Cask Of Amontillado

♦ SOCIAL SENSITIVITY ♦

In the first half of the nineteenth century there was a great call for Americans to develop a national literature, by which was meant a body of works written by Americans, published by Americans, and dealing with particularly American characters, locales, and themes. The United States was still a young country, and most American readers and writers looked to Europe for great books and great authors, as well as for literary forms and themes. In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson gave an influential address titled "The American Scholar," in which he called upon Americans to combine the best of European ideas with a determined self-knowledge, to create the new American intellectual who would best be able to lead the nation. Writers and publishers hoped

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The Cask of Amontillado

that a national call for a national literature would create a stronger market for their products/ which were being outsold by European imports.

Poe, although he had the same difficulty supporting himself through writing as his contemporaries, did not wholeheartedly embrace the movement. On the one hand, his published criticism and reviews railed against writers who wrote mere imitations of popular European writers. But neither did he approve of writing that was too patriotic, that offered clicMd praise of the United States but had little artistic merit. He was also critical of those who praised inferior work simply because it was American. Like Emerson, Poe believed in using elements from Europe if they were useful artistically, and he believed that international settings helped establish universality. Still, he called upon American writers to use their imaginations to produce original and vital works. In "The Cask of Amontillado," therefore, he used a European setting to create his exotic and murky atmosphere, but within the structure of the new and distinctly American short story form.

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