Impish Throbbing—Impulses and Imperatives in the Heart of the Story: A Reading of Eudora Welty's "Death of a Traveling Salesman"

In Eudora Welty's first published story, Bowman, the salesman, after getting lost in the countryside and finding shelter in an awkward household, has strange sensations which he later identifies as the throbbing of his heart. My paper, borrowing the title of Peter Schmidt's book, The Heart...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Hungarian journal of English and American studies 2012-04, Vol.18 (1/2), p.227-237
Main Author:	Kállay, Katalin G.
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	"The Death of a Traveling Salesman" 1900-1999 American Fiction American literature Auditory perception Authors Automobiles Blood Death of a Traveling Salesman English Literature Gestures Heart Heart atria Heart Motif Heart ventricles impulsivity Itinerant sales Literature rhythm short story Twentieth Century Welty, Eudora Welty, Eudora (1909-2001) Writing
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	In Eudora Welty's first published story, Bowman, the salesman, after getting lost in the countryside and finding shelter in an awkward household, has strange sensations which he later identifies as the throbbing of his heart. My paper, borrowing the title of Peter Schmidt's book, The Heart of the Story, wishes to examine the motif of the heart in the text as well as the unusual gestures performed by the characters acting upon their heart's impulses. The final shock for Bowman, the ordinariness of the situation ("a marriage, a fruitful marriage") also implies an imperative: the privacy he accidentally found has to be preserved, and he must leave the place, even at the expense of the bursting of his heart. I will also investigate the structural and rhythmical implications of the heart-motif and study the possibilities offered by the "cardiology" of reading and writing.
ISSN:	1218-7364