere of improbabilities, a treasure can not be found.”

Jupiter, although being in some ways the stereotypical black servant, serves a vital role in the story and in uncovering the treasure. He “represents the instincts” (as his name suggests) because it is towards he who the gold bug initially flies, he that wraps the bug in the parchment, and he who is superstitious towards it. On this latter point, the writer says something quite interesting: "Paradoxically, limited as he is by literalism, Jupiter understands the meaning of the scarabaeus before Legrand. He believes the "goole bug" is solid gold. Symbolically he is absolutely correct. The finding of the bug did translate into hard cold cash for Legrand. Jupiter was wise enough to fear being bit by the goole bug. He made the connection between Legrand's discovery of the insect and his inordinate obsession with wealth." (Link to page)

This is yet another example of the role of instinct in the story which serves to make Legrand’s discovery possible and which communicates its meanings. As the writer states, “Poe gave Jup the language of instincts, which is comedic but also ironic, since Jup's language speaks more accurately than the eloquence of Legrand.”