Tsay Yelena Nikolayevna

Syuy-Fu-Shin Olga Viktorovna

Karaganda State University named after academician E.A. Buketov

The Role of Epithet in Creation of Mysterious Images in Writings of E.A. Poe

At present time many researchers in the field of linguistics devote their works to the problems of the text as well as its components. Stylistic aspects of the text are in a great favour among the scholars. Epithet has remained over the centuries one of the most frequently used stylistic devices, it gives very good opportunities of qualifying and evaluating every thing and phenomenon from the author’s subjective point of view, which is indispensable in works of literature.

The power of such a stylistic device as epithet, which is considered as one of the most expressive means, found its reflection in creative works of the famous American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe. Importantly, the peculiarities of his style widely manifest themselves in the epithets.

The basic aim of this article is to analyze functioning of epithets from the point of view of E.A. Poe’s style.

Edgar Allan Poe is best known for his tales of mystery and macabre. Thus, many scientists share the opinion about his obsession with the elements of fear and death, and the supernatural. The majority of his fiction works are known as Gothic. As a traditional subject of Gothic style scholars consider a death, the ultimate outcome which appears as a fateful consequence of the utmost psychological state of the deranged men committing the horrendous crimes against other human beings. “Many of Poe’s tales and poems conjure terror and trepidation, they penetrate the imagination with fantasy. Poe repeatedly attempts and succeeds at making his readers endure analogous feelings as those characters in his works” [1, 69].

Through Edgar Allan Poe’s use of descriptive language and special attention to details he resorts to the theme of horror which is evident in almost each of his short stories. In “The Black Cat”, such an innocent creature as a cat (even black), becomes the reason of all evil causes killing of the pet and the eventual brutal murder of the narrator’s wife. The author creates an image “a crafty animal” and “a hideous beast” which drives the narrator mad and regarded by him as a demon. The writer skillfully uses descriptive epithets in this works making its images bright and vivid.

The descriptive epithets are frequently employed by Edgar Allan Poe to project a total image of the story. To prove this fact “The Fall of the House of Usher” can be used as an instance. In this work horrible and mysterious epithets prevail: “a dull, dark, and soundless day”, “dreary tract”, “the hideous dropping”, “a black and lurid tarn”, “the vacant eye-like windows”, etc.

All stylistic devices in E.A. Poe’s writings are not incidental. It is noteworthy how the author uses the colour epithets to render the mood of the tale: “I looked upon the scene before me… upon a few white trunks of decayed trees” [2, 65]. Here the epithet “white” is a figurative epithet which means not only a colour of trees but, first of all, it conveys the sense ‘dead’. A white colour for ages was associated with death and rather frequently was treated as synonym to the adjective ‘macabre’. This assertion is also corroborated with the word expression “decayed trees”. The fixed epithet “decayed” is expressed by attribute in the meaning ‘rotten’. The images of these trees make the picture of the described landscape gloomier and oppressive. In his story “Massage Found in a Bottle” E.A. Poe resorts to another colour epithet which can be referred to the shade of green: “phosphoric sea-brilliancy”. In this expression the adjective obtains a connotative meaning of ‘ghastly shine’.

Another trait of Edgar Allan Poe’s style is presence of the feeling of the superstitious terror typical for his characters. Thus in “The Black Cat” the narrator is profoundly superstitious. He is extremely terrified of the black cat, damnation, the Devil and the punishment of the God. All these superstitions found their reflection in epithets. This tale differs from other stories due to the language of religion and folkloristic superstition. According to the religious view of the world, it is divided into forces of pure good and pure evil and of the human soul as a battleground of those forces. Considering this, the superstitious epithets of “The Black Cat” can be grouped in the following way illustrated by Table 1:

Table 1

The usage of the superstitious epithets in “The Black Cat”

The superstitious epithets associated with
the Devil	the God	the Soul
“fiendish malevolence”	“The Most Merciful and Most Terrible God”	“immortal soul”
“demonical interference”	“High God”	“deadly sin” (for both the God and the Soul)
‘Fiend Intemperance”	“deadly sin” (for both the God and the Soul)
“damnable atrocity”
“evil thoughts”

Relying on Table 1 we can make the conclusion that the personage of the narrator of this story, as the majority of superstitious people, is mostly afraid of unknown for him evil forces and the Fiend and only after that he cares about the God longing to escape his punishment and, as a consequence of this, about his soul. The character easily commits crimes and does not feel any pangs of conscience or regret.

Moreover epithets serve to develop the themes which are determined by the author’s style and thereby they emphasize the significance of these elements. This phenomenon can be observed in the literary text of “The Fall of the House of Usher”.

- the theme of horror (expressed by means of such epithets as “dreary”, “gray”, “gloomy”, “hideous”, etc.);

- the theme of fear (which inevitably results from the previous one, its evidence is a frequent usage of the words “dreadful”, “ghastly”, “horrible” which makes readers to feel this insanity caused by terror);

- the theme of madness and sickness (this can be seen through such epithets as “mad”, “wild”, “sickly”, “feeble”, “oppressive”, “morbid”, etc., they allow readers to experience the madness which fills the whole story);

- the theme of death (the image of which appears with the help of “cadaverously wan”, “decayed”, “white”, “pestilent”, etc.);

- the theme of sorrow (its marks can be found in the epithets “bitter”, “sorrowful”, “deplorable”, etc.);

- the theme of mystery (to develop it the author employs such stylistic devices as “phantasmagoric”, “extraordinary”, “mystic”, “unnatural”, “fantastic”).

As a result of the given analysis it might be said that the epithet is a stylistic device the usage of which is in the majority of cases is purely individual for the authors; it bears particular features of the writer’s (or, poet’s) style. E.A. Poe skillfully uses epithets to render the peculiarities of his style which is gloomy, Gothic and horrific.

Literature

1. Vincent Buranelli. Edgar Allan Poe. - Twayne, 1977. – 166 p.

2. Edgar Allan Poe. The Fall of the House of Usher // Tales. - Kessinger Publishing, 2004. – PP. 65-81