Alice's Research Report
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RESEARCH REPORT: "The Universe of Roferick Usher
Abstract:
This report will consider “The Universe of Roderick Usher” by Maurice Beebe and the possible influence of his discussions about Poe’s cosmology and theory of the short story on the web-based project of the English 194 Gold-Bug team. I will focus on the unity of the Poe’s text and its component parts in particular, and consider how these may be applied to the project.
Description of “The Universe of Roderick Usher”:
In “The Universe of Roderick Usher”, Maurice Beebe discusses how Poe’s ideas about cosmology reflect his theory of the short story, in particular the unity of the universe and subsequently the text, and the necessity for every aspect of both to be interconnected. The cosmos, according to Poe, is maintained by a continual movement of atoms and energy generated, ordered and part of God, or the Heart Divine. For Poe, the “artist resembles God” (127) as s/he “disperses elements previously ordered by God and reassembles them into new unities and totalities” (122). The artist thus stands for, or is the creative energy of the work and subsequently should, as God creates a perfectly unified universe, create a similarly unified work of art. The short story is therefore considered a form most suited to Poe’s belief, its ability to be short and succinct, to move purposefully towards a final climax and to allow the reader to read it in one sitting, most potentially realising his ideals. This latter reason is, in fact, fundamental for Poe “for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and every thing like totality is at once destroyed”.
No word or aspect of the plot, therefore, can be superfluous. All must be needed by the story and contribute to its conclusion. In regards to “The Fall of the House of Usher”, for example, Beebe discusses how even the “barely perceptible fissure” down the middle of the house contributes to the story in a number of ways, namely that it “corresponds to Roderick’s struggle against insanity” and “to the diffusion split between Roderick and Madeline” (125). This is so that at the end of the story, Beebe describes how “The House of Usher splits first into two parts, corresponding to the many delicately balanced diffusion-correspondences in the story. The crack widens, suggesting Roderick’s insanity, his inability to maintain balance, and hence his desperate effort to become independent of the diffused matter” (133).
Evaluation:
Maurice Beebe thus claims “The Fall of the House of Usher” to be “an almost perfect illustration of Poe’s theory of totality”, all its details reaching to its “final catastrophe” (123). However, this also appears true of “The Gold Bug”; there is certainly something of the totality found at the end as the mystery is resolved, and the reader can see how the constituent parts of the story work towards this resolution. For example, one could question why Poe chose to have the first attempt at finding the treasure fail, to have Jupiter put the bug through the right instead of the left eye of the skull. But the effect of that detail is great. Firstly, the reader is forced to yet again question the sanity of Legrand and the truth of his claims, and secondly, it reflects the theme of rationality versus irrationality; that the bug must pass through the left eye, the irrational side of the brain, shows that the mystery cannot only be resolved by rationality alone:
"That Jupiter made an error and dropped the scarab through the right rather than the left eye indicates that without involving the whole of man, without tapping the transpersonal sphere of improbabilities, a treasure can not be found."
The unity of the short story is such a fundamental part of Poe’s beliefs about writing that I would like to think that we might try to recreate this unity in our project. In Poe’s terms, the group now has to become that figure of the artist as we rearrange Poe’s “elements” and create something new out of them. Of course the plan is not to divert entirely from the text, but to see how it may be analysed in a way other than literary criticism and consequently how the text will change as we submit it to different modes of analysis and exploration. If we were to adhere fully to this idea of unity, however, I think we might be limited in our investigations. Would it allow us, for example, to link to outside sources about the text or even to other comparable texts? This is something the group has spoken about, but it would of course divert attention away from the text or web page itself and potentially break the boundary around it. How much freedom may be attributed to creativity becomes an issue, therefore; so to what extent should we be faithful to the text? We intend, for example, to use images and music in our project, but surely this, too, threatens the unity as more external influences are imposed upon his and our work. One might even ask, then, whether this kind of unity and focussed attention can be applicable when the World Wide Web is in the picture, when the project becomes part of an extensive and interactive network.
This is certainly something to consider theoretically. However, practically, I still think his theory of the short story and how it applies to “The Gold Bug” can be of great use to our project and especially to its overall structure. Once reaching our website on the internet, for example, it is the intention that the user must have to enter it formally by doing something – playing a simple game or, for example, passing the gold bug through the eye of the skull – in order to open the following page. This will immediately get the user engaged in the site, something fundamental for Poe’s readers, and make clear the boundaries of the site as distinct from the rest of the internet. From then on, Poe’s theory of the short story would encourage the team to make everything in the project focussed and engaging; just as the elements of “The Gold Bug” lead towards the finding of the treasure and the method by which this could be done, so will the users of our site work towards the resolution of the mystery, or perhaps the cryptogram which gave Legrand the clues to the treasure’s location. Finally, in parallel to the definite entrance into the site, the browser will leave it when, for example, he finds and opens the treasure chest or solves the cryptogram. Thus the website’s exit will also be clearly defined and the browser’s attention will be able to move from the web page and from “The Gold Bug”.
What Poe’s theories would contribute to the concept of the project, therefore, is a need for it to be well-structured, focussed and most importantly, engaging. It suggests that innumerable links on the pages going to a large number of different places within or without of the site itself, would threaten the unity and the structure of the project. Further, it warns against having innumerable routes to the end of the mystery’s solution; rather some kind of designated passage through the site would be beneficial, such that there will be a purpose to the movements of the user and a goal to reach at the end. Further, it would encourage the group to think carefully about what is included in the project – which parts of the text are used, what themes are taken, what outside information and criticism might be included, and how these will be put coherently and cohesively together.
Thus although Poe’s cosmology and theory of the short story will not form a direct part of the project, I think this theoretical and philosophical side to the author can be of great value and influence to it, and to the group’s creative experiments.
Resources for Further Study:·
· Beebe, Maurice, “The Universe of Roderick Usher”, Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, Robert Regan, (Englewood Cliffs, N. J: Prentice-Hall Inc, [1967])
· “Edgar Allan Poe, An Introduction.” Edgar Allan Poe, An Introduction Biography. 2007 enotes.com LLC. 18th May 2007. <http://www.enotes.com/edgar-allan-poe-masters> This provides some more information on Poe’s theory of the short story
· The Poe Decoder- I have Found It! Qrisse’s Poe Pages. 18th May 2007. <http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/eureka/> A site dedicated to Poe’s cosmological beliefs, including the full text and discussion of Eureka.
· Mapping The Gold Bug Variations: The Taxonomy of Intertextuality, the Partial Nature of Metaphoric Structuring, and Postmodernism. Read Write Perform Listen. 18th May 2007. <http://www.spinelessbooks.com/theory/powers/index.html> This is an interesting look into an experiment with “The Gold Bug”, considering the “translation between media” and the appropriation of artwork in order to create something different.
