...Maddox English IV and History April 22, 2011 Edgar Allan Poe To most people, Edgar Allan Poe was a troubled soul that had many psychological issues. Some people think that his works mimicked his own mental torment and torture; others thought that he was an American writer romantically doomed to failure by events and emotions too great for him to handle. His writings reflect each theory, and his style was very unique and unusual for the time period in which they were written. The artistic liberties and risks that Poe took in his works sparked the beginning of what we call the Romanticism Period. The hardships and tragedies which Edgar Allan Poe faced throughout his life played a big part in influencing his writing, how his writing influenced the period, and how it affected his mental stability (Life 240). Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, to David and Elizabeth Poe. He had two siblings, a younger sister named Rosalie and an older brother named Henry. When Poe was just one, his father abandoned his wife and children. At two his mother died of tuberculosis and the children were split up into different homes (Tragedies 240). Poe was taken in by John Allan and his childless wife Frances, giving him his middle name. Having experienced many tragedies at an early age, he, starting at the age of six, developed a great fear of death and this influenced how and what he would later write (Jordan np). The Allan couple lived in Richmond, Virginia, and Poe was...
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...The Dark Side of Poe Edgar Allen Poe took romanticism to the next level by inadvertently helping to create Dark (Gothic) Romanticism. Poe was not a big writer in America because people in America did not appreciate his writings at that time, but in France he was one of the biggest writers. “Even though many contemporaries in America did not appreciate his work, Poe was hailed as a genius in circles of French intellectuals” (Grieneisen 22). Dark Romanticism helped people let go of the things that were bottled up on the inside. Poe’s interest into the dark side of writing probably came about to try and intrigue Americans to get behind him and his writings. The creation of monsters, vampires, werewolves, etc. was a way for writers and readers to let out their inner “demons.” Romanticism is based on emotion, nature, and the human psyche among other things. Romanticism came at a time where people needed an outlet for additional forms of entertainment. Before romanticism most writings were based off of things people believed whole heartedly in or everyday life. There were the normal forms of entertainment, i.e. music, art, and plays, but nothing that a person could truly make their own. With romanticism people could use their imagination to evoke their emotions and become connected with the work. Edgar Allen Poe used emotion, imagery, and medicine to explore the dark side of Romanticism. Poe dealt with a lot from the beginning of his life. At the age of one his father disappears...
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...ways; one is a literal definition where a person is isolated from human beings physically, while the other is being alone inside and emotionally distant from others. In the poem “Alone”, Edgar Allan Poe most directly relates alone with being emotionally distant and describes alone in terms of not being able to experiences things as others do, most significantly during his childhood. Poe looks back upon his childhood, and with his dark and disturbing writing style he creates the image of fear and loneliness that he felt as a child within the reader. Poe establishes in “Alone” that the true definition of alone is to be emotionally distant from the world. This idea comes from his childhood influences, his search for the unexplainable and his philosophy...
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...on how one man’s darkness and tragedies have made so many differences in the way we write today. His writings have kept us on the edge of our seats and giving us the ability to enter and be part of his dark and tragic world. He has filled our minds with curiosity. How could a man have written such dark works and been considered happy at one point in his life, and had us believe that his life was always full of misery and tragedies? I think that the misunderstanding of Edgar Allen Poe came from the undermining hardship of his life. The artist blood ran in Edgar Poe’s veins, Edgar Poe’s parents were a traveling family they were both actors. His mother Elizabeth Hopkins and his father David Poe fell in love got married and gave birth to three children. Edgar Poe was the middle child and was born in 1809 in Boston Massachusetts. Edgar Poe family was becoming poor. His parents were struggling actors in which they traveled looking for work. Life back then had to be a struggle especially with three children and becoming poorer by the day. Now on top of all that suffering the family gets another blow, the father then decides to leave. The abandonment that this family was feeling must of have taken a toll on Elizabeth Hopkins Poe, not soon...
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...Briana Eng 201 Final Paper 20 April 2015 Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher: Literary Elements Exemplify Gothic Style As the Romantic Movement swept through nineteenth century American literature, Edgar Allan Poe emerged as one of the central literary figures of the Romantic era. Along with other authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Poe’s Romantic style of writings often introduced his readers to the dark side of literature present during the time. As Poe sets out to explore and expose different elements of darkness within humanity, he familiarizes his readers with the experience of fear and horror that are so commonly present throughout his works. As a result of the recurrent themes of fear, horror and mystery that he elicits through his writings, Poe is often credited as one of the most important writers of Gothic fiction, an extension of the romantic style of writing. While most of his works of fiction are told from the perspective of a first person narrator, in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher he implores the use of the peripheral narrator to introduce his readers to the many elements in the story that exemplify his distinctly gothic style. By allowing readers into the mind of the narrator, Poe gives his audience the opportunity to discover, analyze and interpret different key literary devices used to highlight important characteristics that classify the gothic style of writing. Utilizing the peripheral narrators experience with mystery and suspense allows...
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...Amstutz 1 Deborah Amstutz Dr. J. Woolston English 102 15 February 2014 Catacombs and Floorboards. Edgar Allan Poe is considered one of the founding father of the Gothic Society and great horror short stories. These writings were about people on the cusp of events that were grotesque to his audience. It is a known fact that his short stories were on the dark impracticality side of the mind, with characters that were pathological killers. In “The Cast of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Poe portrayed exceptional acts of madness, murders, and decay. In the case of “The Cast of Amontillado,” Poe’s character Montresor seemed mentally disturbed over a thousand injuries and an insult, obsessed with revenge. (1238). This demonstrated the instability or madness of Montresor mental well being. The individual here shows he was committing insanity by letting his emotions rule and not thinking logically. “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the person starts the story stating he is not mad which makes the reader sure of his mental illness. Eight nights he visits the bedroom of the old man, on the eighth night the eye opens; he grows furious as he looks at it and kills the old man. At the end of the story, his madness manifests into the form of the old man’s heart sounds. Illustrating he was insane before and after his killing of the old man. Montresor’s murder is careful calculated, and was illustrated with the trowel. Poe wrote he pulled a trowel from under the folds of his...
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...PREFACE This major project examines the indispensable desiderata of Transcendentalism in comparison to the Dark Romantics background and how these technicalities prepare this work of art as an influential synthesis of human imagination incorporated with mystic facts. Transcendentalism and Dark Romanticism were two literary movements that occurred in America during roughly the same time period (1840—1860). Although the two had surface similarities, such as their reverence for Nature, their founding beliefs were quite different, enough to make one seem almost the antithesis of each other. Moreover one’s genesis is ventured out from other; i.e. Dark Romanticism from the roots of Transcendentalism or precisely the lacunae are best determined for raising up the term called Dark Romanticism. Contents S. No. Page no. Chapter 1.........................................................................................................4-14 Chapter 2.........................................................................................................15-23. Chapter 3..........................................................................................................24-27 Resolution.........................................................................................................28-29 Work Cited................................................................
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...West Point College. (Allen 233) The poem itself is a direct contrast to Poe's usual poetry, which usually deal with death and dark thoughts or other melancholy, Gothic ideas. Poe's idea of the death of beautiful woman being the most poetical of all topics is here, nowhere to be found. This proves that Poe, when so inclined, could indeed write about something other than opium induced nightmares and paranoid grieving men who are frightened to death by sarcastic, talkative, ravens. Besides "Israfel", Poe's other poetry, "To Helen", as well as "Annabel Lee" and others, are virtually unrecognizable to the everyday reader as being works by Edgar Allan Poe. His name is usually associated with his tales of horror and the macabre. His one poem, "The Raven", a work which deals with a mans steady decline into madness, is probably his most recognizable piece of poetry. A situation, which I feel is unfortunate, considering that the aforementioned are in most cases the equal to "The Raven." Scholars have bestowed upon Edgar Allan Poe, the mantle of "horror writer" a crown which does him a great injustice considering the great variety of works that he wrote and the passion which drove him during his writing. It is this passion that is evident in "Israfel." The Poem itself draws heavily on Arabian and Oriental literature, subjects which fascinated Poe.(Allen 249) Supernatural elements, which are strong in all of Poe's works and a basic concept of all the Romantics, are represented here, as...
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...Borough Of Manhattan Community College Edgar Allan Poe: Recurring Theme By Eric Torres Professor J. Carlacio ENG 201 - 071 14 March 2014 Edgar Allan Poe: Recurring Theme Edgar Allan Poe was an inimitable poet in the world of literature. Due to intensely traumatic events that occurred in his personal life, his anxiety led to a strong emphasis on a recurring theme of death particularly a woman not only within his poems. Although the death of a woman was common amongst his work, Poe in fact held women in high regard. There were a number of women present in his life that nurtured and comforted him, but the few he chose to acknowledge and genuinely care for coincidentally would die which was a major part why Poe often went through severe episodes of depression. Poe’s depression led him to a dark emotional state and caused a constant playback of death within his mind. Mourning many years in his life his love for women and experience with death combined to form a curiosity for the unknown and he transitioned this madness into his work. Poe was deeply in love with his wife Virginia. They married each other in the year 1836. She had passed in result of what was then known as consumption to what is now known as Tuberculosis in the year 1847. Within the course of those eleven years Virginia’s presence in his life played an important role in shaping his literary work. From the first time they had met to even after her death, she inspired Poe indefinitely. In Annabel Lee Poe...
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...Jonathon Soto Mon. Wed. 9:10-10:35 English 102 Rough Draft In the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, there are many possible themes the author summits. He covers love, madness, the supernatural, and man vs. the natural world. Next, most importantly Edgar Allan Poe discusses greatly the theme of grief and how it feels to lose someone. The Dark mysterious side of the mind is often present in many of Poe’s works. Also, through the use of tone and theme we as readers are able to depict the true meaning behind these creative poems. “The Raven” has great examples of poetic devices like rhyme scheme, meter, rhythm, and much more. All these different types of elements ensure a better and creative insight on Poe’s astonishing writings. First of all, throughout the poem “The Raven” there are many different poetic devices he uses to try and amplify the theme he wisely describes. In the very beginning Poe shares “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary” (line 1). He used meter to help describe the setting and tone right from the start. This line sets the mood in the poem and provides evidence that it is night time and he’s all alone in his house. Next, Poe constantly points out how the main character is going through a loss of someone he loved. One of the themes in this poem is grief and how this man deals with it. The narrator states “From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore” (line 10). He loses a person by the name of Lenore...
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...I ask a simple question, why do you like to read Edgar Allan Poe stories and poems? You are going to give a simple answer along the lines of, “I like dark stories” or “he is my favorite writer”. That however, doesn’t truly answer my question of why. We all have a personal literary aesthetic, what we enjoy reading and what we don’t. What makes for a good read? A bad read? We all as readers have differing opinions on these concepts. I would like to discuss my personal literary aesthetic, addressing what’s of literary quality and what isn’t, what I consider good and what I consider bad, and what’s worth reading and what isn’t. There are many characteristics of what I consider good work. There are the basics such as grammar, good plot, good characters, language, etc. Then there are the particular things about the stories that I read that either enticed me or deterred me from reading further, which I will mention as I go through the different types of reading materials. The first thing I would like to discuss is what I consider of literary quality and a pleasure to read. Edgar Allan Poe's work is something I find pleasurable and it has great literary quality. I find his work pleasurable because it delves into the psychologically dark recesses of our minds and forces us to think about the dark side of humanity. I find this interesting because we all would like to think we would never do the things the characters in Poe’s work would do, but when you really think about it...
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...The Cask of Amontillado by: Edgar Allan Poe In The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allen Poe manipulates the story to be the way he wants it to be by using the point of view of the narrator, the setting, and a common monotonous sentiment throughout the story. Poe is successful in maintaining a spirit of perverseness. The point of view plays a very important role in influencing the reader's perception of the story. The first line of the story is a good example of how the narrator attempts to bring the reader to his side, right from the start. “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge” (101). Montresor, the narrator of the story, immediately tries to win the reader to his side, by telling him/her that Fortunato has “ventured upon insult,” and apparently crossed the line. This attempt is clever, but the reader never gets a sense of what Fortunato has actually done to the narrator, or whether Montresor is creating it in his own mind. The point of view of the story can also affect the emotional attachment that the reader gets, or fails to get, in this case, for a given character. When a reader is involved in a story, the point of view from where the story is being told is crucial to the feelings the reader has. In this story, Montresor dominates the progression of the story in every regard. This being the case, it is difficult for the reader to develop a liking for another character, unless Montresor...
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...NORTH AMERICAN FICTION BRIEF INTRODUCTION: Before starting our study of American Fiction we must understand what American Literature is in itself and which pieces of writing we can include within this label. It is believed that when a piece is written in North America, more precisely in the USA, it would automatically be given this epithet. But it should be taken into account that this idea is quite broad and doesn’t reflect the real essence of the term. However, there is also another definition that gathers this essence: American Literature is the one that represents the Americanism, the singularity of the USA philosophy and culture. This way, instead of focusing on who the author is, it is focused on the content of the writing. In that which concerns Fiction, the following documents are the ones considered as narrative: Speeches Letters Short Stories Essays Political Documents Sermons Novels Diaries 1 FIRST LITERARY EXPRESSIONS The first documents in which the idea of Americanism is very present are the Sermons. They respond to the strict Protestantism settled in the New Continent after the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers and Puritans in the Mayflower (1620) and the Arabella (1630). They established a theocratic community whose main and only point of reference was the Bible. That is why the idea of the ‘city upon a hill’ is still very present in American mentality. As we all know...
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...The True Demise of Myself Lets take a journey through the mind of a man who is torn between his “id” and “superego.” In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Alan Poe, a man cannot choose between right and wrong. Through the psychological theory I can prove how a man is torn between his “id,” “ego,” and “superego” and to proud to show his true identity of being a psychopath. The man is portrayed as the narrator and has taken on two identities one as a loving and caring man and the other is a psychopath. The “id” will take over his “ego” only to be taken over by his “superego” and eventually taken back over by his “ego.” Our journey starts with the young man, the narrator, telling us his story. The young man is a caretaker of an old man who is really old and has a diseased eye. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the young man starts out by loving the old man very deeply. He takes care of his every need, until one day “ the old man’s eye fell upon him and his blood ran cold”(Poe 2). The young man then turned to his narcissistic ways and it changed the way he felt about the old man whom “he loved so dearly” (Poe 1). In “ Explanation of: ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ by Edgar Alan Poe,” which was rewritten by an unknown author, it explains how the narrator is a “paranoid schizophrenic”(pg. 1). The article explains how Edgar Alan Poe was obsessed with “death, madness, and troubled human relationships” (pg. 1). The narrator is definitely a man caught between normality and psychopath. Further...
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...Unit 2 Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) [pic] The American Romanticism I. What is Romanticism Originated in the second half of the 18th century, romanticism was a key movement in the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment. Romanticism emphasized intuition, imagination, and feeling, to a point that has led to some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism. Romanticism focuses on Nature; a place free from society's judgement and restrictions. Romanticism blossomed after the age of Rationalism, a time that focused on handwork and scientific reasoning. Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, and those of the late period contain Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe. II.Features of American romanticism Edgar Allen Poe(1809 - 1849) the most controversial and most misunderstood literary figure. a Bohemian（吉普赛人）, depraved（堕落） and demonic（恶魔的）, a villain（恶棍） with no virtue at all. Mark Twain declared his prose to be unreadable. But Eliot proclaimed him a critic of the first rank. He enjoyed respect and welcome greatly in Europe. He is the father of psychoanalytic criticism. In deed, Poe places the subconscious condition of the mind under investigation and probes beneath the surface of normal existence. What interests him most is the deep abyss of the unconsciousand subconscious mental activity of the people, His theories for the short story and poetry are remarkable...
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