This document provides an overview of several American authors, including Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and J.D. Salinger. It summarizes their major works and themes. For Poe, it discusses his invention of detective and fantastic fiction genres and themes of death and the supernatural. For Dickinson, it outlines her unique poetic voice, individual style, and subjects of nature, God, and death. Regarding Hawthorne, it mentions his works explored themes of sin, guilt, and morality in New England. For Salinger, it notes his focus on dissatisfied youth facing a superficial modern world.

1. A LOOK AT AMERICAN HERITAGE
EDIGAR ALLAN POE,EMILY
DICKINSON, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE,
J.D. SALINGER, RALPH ELLISON

2. 
EDGAR ALLAN POE

3. 
• The inventor of two kinds of fiction: detective and
fantastic
• The first tries to reduce the crime, a break in social
order, into the realm of normal life
• The second represents a crisis in reality with a lot
of possibilities in the range of stories
• A large display of themes concerning death, the
presence of supernatural creatures, occult
phenomena
EDGAR ALLAN POE

4. 
• In his conception science (detective fiction) was not
able to solve all mysteries of human nature
(fantastic fiction).
• A pessimistic view of life seems to prevail and gives
rise to a quite large stock of stories characterized by
the sense of
• Macabre and perverse.
• All his characters seem to be afraid and fascinated
at the same time by some mysteries with no
solution at all
EDGAR ALLAN POE

5. 
• Madness and reason can coexist
• Descent into a pit or whirlpool, symbolizing self-
investigation and probing into the unconscious
• Terror as annihilation and nothingness
• Utter anguish generated by a sort of masochism
• The clock having a physical and symbolic meaning
• Four colours prevail: black, red, gold and white
EDGAR ALLAN POE

6. 
• Destructive passion leading to the death of the
loved ones
• Hallucinations
• Self-destruction
• The life-death equation
• Descriptions with realistic meticulous details
EDGAR ALLAN POE

7. 
• The image of the vortex or of the spiral is one of the
most evocative metaphors, handed down from archaic
religions and ancient philosophy. It represents the
everlasting process of death and rebirth. The spiral, and
particularly the double spiral, is in fact a decoration that
was often used in prehistoric art to give the idea of the
combination of opposites, like evolution and involution,
as well as becoming and dying.
• It is a dynamic system made of two contrary forces, one
centrifugal and one centripetal, which produce two
opposite movements: winding and unwinding
EDGAR ALLAN POE

8. 
• The image of the vortex or of the spiral is one of the
most evocative metaphors, handed down from archaic
religions and ancient philosophy. It represents the
everlasting process of death and rebirth. The spiral, and
particularly the double spiral, is in fact a decoration that
was often used in prehistoric art to give the idea of the
combination of opposites, like evolution and involution,
as well as becoming and dying.
• It is a dynamic system made of two contrary forces, one
centrifugal and one centripetal, which produce two
opposite movements: winding and unwinding
A Descent into the Maelstrom

9. 
• A meaningful recurrence of synonyms such as vast,
smooth, prodigious, shining/gleaming, jet
back/ebony black;
• Terrific, speeding/bewildering rapidity.
• The image of vortex is that of a deep chasm gaped
under the sky, so as to open a communication
route between the earth and the underworld; a
pathway which changes the inner nature of those
who venture through it.
A Descent into the Maelstrom

10. 
• An allegoric epic deed in which the hero, the fisherman,
tries to reveal the mysteries of the unknown, even if this
implies risking his own life.
• Time seems to have stopped down the funnel, and terror
which we would expect from any man in such a
desperate situation.
• It is as if the hypnotic circular motion of the
vortex has sent the fisherman in a trance and death looks
desirable, because it represents the moment of the
man’s complete fusion with Nature and its divine spirit.
A Descent into the Maelstrom

11. 
• The contemplation of a superior power.
• As the narrator comes back to reality he realizes that
it is impossible to predict the moment when whatever
is spinning round will be dissolved at the bottom of
the abyss, so he understands that it is also impossible
to foretell his own fate.
The ecstasy of the mystic contemplation is inevitably lost, while
anxiety and
• fear of the impending death finally prevail.
A Descent into the Maelstrom

12. 
• By taking us inside this fearful chasm, Poe
leads us to a supernatural dimension of space
and time. In fact, as soon as we get in touch
with the inner nature of the vortex an
overflow of ancestral images sediment in our mind
start flowing and we momentarily perceive the
divine power of Nature
A Descent into the Maelstrom

13. 
• A unique poetic voice
• Magnificent personal confession
• Individual use of imagery
• Off-rhyme and unconventional syntax
• A foretaste of Modernism
• Her subjects are in nature, her relation to God or her
perception of death
EMILY DICKINSON
EMILY DICKINSON

14. 
• A unique poetic voice
• Magnificent personal confession
• Individual use of imagery
• Off-rhyme and unconventional syntax
• A foretaste of Modernism
• Her subjects are in nature, her relation to God
or her perception of death
EMILY DICKINSON

15. 
• Mirroring her own withdrawal from society, she
wrote about the soul that ‘selects her own
Society’. Her inner life was intense.
• Her poetry displays portraying aspects of a
unified experience.
• Nature is drawn in its circle of death and life
and in the reflection upon immortality.
EMILY DICKINSON

16. 
• The poet of the American Sublime
• Sequestered life in her Amherst family home
Transfiguration which all material objects undergo
through the passion of the poet
• Determined individualism
• Victorian literary predecessors (Barrett Browning,
the Brontes, etc.), to Victorian photographs, and
to paintings by English and American artists
EMILY DICKINSON

17. 
• Multiple levels of meaning.
• Poetry as a form of communication in which words are never
simple equivalents of experience or perception. The words
themselves, the words as words, have a life as sounds, as
images, as the means for generating a series of associations.
• She draws on most of the sciences. She must have regarded
science as a basis for testing the outer boundaries of human
understanding and experience. On the one hand science was
transforming the world around her in astonishing ways. On the
other hand science was fast becoming civilization's new Holy
Grail in the quest for certainty and seemed to be undermining the
validity of religious and aesthetic modes of knowing.
EMILY DICKINSON

18. 
• The epistemological dilemma--the struggle between
certainty and uncertainty--is central to her poetic vision.
She uses poetry to perform, in effect, experiments in
language, her counterpart to scientific experiments, which
she accepted as equally valid efforts for apprehending
essential Truth
• Dickinson's poetic equations perform the opposite function
to that of their scientific counterparts: they are designed to
heighten mysteries, not solve them, They work to
counteract scientific reductionism, which tempts us into
thinking that science can present reality whole and
undistorted.
EMILY DICKINSON

19. 
• By simple elision, most of which is licensed by
syntactic recoverability rules, she creates
indeterminacy.
• She uses no recoverable deletion to mask logical
links between consecutive statements and stanzas.
This has the effect of placing abstract and narrative
statements together and of juxtaposing metaphorical
contexts..
• Her compression could be seen as an attempt to
disrupt the micro-linguistic consciousness and thereby
force readers to re-examine their pre-literary reality;
EMILY DICKINSON

20. 
• Filled with odd images, eccentric rhyming, and an
often playful tone, Dickinson's poetry penetrates into
the depths of the human soul and mind with infinite
insight.
• Miniaturist, since most of her poems have fewer than
30 lines, yet she deals with the profoundest subjects
in poetry: death, love, humanity's relations to God and
nature.
• She makes nouns serve as verbs, adjectives as
nouns, and abstractions as concrete objects.
EMILY DICKINSON

21. 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

22. 
• The ghost of New England
• Writing as a dark necessity
• Haunted chamber where he spent his years secluded
• Sin means to have ice in one’s blood
• World subdued to evil
NATHANIEL
HAWTHORNE

23. 
• Narrative with a markedly symmetrical structure to
create unity of action
• Narrative organized around a set of symbols
• Characters represent moral qualities
• The language is extremely formal and ‘literary’ with
occasional use of archaisms
• All details are pertinent to the essential theme
The Scarlet Letter

24. 
• A moral fable or a symbolic romance centred on the
contrast between good and evil, guilt and innocence
• A literary form that emabraced both the real and the
imaginary
• The Puritan conception of sin was a perversion
lacking in charity
• Esther is the most charitable character in the book
The Scarlet Letter

25. 
• Romantic elements as adventure action, the recovery of
past history, secret sinful actions, heroic characters,
mysterious and remote events, curses and witchcraft,
crimes and punishments, picturesque landscape, a blend
of real and unreal, the use of symbolism
• Gothic elements as the presence of a manuscript, a prison,
a scaffold, ghosts, physical deformity, blood
• Sin, remorse, revenge and expiation as the main themes
The Scarlet Letter

26. 
• The problem of guilt and responsibility both in individuals
and in communities
• The study of evil and morality gives the novel an American
touch
• Each section of the book is dominated by a symbol
• Esther represents love, Dimmersdale spirit, Chillingworth
intellect divorced from moral sense
• The novel does not offer a solution to moral conflicts
The Scarlet Letter

27. 
• The novel weighs the different claims of love and
conscience exploring the implications of social and
personal values, revealing the inhumanity of Puritan
morality but focusing the importance of living as a part
of a community
• A marked pessimism
• No possible redemption
The Scarlet Letter

28. 
J. D. SALINGER

29. 
• The deep dissatisfaction of the young with the
selfishness, corruption and hypocrisy of the modern
world around them
• Oversensitive boys or girls as main characters facing
the superficiality and vulgarity of a world where
success and money are the only goals
• the search for moral values, friendship and love
J. D. SALINGER

30. 
• Loneliness and incomprehension as their only
conquest
• The repressed rebellion of the young
• He writes with humour, using the language of
teenagers, slang, swear words giving rise to a sort of
teenage dialect
• A warning against the risks of modern life
J. D. SALINGER

31. 
• The search for identity
• Every human being must realize the capacities and
possibilities he is endowed with in spite of any race
prejudice
• He used a great variety of styles and literary devices:
the vivid language of Harlem people, puns, humour,
symbolism, allegory, folklore, the rhythm of Black
music
J. D. SALINGER

32. 
Ralph Ellison

33. 
• A kind of picaresque work with many adventures and
a crowd of extraordinary characters
• The protagonist discovers that the way to reach his
identity and grow closer to the knowledge of his inner
self is to develop his education, help others and
acquire mature moral principles.
Invisible Man

34. 
• He is invisible to the whites as they refuse to see him,
but this invisibility also gives him freedom and
teaches him that education and morality will be the
values that can bring him and his people to visibility
and social life.
• The narrator avoids classifications or categories,
because he exists ouside them
Invisible Man