Edgar A. Poe (0)

POE

• Refined the short story genre and invented science fiction . Many of his stories prefigure the genres of science fiction, horror and fantasy so popular today
  
• Father deserted the family, mother died and his husband disappeared, was taken into the home of the Allans. The Allans took him to England for five years , then sent him to the University of Virginia . He had a wild year and started to drink and gamble. After losing a large sum of money in a card game , ha was taken away from university. He ran away and enlisted as a soldier. He adapted very well to military discipline. Mr. Allan had him appointed to West Point Military Academy , but was dismissed. He married his 14-old cousin who had tuberculosis (lead to drinking ). Two years after his wife ´s death Poe himself was found in a Baltimore street near a polling place on an Election Day, died a few days later in hospital when he was only 40.
  
• His works reflect the double aspect of his personality: the abandonment of the self-destructive romantic artist and the self-control of the conscious and conscientious craftsman, the passivity of the dreamer indifferent to all that exists outside his dream world and the restless activity of a keen mind always on the alert .
  
• Poe himself classified his tales as “grotesque“, “arabesque“, “ratiocinative“, to indicate variations in his intentions.
  

The „arabesque” are those in which horror or other emotion in violent suspense gives the tale its power (“The Fall of the House of Usher”)
In the „grotesque” tales the effect is achieved by a grim and ironic humour (“The Masque of Red Death ”)
In the „ratiocinative” the effect comes from the use of rational analysis in reconstructing a series of events (“Murders in the Rue Morgue ”, “The Gold Bug”)

• The economy (tobacco had exhausted the soil ) and also the spiritual life in Virginia was deteriorating (the democratic touch was disappearing, Virginia became a forgotten land ). Apathetic, decadent moods took the place of daring theories and noble ideas. The motives of death, decay , destruction that permeate Poe’s work present a strong contrast to the general spirit of American national life in the first half of the 19th century but in keeping the decadent atmosphere of Virginia
  
• His stories and poems usually deal with love, beauty and death. He was concerned with the literary effect he could produce. In every genre, he explores the psyche . His heroes are tortured solitaries, often addicted to drink or drugs. He accurately described the underside of the American dream of the self-made man and showed the price of materialism and excessive competition – loneliness and alienation. Themes of death-in-life, especially being buried alive or returning from the grave , appear in many of his works (“The Fall of the House of Usher”). His most famous stories are his „ratiocinative” stories, known as detective tales (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”).
  
• His verse was very musical and strictly metrical. The poems essence should be beauty and that sadness was the mood most in keeping with the poetic beauty. Poe’s poetry did not tell on American tradition . „Out of space and out of time” – this is what Poe himself said about his work. He made it a rule never to write long epic poems. He thought that “a poem must be comfortably read at one sitting, for, if two sittings are required , the affairs of the world interfere” (“To Helen ”; “Annabel Lee”; “The Raven ”)