Department of English
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
The Tell-Tale Heart
(1843)
Edgar Allan Poe
(January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849)
Notes
First rejected by The Boston Miscellany of Literature and Fashion because the publishers wanted "more quiet articles," this short story was eventually published in the inaugural issue of the short-lived (only three issues printed) literary magazine The Pioneer in January 1843.
The Pioneer (1843) version of the story has an epigraph: the fourth stanza of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life." This poem contains another stanza, the seventh, well-known to Thais because it has been translated into the memorable kloang printed in Dusitsmit 1.11 (1918), and cited frequently and widely.
135 dissimulation:
137 tattoo:
138 scantlings:
139 dissemble:
The Philosophy of Composition
I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping originality always in view—for he is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest—I say to myself, in the first place, “Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?” Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid effect, I consider whether it can best be wrought by incident or tone—whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone—afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect.
[...]
The initial consideration was that of extent. If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression—for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and everything like totality is at once destroyed.
[...]
That pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure, is, I believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect—they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul—not of intellect, or of heart—upon which I have commented, and which is experienced in consequence of contemplating “the beautiful.” [...] Now the object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. Truth, in fact, demands a precision, and Passion, a homeliness (the truly passionate will comprehend me) which are absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excitement, or pleasurable elevation, of the soul. [...]
Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next question referred to the tone of its highest manifestation—and all experience has shown that this tone is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
[...]
But in subjects so handled, however skilfully, or with however vivid an array of incident, there is always a certain hardness or nakedness, which repels the artistical eye. Two things are invariably required—first, some amount of complexity, or more properly, adaptation; and, secondly, some amount of suggestiveness—some under[[-]]current, however indefinite of meaning. It is this latter, in especial, which imparts to a work of art so much of that richness (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term) which we are too fond of confounding with the ideal.
—Edgar Allan Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition," Graham's Magazine 28.4 (1846): 163–67.
Sonnet—To Science
Science, meet daughter of
old time thou art, Who alterest all things with thy piercing eyes! Why pray’st thou thus upon the poet’s heart— Vulture, whose wings are dull realities! How shall he love thee, or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering, To seek for treasure in the jewell’d skies, Albeit he soar with an undaunted wing. Hast thou not dragg’d Diana from her car, And driven the Hamadryad from the wood, To seek for shelter in some happier star, The gentle Nais from the fountain flood. The elfin from the greenwood and from me, The summer’s dream beneath the shrubbery. |
—Edgar
Allan Poe, "Sonnet—To
Science," Saturday Evening Post
9.470 (1830): 1.
Study Questions
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Review Sheet
Characters
Narrator – "True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am" (135); "Villains!...dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!" (139)
Old man – "Who's
there?" (136); "It is nothing but the wind in the chimney—it is only a
mouse crossing the floor...it is merely a cricket which has made a single
chirp" (136)
Setting
Sample Student Responses to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"
Prompt: The act of reading rests upon some familiar ground or structure like grammar and language conventions with the understanding that some new information is proposed. Likewise, a story works because on some foundation of recognizable elements, it offers something unknown. Discuss an example of such interplay between expectations and surprise in one of the stories we have read.
Response 1:
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Response 2:
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Edgar Allan Poe
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Reference
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. and introd. Stephen Peithman. New York: Avenel Books, 1986. 134–9. Print.
Further Reading
Jay, Gregory S. "Poe and the Unconscious." Modern Interpretations of Poe. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Print.
Kennedy, J. Gerald Kennedy. Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987. Print.
Levy,
Maurice. "Poe and the Gothic Tradition." Trans. Richard Henry Harwell. ESQ
18.1 (1972): 19–25. Print.
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