DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium—the bitter lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered.Spooky, eh? And a bit long-winded. If you were going to quote Poe in an essay, you'd definitely want to be selective about which parts of this passage you used and how much you used. But you might also find Poe's language heavy, old-fashioned, and difficult to read -- and in that case, you might want to paraphrase. We'll discuss Poe's language and go over quotation and paraphrase during this afternoon's class.
EXERCISE
For this exercise, I'll ask you to use these lines from Poe's story to practice quotation and paraphrase. Let's try to have fun with it.
1. Choose a few lines from the above passage as the material for your quotations.
2. Write a sentence or a few sentences integrating a phrase from Poe into a sentence of your own. The easiest way to do this is to make a comment about Poe's story. For example, if I were writing about "The Raven," I could say: At the beginning of Edgar Allan Poe's long poem "The Raven," the narrator tells us that he has stayed up late reading "a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore." It must be a pretty boring old book, because reading it leaves him "weak and weary" and "nearly napping."
3. Introduce a quotation and then explain what the quotation means. For example: In "The Raven," Edgar Allan Poe's narrator tells us that the events of the poem happened "in the bleak December / And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor." The second line refers to the fact that he's sitting by a lit fireplace, and it's just a fancy, spooky way of describing the effect of the firelight as it shines off the floor.
4. Paraphrase a short passage from Poe. For example: In "The Raven," Poe's narrator tells us that the events of the poem take place in the winter. At the beginning of the poem, he's sitting cozily by the fire, falling asleep over an old book.
5. Now here's a tough one: try to summarize the entire passage from "The Fall of the House of Usher" in five short sentences.
6. Now here's a really tough one: reduce your summary to two short sentences!
7. Share your work in groups of three or four, discussing each person's work and the differences between them. Try to help your classmates by giving constructive criticism about their work!
8. Discuss these questions with your group: How do the changes in word choice and sentence structure change the meaning or tone or "feel" of the passage? What is lost or gained when you quote and paraphrase Poe?
9. Revise your work and post it to your class blog (due 10/16).
Edgar Allan Bro --> 
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