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Abstract

Magnetic telegraph, a novel “new media” technology in the early 19th century, created a unique historical chronotope that profoundly influenced American symbolic literary culture. However, there has been a persistent oversight regarding the poetic connection between symbolism and the magnetic telegraph. Symbolist poetry and detective stories, as observed by Marshall McLuhan, exemplified the emergence of new genres inspired by the spirit of the age of the magnetic telegraph. Yet, it is essential to recognize that the techno-cultural conditions that gave birth to the invention of the magnetic telegraph stemmed from the ancient epistemology of symbolism itself. This connection involved the providential convergence of symbolist epistemology, the discovery of electromagnetism in the early 19th century, archaeological revelations of Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the spiritual mindset of American puritanism. This study focuses on three symbolist figures — Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville-who bear witness to the age of the magnetic telegraph through their narrative strategies. Notably, these authors were not only inspired by the encryption techniques of the magnetic telegraph, but they also harnessed its symbolist principles in a metalinguistic sense, fostering a media-tech poetics that evolved from modelization to anamorphization and self-reflexivization.

Keywords

symbolism, magnetic telegraph, media tech, poetics

First Page

194

Last Page

204

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