New Historicist Study of Demon Lover Essay example

“Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow. In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black.” (xi) This shows the contrast between the White City and the Black City. One, perfect, beautiful, magical, the other dark, filthy, evil. The two work together yet against each other in the battle to win over the hearts of the people who visit, and those who decide to stay

The social code of the Victorian era places women in a role of obedience. They are expected to fulfill duties such as a mother, keeper of a house, and to be a quiet and “behaved” spouse. The narrator in this story is an obedient spouse, who has become a new mother that experiences postpartum depression. The change in her role sparks a change in her demeanor, causing a “nervous condition”, in which her husband dictates her treatment. John’s treatment of his wife represents the powerless-ness and repression of women during the late nineteenth-century.” (Wilson). John’s authority over her treatment, mimics that of patient to doctor relationship, and further reminds her of her secondary status during the era.

The events in Elisabeth Bower's 'The Demon Lover'; can be explained naturally. The story being as vague as it is leads most to concur with the title of the story and imagine that there is a supernatural aspect in the story. In the short story, Kathleen has returned to her home in London that has been abandoned during the bombing of World War II. She is not expected, yet she finds a letter addressed to her on a table in the hallway. Twenty-five years has past since the leaving of her former lover during World War I. Kathleen's lover is had been presumed dead after months of being missing in action and she has moved on. She is now married to a William Dover and living the countryside with her immediate

“The Haunted Palace” is one of Edgar Allen Poe’s mysterious and phantasmagoric poems. Written in the same year as “The Devil in the Belfry,” and included in his short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Haunted Palace” is another tale of innocence and happiness now corroded with sorrow and madness. It is fairly easy to say that “The Haunted Palace” is a metaphor for Poe’s own ghostly troubled mind, more than it is about a decaying palace. For in 1839, it was found in a book that the main character in “The Fall of the House of Usher” comes across. In the context of its appearance in “Usher,” it is startlingly clear that this is no fable of earthly decay, but one of mental and spiritual ruin.

In "The Demon Lover," by Elizabeth Bowen, Kathleen Drover returns to London from her house in the country in order to gather some things that she and her husband had abandoned during the bombings of the war. It is a humid, rainy day in late August and her once familiar street is now mostly deserted. The caretaker of her house is supposed to be out of town for a week and her arrival is assumed unknown. Mrs. Drover enters the old musty house and discovers a letter addressed to herself and it is marked with the present date. Curious to know if the caretaker is back in town and a little annoyed by the letter seeming to have no urgency in being mailed to her, she proceeds upstairs to her old bedroom to read it. In utter shock and complete

All three versions of “The Demon Lover has the same common messages: to be careful in trust, be careful of the vows you make, and that the decisions of the young often come back around negatively. All three pieces exemplify these messages heavily. Of all of the works maintaining these themes, Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” displays these messages the most vehemently. Bowen’s version of “The Demon Lover” take on the principles of Harris’ “The Demon Lover” and makes the ideals more noticeable to the novice reader.

The great debate whether Satan is the hero of Milton’s Epic Poem, Paradise Lost, has been speculated for hundreds of years. Milton, a writer devoted to theology and the appraisal of God, may not have intended for his portrayal of Satan to be marked as heroic. Yet, this argument is valid and shares just how remarkable the study of literature can be. Milton wrote his tale of the fall of man in the 1674. His masterpiece is an example of how ideas of a society change with time. This is because it wasn’t until the 1800’s during the Romantic era, that people no longer saw the hero of literary works as perfect in every way. It started to become more popular to develop the flawed character similar to the ones written in the classics. A literary

Besides creating a narrator that reveals the complex dynamics of female oppression, the writer also employs symbolism to enhance her message and depression that is given the fact that the narrator feels trapped and it is easy to assume that the woman she sees in the yellow wallpaper is a symbol of herself, not climbing thought the pattern therefore the yellow wallpaper and the character are two separate object. In ‘The Fall of The House of Usher’, the narrator states that ‘I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep,  and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all,’ showing the connection between the family and the house which suggested that Usher and the house are one. While comparing to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ seems lack of these connections to show the intense rather than expressing the woman feeling oblivion of being trapped and faced oppression behind the

The setting of this story takes place in the Usher manor a creepy place located in a “dreary tract of country.” When the narrator first sees the estate he feels “an insufferable gloom” because of the manors horrible state. With its “eye-like windows” and “decayed trees...I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the afterdream of the reveler upon opium.” Poe establishes a Gothic setting through the narrator's point of view just like in “Young Goodman Brown.”

He first emphasizes how ample and bright the place is. He also narrates how there are “poisonous particles… as motes in sun-beams, into the lungs” (40). He expresses how suffocating this place is with a cough (14). The fact that the women don’t cough and are “used to it” is like saying they don’t breathe anymore. He describes the women as the “blank-looking girls, with blank, white folders in their blank hands” (12). He portrays these women as cadavers being preserved in this cold place, like a morgue. He says, “…face pale with work, and blue with cold; an eye supernatural with unrelated misery” (11). He is intentionally making the reader feel they are dead alive through the description of a physical death, then a social and emotional death.

The tone of each piece is set in each one is amplified by the social and political climate of the time and the current historical viewing. The post-war disillusionment displayed in both pieces addresses what lead society into the new attitudes sprouting up in the 1920s. In conclusion, Graves’ investigation of modern disillusionment works in tangent with Survage’s discussion of isolation explores how the horrors of World War I effected societal

To start off the analysis, the setting of the entire poem is significant. Though the poem takes place in a house, the atmosphere the house is set in is also important. The month is September which is a month of fall which can be seen as a symbol for decline. It definitely insinuates that the poem is leading towards death. Line 1 has “September rain falls on the house” which gives the feeling of a dark and cold night with a storm on top of that. To further develop that, Bishop gives us the failing light in line 2 to also give us an idea of the grandmother’s struggle. Bishop uses the cyclical theme of changing seasons to show the unending nature of what is transpiring within the

Not to mention the Vitamin D deficiency, a perpetual gloomy and bleak ambiance is clearly beneficial to neither the mind, body, nor soul. However, the Ushers are doomed to such a dark environment in a house is so dilapidated and dreary that “The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within.” (3-4) These windows give a sense of sensory and social deprivation, as if it would be impossible to reach the outside world. In addition, the cheerless environment is made obvious from the first paragraph when the clouds are described as “oppressively low” (1) as the narrator journeys through “a singularly dreary tract of country.” (1) The lackluster location took a severe toll on the physical stability of Roderick and Madeleine, but the lack of friendly faces was the real deciding factor of their downfall.

The setting presented in this story has a very dark and gloomy atmosphere which has been used as a technique to help outline the scene. It is set in the one location; a bedroom. Poe describes the room as being “black as pitch with the thick darkness,” which deepens the effect of terror. The night setting gives the text an eerie feel as it focuses on the horrors of night time. This horror creates a noticeable impact which is recognisable when the victim cried out “who’s there?” against the backdrop of frighteningly still silence. Ultimately, the way in which Poe’s story is set builds anxiety and fear in the reader.

New historicism was born in the end of 1970s. It is one of the most important theories of literary criticism. It is different from the old historicism. New historicism stressed that the implementation of a comprehensive reading of texts from political power, ideology, cultural hegemony perspectives, formalism. Its research focuses on literature and life, literature and history, literature and power discourse. The New historicism breaks the kind of wordplay deconstruction strategy, making the recovery of historical consciousness becomes an important methodological principles of literary criticism and literary studies. Some scholars hold the view that the new historicism is sure to permeate in all the fields of literature. Main animateurs of new historicism are Stephen Greenblatt and Hayden White. Stephen Greenblatt attached importance to research the self-shaping of renaissance. He regarded literature as the history of reshaping human’s heart. He tended to create cultural poetics of historical context. Hayden White engaged in the history of consciousness in 19th century. He advocated the narrative historical poetic theory.