"It was open—wide, wide open": Optics and Visual Perception in the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe Satwik Dasgupta A dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Middle Tennessee State University 2009 UMI Number: 3370184 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI® UMI Microform 3370184 Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 'It was open—wide, wide open': Optics and Visual Perception in the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe Abstract Reception of Edgar Allan Poe's work in the past few decades has been either overtly critical or grudgingly appreciative, mainly due to the author's peculiarly dark, unfathomable, and unreal world view. This reception has been guided primarily by readings of Poe's famous tales and poems, such as "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Black Cat," "The Raven," and "Ulalume, " works that have been frequently read, taught, critiqued, serialized, and even filmed around the world. Recent scholarly efforts have also ventured to position Poe's socio-political, philosophical, and psychological preoccupations with regard to the marketplace of contemporary periodicals and journals in which he struggled to fashion a career. This re-contextualization of Poe in nineteenth-century American literary history has been quite informative and insightful, but has done little to reveal the full potential of those lesser-known tales in Poe's armory that share a common denominator with his more popular works. This dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary approach interpreting various works of Edgar Allan Poe against the backdrop of other cognitive and aesthetic discourses dealing with the topoi of sight and perception. Both in and out of his time, Poe produced works that locate him in his immediate environs as well as transcend nineteenth-century sensibilities to embrace and anticipate visual mechanisms of a later era. This project aims to fill a two-fold gap in Poe scholarship; it focuses on those tales that have been accorded little attention in the past fifteen years, and presents a book-length study on elements of ocularity and perception in Poe's oeuvre that have been explored only in isolated articles and not through a holistic treatment spanning the author's works. Through application of the working principles of the microscope, panorama, phenakitoscope, panopticon, surveillance cameras and other visual disciplines to Poe's works, this study reveals Poe as a timeless cultural signifier, an author who explored diverse nuances of vision and perception in ways that transcend immediate historical and geographical limitations to apprehend certain universal conditions of human existence. "It was open—wide, wide open": Optics and Visual Perception in the Tales of Edgai; Allan Poe Satwik Dasgupta Approved Graduate Committee: Dr. Cu*J C^CH^OI Dr. Carl Ostrowski, Director Dr. Philip Phillips, Reader i Dr. Tom Strawman, Reader/Chair of the Department of English yU»)l& On**/ Dr. Michael D. Allen, Dean of the College of Graduate Studies Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write." - Sir Phillip Sidney, "Loving in Truth" 11 DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my parents, Salil Dasgupta and Bithika Dasgupta, and my brother, Sagnik Dasgupta; their continued moral support helped me to complete this project on time. I cannot thank enough my committee members, Dr. Tom Strawman, Dr. Carl Ostrowski, and Dr. Philip Phillips, for their unqualified support and guidance throughout the period of formulating and writing this dissertation. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Allen Hibbard and Dr. Marion Hollings for their encouragement and support during the initial years of my Ph.D. program. Finally, I am sincerely grateful to Dr. Kevin J. Hayes for graciously answering my queries pertaining to various topics central to this dissertation. Table of Contents Introduction: Re-envisioning Edgar Allan Poe 1 Chapter One: (T)ERROR of the Soul: Optical Illusion "with what foresight" in "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Sphinx," and "The Spectacles" 19 Chapter Two: Poe, Panorama, and the Panoptic Sublime: Sovereign View in "Morning on the Wissahiccon" and "The Island of the Fay" .. .69 Chapter Three: Surveillance Camera Players and Discontent: Anonymous Role Playing in "The Man of the Crowd" 108 Chapter Four: The Anthropocentric Vision: Aesthetics of Effect and Terror in Poe's "Hop-Frog" 146 Chapter Five: Poe and the Pointe Sublime: Surrealistic Meditations in "Berenice," "The Angel of the Odd," and "Three Sundays in a Week" ...195 Conclusion: The Vision Beyond 229 Works Cited ....233 1 Introduction: Re-envisioning Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe—what's in this name? What does it bring to our minds? For a moment, if one withdraws from the platform of academia and re-adjusts one's viewing lens to look through the eyes of a layman not cognizant with the majority of Poe's works, it can be argued that his themes problematize his reputation as a serious literary artist. His tales have the most gruesome visions of violence, terror, and cruelty that have made horror movie franchises proud, but are disturbing to most due to their graphic content and lurid images; his world view is devoid of morality and character judgments; his Machiavellian figures proudly flaunt their evil designs and get away with criminal perpetrations; there is no consistency or control in his protagonists' actions or the way his plots unfold; his hoaxes are over the top, and the comedy is loaded with fierce irony; his poetry is monotonous and arguably labored in design and purpose; and his most popular theory of poetic composition is widely considered to be ludicrous. These probably constitute the major reasons for Poe's reputation as a stringer of sensational ideas rather than a respectable writer. Despite scores of books and articles being published on Poe every year and despite the fact that average Americans will have studied Edgar Allan Poe at some point in their high school years, Poe is primarily perceived as a sensational author along the lines of Stephen King rather than a writer of notable repute. The problem here is not that an average person ought to know more about Poe, but that the author has somehow been set up as an icon and his larger-than-life persona has gained precedence over his works. Poe equals alcoholism, mania, depression, and even dementia, and this •2 partly has to do with the limited perspective of critical studies focusing only on those tales and poems that are popular and consistent with the current tide of academic fashion. Poe is one of the most popular literary artists America has ever produced and, at the same time, arguably the least understood of her men of letters. He continues to be popular,1 and major book-length studies published (specifically in the past ten years) have successfully demonstrated how Poe was connected to his contemporary literary marketplace and actively involved in tapping extensive resources of American culture and drawing them into his works. En route, these works also have pointed out how Poe was not a crazed alcoholic out of his time and should be considered as a serious artist responsibly and crucially engaged in the critical discourses of his era. Whalen's Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses: The Political Economy of Literature in Antebellum America (1999) started the trend of contextualizing Poe within the economics of printing and publishing of the early-nineteenth century, and so did Kevin J. Hayes' Edgar Allan Poe and the Printed Word (2000), which traced Poe's involvement with the books and print culture of his era. Gerald Kennedy's Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe (2001) brought fresh perspectives on the socio-historical conditions prevailing during Poe's time through a collection of essays, and, in the same year, Romancing the Shadow. Poe and Race brought together nine essays on race and slavery issues, prompted by Toni Morrison's observation that "no early American writer is more important to the concept of African Americanism than Poe" (Morrison 79). Among others, this volume included Joan 1 According to a source on the IMDB (Internet Movie Database), the latest news on Poe is that Sylvester Stallone is set to write and direct a movie titled Poe (2009) with Viggo Mortensen in the lead.