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영어

This paper aims at revealing the ambivalence of Americanness as portrayed in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket(1838). Americanness is a product of history and functions as a nationalistic rhetoric that aims to integrate America as a unity and reshapes the way Americans think and talk about themselves, most of which is optimistic like the concept of Edenic America. Poe’s only novel, The Narrative was written during the renaissance of American literature, a time of rising nationalism. However, the national consciousness that dominated this period of history was parochial, to the extent that it was merely a reflection of the white man’s society, alienating Native Americans, slaves and women. So, the narration by Pym, who enjoys the privileges of a white male southerner, betrays an ambivalence and tension between Pym’s America and its future in an ambiguous tone. The self-contradiction of American society is caused not only by the fact that immigrats from England were so thoroughly steeped in their own traditions, but also by the fact that their liberal democracy and Calvinism were in shameful contrast with the sacrifices of native Americans and slaves. Americanness and its ambivalence in The Narrative are seen in the American will to be free from European tradition, as well as in America’s attempt to partake of that tradition through its liberal democracy and protestantism, both of which run parallel with the ideology of racial discrimination. As a writer in the middle of the romance tradition in the period of American Renaissance, Poe reveals the ambivalence of Americanness through Pym’s narratives and his unconsciousness. This fact alone prompts us to rethink those easy literary assumptions that place artificial walls between our so-called romantic and realistic writers and to see Americanness as an ideological discourse.