Terrors of the Soul: Religious Pluralism, Epistemological Dread, and Cosmic Exaltation in Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

IF 0.1 4区 文学 0 LITERATURE, AMERICAN Poe Studies-History Theory Interpretation Pub Date : 2006-01-12 DOI:10.1111/J.1754-6095.2006.TB00194.X
Brian D Yothers
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引用次数: 3

Abstract

Few critics have drawn our attention to the significance of doubt, irony, ambivalence, and skepticism for the study of dark romanticism as forcibly as G. R. Thompson. I suggest that an often-overlooked source of the epistemological uncertainties that pervade the gothic works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville is the frequently chaotic religious pluralism of nineteenthcentury America. Nineteenth-century Americans faced a bewildering variety of religious options that offered widely disparate ontological, ethical, and epistemological bases for understanding their world. The proliferation of new religious denominations and sects within the United States offered a multitude of angles from which to view mainstream Protestantism (and to depart from it), while American travelers and intellectuals increasingly encountered works from religrous traditions that were strikingly different from Protestantism, including not only Roman Catholicism and Judaism but also Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. As the writings of the transcendentalists attest, the experience of religious pluralism could be p r e foundly liberating and exhilarating, but this same experience could also be the source of tremendous intellectual and psychological vertigo. Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville each explore the terrors and promises of religious pluralism in distinctive ways in their works. Poe’s prose poem Eureka, a curious pastiche of philosophy and farce, plays out the problem of pluralism on a grand scale. Hawthorne’s engagement with religious pluralism is more explicit, both in his accounts of the Puritans’ persecution of Quakers and Anglicans in colonial New England and in his deeply ironic discussion of American spiritual diversity in “The Celestial Railroad.” Melville, meanwhile, puts the problems and promises of pluralism at the center of his work, from the interaction of Ishmael and Queequeg and the sinister role played by the Parsee Fedallah in Mob-Dick to the anguished interreligious debates in his long poem Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Terms like “pluralism” and “dialogue” are often tossed about casually as if they represent solutions to religious difference in themselves. Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, each in his own way, explore the anguish, fear, and uncertainty attendant on any effort to think seriously and systematically about religious difference. My focus in this essay will be on Poe’s representation of the euphoria connected with pluralism in Eureka and “Mesmeric Revelations,” Hawthorne’s skepticism about the liberalization of religious belief prompted by religious pluralism in “The Celes tial Railroad,” and Melville’s anguished grappling with both the allure and the terrifylng uncertainty associated with religious pluralism in Clarel.
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灵魂的恐怖:坡、霍桑和梅尔维尔的宗教多元论、认识论的恐惧和宇宙的升华
很少有批评家能像g·r·汤普森那样,让我们注意到怀疑、反讽、矛盾心理和怀疑主义对黑暗浪漫主义研究的重要性。我认为,坡、霍桑和梅尔维尔的哥特式作品中充斥着认识论上的不确定性,而这种不确定性的一个经常被忽视的来源是19世纪美国经常出现的混乱的宗教多元主义。19世纪的美国人面临着各种各样令人眼花缭乱的宗教选择,这些选择为理解他们的世界提供了广泛不同的本体论、伦理学和认识论基础。在美国,新兴宗教派别和教派的激增为观察主流新教(或背离它)提供了多种角度,而美国旅行者和知识分子越来越多地接触到与新教截然不同的宗教传统的作品,不仅包括罗马天主教和犹太教,还包括伊斯兰教、印度教、佛教和儒家。正如先验论者的著作所证明的那样,宗教多元主义的经历可能是令人解放和振奋的,但同样的经历也可能是巨大的智力和心理眩晕的来源。坡、霍桑和梅尔维尔在各自的作品中都以独特的方式探讨了宗教多元化的恐怖和希望。坡的散文诗《尤里卡》(Eureka)是哲学与闹剧的奇妙结合,在很大程度上展现了多元化的问题。霍桑与宗教多元化的接触更为明显,无论是在他对新英格兰殖民地清教徒迫害贵格会教徒和英国国教教徒的描述,还是在《天国铁路》(the Celestial Railroad)中对美国精神多样性的深刻讽刺讨论中。与此同时,梅尔维尔将多元主义的问题和承诺置于其作品的中心,从以赛梅尔和魁魁格的互动,以及《暴民记》中帕西人费达拉所扮演的邪恶角色,到他的长诗《克拉雷尔:一首诗和圣地朝圣》中痛苦的宗教间辩论。像“多元主义”和“对话”这样的术语经常被随意地抛出,仿佛它们本身就代表了宗教差异的解决方案。坡、霍桑和梅尔维尔都以自己的方式探索了认真而系统地思考宗教差异所带来的痛苦、恐惧和不确定性。在这篇文章中,我的重点将是坡在《尤里卡》和《催眠启示》中对多元主义带来的狂喜的表现,霍桑在《塞莱斯铁路》中对宗教多元主义引发的宗教信仰自由化的怀疑,以及梅尔维尔在《克拉雷尔》中对宗教多元主义带来的诱惑和可怕的不确定性的痛苦挣扎。
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