Similarities Between Edgar Allan Poe And Transcendentalism

Romantic literature encompasses both transcendentalist and gothic writers. Although they use different syntax and diction, both Edgar Allen Poe, a gothic writer, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, a transcendentalist, achieve similar ideas about how society limits individuality . The authors use literary devices to convey the idea that society puts limits on accepting individuality. Edgar Allen Poe and Ralph Waldo Emerson use differing syntax, yet still similarly portray societies limits on individuality. In his short story “ The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe uses syntax to convey societies effect on individuality. “It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises

In his short story “The fall of the house of Usher,” Edgar allan Poe uses diction to show the negative aspects of society. “Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable beauties, of musical science.”(Poe 414) Poe uses diction such as ‘excessive’ and ‘habitual’ to give a negative description to show that the narrator, a member of society, did not like the way an individual was. Emerson tends to use diction with more aggressive connotation to get the same idea across. “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. . .”(Emerson 370) . Emerson uses such diction as ‘ignorance’ and ‘suicide’ to give a true representation of what conforming to society is. The authors say that society does not care for