批評家としてのPoeの南部的特色について

The traditional view of Poe and his place in American literature is the view that he lived and wrote "out of space, out of time"; that he displayed scarcely any concern for the American\u27 scene, people, or the American problems of his time, that he made no attempt to glorify the history or civilization of his country, and further that scarcely anywhere in his imaginative writings did he leave the mark of being an American. It is, therefore, maintained that Poe stands alone, outside the main stream of the American literary tradition. There are, on the other hand, some scholars who hold that Poe was not so isolated a figure as has been believed, but that a more compre-hensive examination of Poe\u27s writings proves that he was considerably indebted to his age and environment. They maintain the view that he betrayed, in his more critical writings, not a little interest in things American and in the social and cultural conditions of his native country. In the light of the latter view of Poe, and on the general assumption that very few writers transcend the regional, social and intellectual climate in which they live, I have attempted, in this essay, to discover any possible influence on Poe of the South of his time, especially of the Virginia where he spent most of his youth. In spite of being born in Boston, Poe always claimed to be a Virginian; in fact, he was brought up and educated as a Southern gentleman. His appearance, his personal bearing, his speech, his temperament, his sensibility and imagination as well as his habits of thought showed distinct Southern traits. His chivalrous, sentimental attitude toward woman, and his ideals of womanhood are Southern. His proud, cavalierly manner, his moody, excitable temperament, his love of reverie, his sensibility to music and color, and besides all these his warm hospitality to friends and faithfulness to his family undoubtedly bore the mark of the South. With regards to Poe\u27s attitude toward the social and political conditions of his contemporary America, he also seems to have been a Southerner. His social and political views more or less reflected the opinions of the ruling classes of the ante-bellum South, to which he liked to think he belonged. As an intellectual aristocrat and a firm individualist, Poe showed antipathy to democracy and social reform, which seemed to him "to annihilate the indi-vidual by means of aiding the mass." He was too pessimistic to have faith in the doctrines of progress and of human perfectibility. He opposed feminism and the abolition movement. He was hostile to the rising industrialism and despised the American love of dollars as a degenerating expression of utili-tarianism. It may be considered as well that Poe\u27s suspicion of any radical change had its root in the resistance of the conservative South against the threatening influence of the North