The Dark Romantics

1. The Dark Romantics Hawthorne & Poe

2. The Basics • Characteristics of Dark Romanticism • Dark Romantics present individuals as prone to sin and self-destruction • "The Dark Romantics adapted images of anthropomorphized evil in the form of Satan, devils, ghosts . . . vampires, and ghouls.” • Dark Romanticism views nature in a sinister light. For these Dark Romantics, the natural world is dark, decaying, and mysterious; when it does reveal truth to man, its revelations are evil and hellish. • The Gothic- • Works of the genre commonly aim to inspire terror, including through accounts of the macabre and supernatural, haunted structures, and the search for identity; "Gothic fiction is more about sheer terror than Dark Romanticism's themes of dark mystery and skepticism regarding man. Still, the genre came to influence later Dark Romantic works, particularly some of those produced by Poe.

3. Nathaniel Hawthorne • Major Themes in Hawthorne's Fiction: • Alienation • Initiation - involves the attempts of an alienated character to get rid of his isolated condition. • Problem of Guilt • Pride - Hawthorne treats pride as evil. • Puritan New England - used as a background and setting in many tales. • Allegory - Hawthorne's writing is allegorical, didactic and moralistic. • Other themes include individual vs. society, self-fulfillment vs. accommodation or frustration, hypocrisy vs. integrity, love vs. hate, exploitation vs. hurting, and fate vs. free will.

4. Edgar Allan Poe • Major Themes: • Love - usually of a mourning man for his deceased beloved. • Pride - physical and intellectual. • Beauty - of a young woman either dying or dead. • Death - a source of horror. • Poe’s Aesthetic Theory of Effect: • "Unity of effect or impression" is of primary importance; the most effective story is one that can be read at a single sitting. • The short story writer should deliberately subordinate everything in the story - characters, incidents, style, and tone - to bringing out of a single, preconceived effect.