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Nov 11, 2020 · Thomas De Quincey’s essay On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth is one of the best known of his critical works-it appears in most anthologies of criticism and nineteenth-century prose, and is hailed it as “the finest romantic criticism.” “On the knocking at the Gate in Macbeth” was first published in the London Magazine in October ...
- Feeling Over Understanding
- The Meaning of Sympathy
- Time Stands Still
Thomas De Quincey was a Romantic-era writer and valued emotion and intuition over logic and reason. He begins this essay by sharing his profound emotional experience at the moment someone knocks at the gate after Duncan's murder in Macbeth. De Quincey's concern with feeling rather than logic or rhetoric distinguish his essay from other Shakespearea...
De Quincey says that people feel revulsion if they only have sympathy or an emotional connection to the victims. Murder goes against the human instinct to self-preserve, and it evokes repulsion but does not help people understand human nature. De Quincey states that this perspective does not work for poetry. It would be vulgar if a poet only evoked...
De Quincey can explain the significance of the feeling he experiences at the knocking at the gate in Macbethby describing other times he's felt the same feeling. He describes the gasp after a woman faints or the first noise after a moment of silence. These small events break the stillness of an emotionally significant moment. Other similar moments ...
Essays. From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murderer a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet ...
This is why De Quincey says that the knocking of the gate "reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity": it provides perspective that allows us to see how terrible a deed the murder is, a perspective not possible during the moment of annihilation itself.
[De Quincey, a Romantic essayist, critic, and author of Confessions of an English Eater, contributed to Shakespearean criticism with his famous essay "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth," first published in 1823. In the excerpt below, De Quincey explains the profound effect of the knocking heard in Macbeth following Duncan's murder.
Macbeth. ". Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) was an English essayist and literary critic, best known for his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822), and for the short essay, "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth," first published the London Magazine for October 1823. Murder, in ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly ...
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Analysis of Thomas De Quincey’s On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth. By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on November 11, 2020 • ( 0). Thomas De Quincey’s essay On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth is one of the best known of his critical works-it appears in most anthologies of criticism and nineteenth-century prose, and is hailed it as “the finest romantic criticism.”…
