Transcript Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849
Edgar Allan Poe
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Born in Boston on
January 19, 1809
Mother, Elizabeth
Arnold Poe, was a
successful actress
Father, David Poe,
Jr., was a less
successful actor due
to alcoholism
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Poe’s father abandoned his family around the
time of his 2nd birthday
Elizabeth Poe took Edgar and his 2 siblings,
William Henry and Rosalie, to Richmond, VA
in 1811, where she died later the same year
Poe was separated from his siblings and
placed in the care of a childless couple, John
and Frances Allan (Poe was never leagally
adoped by the couple)
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John Allan was a Scottish/English merchant
who kept a tight hold on the family’s purse
strings, but also recognized the value of
education
In 1815 he took his wife and Poe on an
extended business trip to England
In England, Poe spent his childhood at
prestigious boarding academies
It was in England that Poe first became
acquainted with the Gothic literature that was
popular in Europe at the time
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The Allans returned to Virginia in 1820, where
Poe continued his education at private
schools
Poe was an excellent student and a superior
swimmer and marksman, but he was not
popular
He was made fun of for being the son of 2
actors (a disreputable occupation) and an
unadopted stepson of the Allans
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Poe received support and encouragement from the mother
of a classmate, Jane Stith Stanard, but she died of a brain
tumor when he was fifteen years old
More so than Elizabeth Poe or Mrs. Allan, he looked upon
this woman as his idealized mother, and her untimely death
was the apparent cause of his first extended period of
psychological depression, during which he often visited her
grave
Around this time, John Allan's trading firm suffered a series
of financial setbacks, the company itself was dissolved, and
Poe's stepfather took to extramarital affairs and to the
bottle
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In 1825, John Allan inherited a large sum of
money, and this abrupt reversal of fortune
enabled him to enroll Edgar at the University
of Virginia
Shortly before his departure for college, Poe
began to court a fifteen-year-old woman
named Sarah Elmira Royster
Whether the two were engaged before he left
for college is unclear; that he was serious
about his intention to marry Sarah is fairly
certain
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Poe entered the University of Virginia in 1826 at the
age of seventeen, concentrating on classical and
modern languages
He found it difficult to maintain a gentleman's life
style on the relatively meager allowance that John
Allan furnished to him so he took to gambling and
compiled debts of honor amounting to some $2,000,
an enormous sum in the 1820s
John Allan refused to pay these debts; Poe left school
and returned to Richmond, where he worked for a
time in Allan's counting house
When he tried to renew his courtship of Sarah
Royster, her parents first told him that she was
abroad; he eventually learned that his first fiancée
had become engaged to another young man
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Alienated from his stepfather and rejected by
Sarah's family, the headstrong Poe set out on his
own, moving first to Baltimore in March 1827 and
then back to the city of his birth, Boston, where
he took the first of several pseudonyms, calling
himself Henri Le Rennet
It was in Boston that Poe wrote the first poems
that would eventually bear his real name
Without a regular source of income, Poe joined
the army at the age of eighteen, enlisting under
the fictitious name of Edgar A. Perry
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While he was stationed at Fort Independence, Poe
prevailed upon a local publisher to print his first
volume of verses, Tamerlane and Other Poems. By
a Bostonian, in 1827 under the name of Edgar
Perry
To these, he would eventually add six new poems
for a volume that would be published in Baltimore
under his real name at the end of 1829
By then, however, tragedy struck Poe's life once
more: in February 1829, Poe's stepmother, Frances
Allen, died, the third mother figure in his life to
suffer an untimely death
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The death of Frances Allan set the stage for reconciliation between Poe and
John Allan
Poe entered West Point in July 1830, but a few months later, he learned that
John Allan had remarried a woman with children and realized that he would
never receive any inheritance from his stepfather
Poe resumed his losing ways at cards, drank heavily, and neglected his duties,
refusing to leave his room at the Academy for days on end: he was dismissed
from West Point in March 1831
Poe took up residence at the home of his aunt, Maria Clemm, with her young
daughter (and Poe's cousin), Virginia Clemm, and Poe's paternal grandmother,
Elizabeth Poe
Shortly thereafter, he brought out a third slim volume of poems; like its
predecessors, this third book was comprised of verses on conventional romantic
subjects, notably the myth of an idealized world of beauty and joy recaptured
as dreams and memories.
Unfortunately, like his first two collections, it failed to receive any reviews. Poe
applied for editorial and teaching positions but was unsuccessful in his effort to
gain regular employment.
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In 1831, Poe entered into a new stage in his fledgling literary
career
The tastes of the American reading public had turned from
romantic poetry and toward humorous and satirical prose
By June of that year, he had submitted five comic pieces to the
Philadelphia Saturday Courier
Poe received entree to the Southern Literary Messenger, in
which he published his first true horror story, "Berenice," in
1835
Shortly thereafter, he became an editor of this journal, to which
he would contribute additional tales, poetry, and scores of book
reviews
Many of the latter were extremely abrasive; having secured a
permanent position in the literary world, Poe quickly made
enemies that would come back to haunt him, even after his
death
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When John Allan took ill in 1834, Poe traveled to
Richmond in the hope of some positive resolution of
his conflict with his erstwhile stepfather
The dying man, however, would have none of it and
refused to see Poe
A year later, Poe’s grandmother, Elizabeth Poe, died
and Poe moved from Baltimore back to Richmond
with his aunt and cousin
On May 16, 1836, Poe married his cousin Virginia
Clemm, who was just thirteen years old at the time
Poe, his bride, and his mother-in-law then moved to
New York City, where they would remain for about 18
months before relocating again, this time to
Philadelphia
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The year 1837 marked the start Poe's most productive period as a fiction
writer; during the next eight years, Poe composed most of the tales of
terror with which he is customarily identified
In 1840, Poe financed the publication of twenty-five short stories as
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. But sales of this volume were
surprisingly poor; its appearance was neglected by other reviewers,
many of whom Poe had already alienated through his criticism of their
talents and tastes
After several unsuccessful attempts at full-time employment, in 1842, his
young wife, Virginia, suffered a burst blood vessel and contracted
tuberculosis
In March 1843, he went to Washington, D.C., in search of a job with the
federal government. But he was waylaid by an extended drinking binge,
Poe taking to the bottle with increasing frequency after Virginia became
ill
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In 1845, Poe's career received two additional boosts
The first came after Poe and his family moved back to
New York City, taking residence at a cottage in Fordham,
and began to write poetry again. It was in New York
that he wrote "The Raven." The poem was a popular
sensation, and it gave him a new source of income,
reciting his own verses (and later lecturing) to paying
audiences
During the remaining years of his life, Poe wrote virtually
all of his most famous poems
The second boost came when James Russell Lowell
wrote a laudatory essay about Poe that appeared in
Graham's Magazine. With Lowell's assistance, Poe
became the editor of the Broadway Journal
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Poe now watched as Virginia's health deteriorated
In his own words, he suffered "the horrible, neverending oscillation between hope and despair"
On January 30, 1847, Virginia Poe died
Poe lapsed into depression and hard drinking
He pulled out of this descent, turning to the
composition of theoretical works about literature,
human nature, and the cosmos at large
He became conditionally engaged to the somewhat
older Sarah Helen Whitman, but their relationship
ended abruptly when he called upon her in a drunken
state
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Contrary to popular belief, in his final year
(1849), Poe's life was relatively stable
He continued to earn a living through his
lectures and recital performances, and he
visited friends that he had made in
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond
In fact, Poe spent two months in Richmond,
calling upon Sarah Shelton, who had become
a widow and reportedly accepted his proposal
of marriage
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On October 3, 1849, an election day, Poe was found
deliriously ill, lying half-conscious in the street (in
Baltimore) outside of a polling place and a few yards away
from a tavern
Whether Poe was drunk or not has never been conclusively
determined
He was taken to a local hospital, still in a delirious state
and calling for a polar explorer of the day named Reynolds
He uttered his final words and epitaph, "Lord help my poor
soul," on October 7, 1849, and was buried the next day in
Baltimore's Presbyterian Cemetery
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While the enormous popularity of Edgar Allan Poe's famous short
stories and poems continues to highlight his creative brilliance, Poe's
renown as the master of horror, the father of the detective story, and
the voice of "The Raven" is something of a mixed blessing
Today, Poe is known, read, and appreciated on the basis of a
comparatively narrow body of work, roughly a dozen tales and half as
many poems
He wrote for the masses, using his learned artistry to reach the
common people of his day and to then elevate their minds while
intensifying their emotional reactions
Along with Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, Poe ranks among the
foremost literary stars in the firmament of popular American culture. A
century and half after his death, Poe is instantly identifiable, stands
without rival, and remains (with effort) immensely enjoyable
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Poe, in fact, wrote nearly seventy short works
of fiction
He is duly credited with creating the detective
story genre and with transforming the Gothic
mystery tale of the Romantic Period into the
modern horror or murder stories centered in
the outlying regions of human mind and
experience
But he also wrote several comic and satirical
pieces, literary parodies, sketches, and
experimental stories
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Poe developed a theory of composition that he applied to both his short
stories and his poems
Its most basic principle was that insofar as short fiction and poetry
were concerned, the writer should aim at creating a single and total
psychological/spiritual effect upon the reader
The theme or plot of the piece is always subordinate to the author's
calculated construction of a single, intense mood in the reader's or
listener's mind, be it melancholy, suspense, or horror
There are no extra elements in Poe, no subplots, no minor characters,
and no digressions except those that show the madness of deranged
first-person ("I") narrators
Ultimately, Poe took writing to be a moral task that worked not through
teaching lessons, but in simultaneously stimulating his readers' mental,
emotional, and spiritual faculties through texts of absolute integrity
Lenore (1831)
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“Lenore” is a poem reflecting on the death at a young age of
the fair Lenore
Most likely, the Lenore remembered in this poem is the
same who is mourned in “The Raven”
“Lenore” is a poem with at least two different speakers
The second and fourth stanzas are enclosed in quotation
marks; the first and third, while not marked, are clearly
spoken by a character or characters, not by an omniscient
narrator
Beyond the quotation marks and a noticeable shift in tone
and attitude, there is no indication who is speaking anywhere
in the poem
Most critics have assumed that the poem presents a dialogue
between Guy De Vere, Lenore’s grieving lover, and the family
or priest of the dead woman
Berenice (1835)
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The story follows a man named Egaeus who is preparing to
marry his cousin Berenice
He has a tendency to fall into a periods of intense focus
during which he seems to separate himself from the outside
world
Berenice begins to deteriorate from an unnamed disease
until the only part of her remaining healthy was her teeth
Egaeus begins to obsess on her teeth
Berenice dies and Egaeus continues to contemplate her
teeth
Deep in thought, he is interrupted by a servant who tells
him Berenice's grave has been disturbed
Poe was forced to self-censor the work due to its violent
nature
Ligeia (1838)
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Edgar Allan Poe's celebrated "Ligeia"— one of his finest treatments of
romantic love frustrated by death—may be a story that asserts the
power of the human will; or "Ligeia" may be a story that demonstrates
the destructive power of delusions
At the story's climax, is Ligeia's resurrection from the dead a
supernatural event, or an hallucination by a man demented from
obsessive grief and excessive opium, or both?
The text of the story supports both readings and has thus inspired a
lively debate among literary scholars
The two interpretations seem to argue in opposite directions: that the
human will is so grand that it can overcome all other forces in its
exercise of godlike supernatural power, or that human consciousness is
so easy a prey to raw emotion and narcotics that it cannot even
perceive what is real
Human will is either powerful or puny
The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
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One of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous short stories, it
is a psychological portrait of a mad narrator who kills
a man and afterward hears his victim’s relentless
heartbeat
It is simultaneously a horror story and psychological
thriller told from a first-person perspective
It is admired as an excellent example of how a short
story can produce an effect on the reader
It exemplifies Poe’s ability to expose the dark side of
humankind and is a harbinger of novels and films
dealing with psychological realism
The Raven (1845)
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Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
“The Raven” has become one of America’s most famous
poems, partly as a result, of its easily remembered refrain,
“Nevermore”
The speaker, a man who pines for his deceased love,
Lenore, has been visited by a talking bird who knows only
the word, “Nevermore”
The narrator feels so grieved over the loss of his love that
he allows his imagination to transform the bird into a
prophet bringing news that the lovers will “Nevermore” be
reunited, not even in heaven
In “The Philosophy of Composition,” Poe’s own essay about
“The Raven,” he describes the poem as one that reveals the
human penchant for “self-torture” as evidenced by the
speaker’s tendency to weigh himself down with grief
Annabelle Lee (1849)
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Written in 1849, "Annabel Lee" was published the same
year, just two days after Poe's death on October 7
Using a melodious narrative form, the speaker laments
the death, many years ago, of his beloved young bride
Annabel Lee
His loss moves him to state that envious angels caused
the girl's death to separate the young married couple
He tells briefly of her funeral and entombment "in her
sepulchre … by the sea"
The narrator then reveals that he has been unable to
accept their separation; since her death, he has spent
night after night at her tomb, an astonishing and
perverse example of the immortality of young love