Edgar Allan Poe

1809-1849
• Poe’s brief life exerted a big influence on
American and (even more so) European
literature

• His literary output includes about 50

poems, one novella, 70 short stories and
essays

• His literary reputation was especially strong

in France, in the movements of l’art pour
l’art, symbolism and surrealism
• Poe is in recent times very popular in the
structuralist, poststructuralist and
deconstructionist literary criticism theories

• In US and UK however, Poe sometimes has a

mixed literary reputation (excessive style,
obsessive life/death topics, excessive horror)
• Poe frequently exhibited self-destructive
behaviour (Imp of the Perverse)

• He is well known for the ‘dramatic

monologue’ of his short stories and poems,
reflecting the transcendental states and Dark
Romanticism)
• As a poet, Poe used sound, rhythm and
repetition to achieve an intensely emotional
state, lifting the soul above the material

• He was a driven literary critic who praised

originality and power of authors like
Hawthorne

• He supported American literary

independence, but criticized mindless
literary nationalism
• Despite being involved into literary ‘wars’ of
his time, he sought to establish a proper
literary journal beyond petty conflicts
• He broadened his range from Gothic, to
proto-science fiction, cryptography, prose-
poems, multilayered satire and detective
fiction

• Poe’s is considered a master in external and

internal Gothic atmosphere
• Poe was also very interested in astronomy,
new sciences (mesmerism and phrenology),
psychology and contemporary social issues

• He was a sharp satirist, and very fond of

hoaxes (Hans Pfaall, Pym, Valdemar, Mason,
Von Kempelen)

• His treasure hunt story The Gold-Bug

popularized cryptography and riddles in
subsequent magazines
• Born in Boston, January 19th, 1809

• Second child to Elizabeth and David Poe

• Children put into foster care

• Fostered to the Allan family, wealthy

merchant family
• Educated in England 1815-1820 and America

• 1826 – attended the University of Virginia

• Definite estrangement between John Allan

and Edgar

• 1831 – West Point - discharged due to “gross

neglect of duty” and “disobedience of
orders”
• Moves to New York (1831), searches for
relatives

• Maria Clemm (Muddy) widowed aunt with

daughter, Virginia

• 1834 – John Allan dies – Poe inherits

nothing

• 1835 – Marries cousin Virginia, age 13

• Employed by various magazines as a literary
critic

• Worked for: The Messenger, Burton’s

Gentleman’s Magazine, Graham’s, The
Evening Mirror

• Established magazine The Penn, proved

unsuccessful
• 1847 – Virginia dies of consumption

• Death of a beautiful woman a common

theme even before this

• Later engaged to Sarah Whitman – drinking

and violent temper broke off engagement
• October 3, 1849 - Poe found in Baltimore,
“strangely dressed and semiconscious”

• October 7, 1849 - Poe died in Washington

Medical College Hospital, of controversial
cause

• Possible causes: alcohol poisoning, delirium

tremens, cerebral inflammation, and
possibly encephalitis brought on by
exposure
• Four major styles: the Arabesque, the
Grotesque, Ratiocinative, and Descriptive

• Theme of death the most prominent, and in

most of his works he explores ways of
denying or overcoming death
• 1829 - Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems

• 1833 - “MS. Found in a Bottle” won contest for the best tale

• 1837 - The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (fiction)

• 1839 - “The Haunted Place” and “Ligeia”; Tales of the Grotesque

and Arabesque – critical acclaim, no financial success
• 1842 – publishes short stories in The Pioneer - “The Mask of the
Red Death,” The Tell-Tale Heart.” The Pit and the Pendulum,” “A
Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “The Black Cat,” “The Gold-Bug”

• 1845 – The Raven published in Evening Mirror – gains

popularity
 Poe’s depiction of death

• Horrific if its imminence is realised

• Guilt, hatred or revenge are appropriate

justifications for murder

• Impending death can be postponed

• Death may enhance a loved one’s beauty

 Portrayal of love and beauty

• Historical & mythological references

• No boundaries, not even in death

• Beauty an idea – cannot be weakened

• Ideal form of beauty unattainable

 A Sense of the Macabre
• Suspense: revealing and witholding facts

• Element of danger – evokes intensity of

emotions, death a frequent motif

• Minutely-detailed descriptions, morbid

atmosphere
 The Raven (1845)

• compelling narrative structure

• darkly evocative atmosphere
• hypnotic verbal music, and
• archetypal symbolism

Nothing new, but the combination of all

four elements is
 Structure

• 18 stanzas, six lines each

• meter – trochaic octameter – eight pairs of

stressed and unstressed syllables (5 lines)

• alliteration and internal rhyme + end rhyme

– very musical
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
            Only this and nothing more.”
• The speaker tries to repress and bury his grief

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore
Nameless here for evermore.

• The grief starts to overpower him and put

him in an excited state of mind
• Raven, a dreaded symbol, flies in, excites the
already fragile mind

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

• The significance of its positioning on the bust

of Pallas
• The speaker thinks the raven as a symbol of
respite and forgetfulness

“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath
sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

• He urges the bird to tell him if he will

reunite with Lenore after death
• The speaker finally understands his grim
situation:

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!

• The sadness claims him

• The speaker cannot escape his condition:

• Raven above the door – speaker cannot leave

 MS. Found in a Bottle
• Best short story – 1833

• Elements of fantasy, SF, the themes of reason vs.

imagination and identity

• Adventure story - danger and mystery

• Psychological reactions in the narrator that he

finds nearly impossible to describe
 The Narrator

• Unnamed, no parentage, no country

• An extreme of an educated realist, no

imagination

• Defending the veracity of the story he is about

to tell
 South Pole Theory
• A hole in South Pole empties out in North
Pole

• Whirlpool – marks South Pole as

threatening region beyond human
rationality and knowledge
 A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken possession
of my soul -- a sensation which will admit of no analysis,
to which the lessons of by-gone time are inadequate, and
for which I fear futurity itself will offer me no key. To a
mind constituted like my own the latter consideration is
an evil. I shall never, -- I know that I shall never -- be
satisfied with regard to the nature of my conceptions. Yet
it is not wonderful that these conceptions are indefinite,
since they have their origin in sources so utterly novel. A
new sense, a new entity is added to my soul. 
• The storm and the appearance of the ghost
ship

• The ghost crew looks strange, old and out of

time, forever wandering

“We are surely doomed to hover continually upon

the brink of Eternity, without taking a final
plunge into the abyss.”
• The legend of a cursed ship

• The ship seems to be floating in the outer

limits

“All in the immediate vicinity of the ship is the

blackness of eternal night, and a chaos of foamless
water; but, about a league on either side of us, may
be seen, indistinctly and at intervals, stupendous
ramparts of ice, towering away into the desolate
sky, and looking like the walls of the universe.”
“To conceive the horror of my sensations is, presume,
utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to penetrate the
mysteries of these awful regions, predominates
even over my despair, and will reconcile me to the
most hideous aspect of death. It is evident that we
are hurrying onwards to some exciting knowledge
—some neverto-be-imparted secret, whose
attainment is destruction.”

• The voyage of discovery, they are caught in

the whirlpool
• The ship and the crew a symbol of insatiable
drive for exploration, mystery and discovery

• They represent the mental capabilities the

narrator lacks but needs

• Or was it all opium?

 William Wilson (1831)

What say of it? what say of CONSCIENCE grim,

That spectre in my path?

• The benevolent doppelganger

• The narrator feels inseparable from the
other:

“To the moralist it will be unnecessary to say, in

addition, that Wilson and myself were the most
inseparable of companions.”

• He senses something of him in this boy

• The protagonist puts this boy through many
attacks disguised as practical jokes, but is
frustrated by not being able to find his
Achilles' heel, except for his whisper

• But the other William found the

protagonist’s Achilles' heel

“My louder tones were, of course, unattempted,

but then the key, it was identical; and his singular
whisper, it grew the very echo of my own.”
• He confronts him in Rome at a costume party,
and kills him, but sees a mirror and himself
bleeding

A large mirror, -- so at first it seemed to me in my

confusion -- now stood where none had been perceptible
before; and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror,
mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled
in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and
tottering gait.

• The mirror symbolizes what?

It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper,
and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking
while he said:
"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet,
henceforward art thou also dead -- dead to the
World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou
exist -- and, in my death, see by this image, which
is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered
thyself.“

• Who or what did he kill in the end?

•
 The Purloined Letter (1845)

Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. - Seneca

(Nothing is more offensive to the wise than an
excess of trickery.)
• This is the third story in Poe’s detective
series (The Murders of Rue Morgue, The
Mystery of Marie Roget)

• Inventor of detective fiction, popularized

many staples of it; later adapted and
popularized by Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) and
Agatha Christie (Poirot)
• Staples include: brilliant, but
unconventional and idiosyncratic private
detective, bubmling and semi- incompetent
police inspector and the inquisitive side-kick
• Prefect G explains in detail the
comprehensive and exhaustive search
methods in obtaining the letter, which were
all in vain

• A month later, the Prefect visits them again

and Dupin produces the purloined letter

• At this point, the reader’s curiosity is at its

highest
• Dupin starts to explain the methodology
behind his success:

"The measures, then," he continued, "were good in their

kind, and well executed; their defect lay in their being
inapplicable to the case, and to the man.

• Dupin and Miniter D- can function as

doubles
 The Logic
• One must know one’s rival

• The boy who won all the marbles

• The map game
• Prefect G’s misconception that poets are fools
• Hiding something in plain sight
 ”I knew him, however, as both mathematician and poet,
and my measures were adapted to his capacity, with
reference to the circumstances by which he was
surrounded. I knew him as a courtier, too, and as a bold
intriguant.”

• The simplest solution is sometimes the best

(“Hiding in plain sight”); Dupin gives an
example of game of puzzles