Edgar Allan Poe 1809 1849 Early Life Born

Edgar Allan Poe 1809 - 1849

Early Life �Born in 1809 in Boston �His parents died before he was three, and he was raised by a wealthy tobacco farmer in Richmond, VA, while his two siblings were raised by other families. �Adoptive father wanted him to take over the family business, but Poe (obsessed with the British poet Lord Byron from an early age) wanted to be a writer. �Attended University of Virginia in 1826, but Allan, his adoptive father, didn’t give him enough money to pay the tuition, so he took up gambling and burned his furniture to keep warm.

Career/Adult Life �A versatile writer, Poe’s work includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. �Widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. �Published first book, Tamerlane (poetry), at age eighteen, and then joined the US Army. �Entered West Point and published a second book (also poetry). �Was thrown out of West Point and published ANOTHER book of poetry.

Career/Adult Life, continued: � Began writing short stories; became Editor and magazine writer for Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, which quickly became the most popular literary magazine in the South. � Poe developed a reputation as a fearless literary critic. And throughout the years, he tried to start many literary magazines of his own, but they all failed. � At age 27, he married his thirteen year old cousin, Virginia Clemm. � Low pay and lack of editorial control at the Messenger, prompted a move to New York City. In the wake of the financial crisis known as the “Panic of 1837, ” Poe struggled to find magazine work and wrote his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

Career/Adult Life, continued: �Moved to Philly in 1838. Wrote for a number of magazines but remained impoverished annoyed with lack of pay for writers. Pushed for better pay and better copyright laws. Tried to start another magazine. �In 1842, his young wife contracted tuberculosis (the same disease that had claimed his mother, brother, and adoptive mother). �His poem “The Raven” was published in 1845, finally making him a household name. �Moved to a tiny cottage in the Virginia countryside, where his wife finally passed away in 1847.

Final Years �Most critics didn’t think Poe would live long after the death of his wife, and they were correct. He spent the two years following her death traveling, lecturing, and writing. �He began to court his ex-girlfriend from years earlier (now a widow). �Left VA to go on a routine business trip and was found in a bar room in a public house used for election polling. �Was sent to a hospital and died five days later on Oct. 7, 1849 at age 40. The cause of death remains a mystery.

Our Image of Poe �The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. �Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. �But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

Why this Tarnished Image? �After Poe’s mysterious death in 1849, his biggest rival, Rufus Griswold, attempted to get back at Poe for so harshly criticizing his work for many years. Griswold wrote a mostly fabricated biography of Poe, painting the writer as a drunken, tortured, womanizing, depressive, madman with no morals and no friends. �Griswold meant to cause the public to dismiss Poe and his works, but the biography had exactly the opposite effect and instead drove the sales of Poe’s books higher than they had ever been during the author’s lifetime. Griswold’s distorted image of Poe created the Poe legend that lives to this day while Griswold is only remembered (if at all) as Poe’s first biographer.

His Writing: Inventor of the Detective Story � His story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” established the prototype future mystery writers would follow. � Sherlock Holmes creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote, “Where was the detective story before Poe breathed the breath of life into it? ” He considered Poe the father of the detective genre and based Holmes on Poe’s character C. Auguste Dupin.

His Writing: Pioneer of Science Fiction �In 1835, Poe published “Hans Phaall, A Tale” the story of a trip to the moon. Although other writers had written fantastic stories, Poe added realistic scientific details to make his stories more believable. �Poe’s science fiction tales were so believable that he once reported in the New York Sun that someone had crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon — decades before it would actually happen. Eager to learn all about this fantastic voyage, New Yorkers rushed to buy the paper, only later to discover they had been fooled. The story is now called “The Balloon Hoax. ”

His Writing: Master of Psychological Horror � Much of Poe’s popular appeal rests on a few of his tales of terror, but the horror genre has frequently been ignored or derided by critics. Poe believed terror was a part of life and therefore a legitimate subject for literature. � By Poe’s time, Gothic fiction had already been popularized by Horace Walpole and Charles Brockman Brown. Their tales typically centered on family curses and haunted castles, but Poe moved the action away from a remote castle and into an everyday setting like a home (“The Tell-Tale Heart, ” “The Black Cat”) or a school (“William Wilson”). � Even when Poe set his horror tale in a distant land he focused less on the location than on the psychology of his characters. Poe also wrote about the subjects that were generating newspaper headlines in his day— murders, premature burials, and grave robberies.

His Writing: America’s First Great Literary Critic �His reviews tended to be scathing and some might say unfair. �He had strong ideas about what constituted “good writing, ” and believed “good writing” should be original and should have an emotional impact on the reader. He also thought the entire story should be composed with that emotional impact in mind. �Poe believed the short story was superior to the novel because it could be read in one sitting, so the emotional impact would build and build the entire time, whereas reading a novel required taking breaks and, thus, downplaying the importance of emotion.

“The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) � Characters: � Unnamed narrator; Roderick Usher; Madeline Usher; the House of Usher? � The Setting � No actual location, but great attention to describing time of year and physical details of the house � Themes � Claustrophobia and Confinement ; Crossing Boundaries; Paranoia and Fear; Invasion; Impermanency; Family; Identity � Motifs and Symbols � The house; Doubling/Doppelgangers; Reality vs. Art � Foreshadowing � The title; the house (again); the works of lit and art; the atmosphere; the revelation that Roderick and Madeline are twins

The Epigraph? � Son coeur est un luth suspendu; Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne. – De Beranger Translation: "His/her heart is a poised lute; as soon as it is touched, it resounds. ” � Who wrote the epigraph? The narrator? Roderick Usher? � Why the gender-neutral pronoun son? To exemplify the complex connection between Roderick and Madeline? � Meaning? � “These lines describe a heart so alone that it is poised and ready for touch, and so sensitive that it will resound the moment it is. Recall the story’s theme of isolation as well as Roderick’s “acuteness of the senses” and try running with that. ”

The Gothic Tradition? �Characteristics of the Gothic tradition include a heightened and extravagant style of writing: an atmosphere of brooding, unknown menace or terror; the setting of a decaying medieval castle with long underground passages and mysterious rooms; and the appearance of ghosts and other supernatural phenomena.

On the Effectiveness of Poe’s Techniques and Other Matters �At a time when “horror movie” usually means sadistic violence and revolting gore, do you find Poe’s use of atmosphere and suggestion effective? Why or why not? �Do you find the story successful in creating uneasiness and dread? �Does the narrator suggest any reasons for the fall of the House of Usher? If so, what are they? �Is the story more effective as the working out of a cause-and-effect process, or as an instance of unknown horror?