Poe’s name excavated: The mediating function and the transformation of discourse theme into discourse rheme

Abstract

This article examines the mediating function that transforms the topic presented, usually but not always in the initial position of a text, into the comment, in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Haunted Palace’. In this text, a poem in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, the mediation, which is indicated in parentheses, is realized through various transformational devices, for example, a gradual change of lexical items (e.g. a graphological and voice inversion like _III-2saw – (_III-8was seen) – _IV-2 Was….₆Was). This function mediates the discourse theme, PAST GLORY (EXISTENCE) into the discourse rheme, PRESENT FALL (DESTRUCTION). This short text displays Poe’s exquisite skill in using the poetic devices that were available at that time. Unlike Old English poetry, which was exclusively delivered orally, or medieval poetry, which was circulated in manuscript but transmitted largely through the medium of sound, this 19th century work added several different communicative aspects characteristic of poetry circulated in print following a functional pattern of thematization common to communicative events. Through the discussion of functional arrangements of the traditional and ‘new’ textual devices, Poe’s name is shown to be anagrammatically embedded to mediate the topic of the text, or discourse theme, PAST GLORY (EXISTENCE), and the comment on the topic, or discourse rheme, PRESENT FALL (DESTRUCTION).