Life for Edgar Allan Poe seems to help him build his literary creations of art, but contrary to that notion, Poe’s creations are what build his life. A complete mirror opposite of what has been theorized and proven. Think of this as the energy one puts out in to the world is the energy one will get back from the world. The death of loved ones, the scandals, and the brutal gossip mountains that encompass Poe’s life, help him to develop into a twisted mad man struggling to cope with no chance of gaining his sanity back. The exploration route that will be taken will guide through the similarities of life and art with Poe’s fabulous creations such as Ligeia, The Pit and The Pendulum, and The Fall of The House of Usher.
There have been many deaths in Edgar Allan Poe’s life. Each death may have brought out a story from the great writer. The truth may also be that the works of Poe’s involving love and death have aid in some of his loved ones dying. There are several stories that Poe has created before an untimely death. One story happens to be Ligeia, a creation of great love and passion for a female that the narrator has never felt before. The story of Ligeia may also be views about Poe’s love for his teenage bride Virginia Clemm. The nature of love energy written in Ligeia may have also sent a message to the life cycle of Virginia Clemm. The strength of the narrator’s love, who is believed to be Poe himself, gives off such great passion…”In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was a radiance of an opium dream”(EAP 1838), such lovely words to be written about someone dear to one’s heart. Possibly, Ligeia may be Virginia Clemm by some.
Remembering that Virginia Clemm is not a female Poe had to court for any amount of time, any...
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...s of Poe’s traumatic life in literary format. The force of nature that creates Poe’s life is the force of nature that Poe himself has written. The collective works of a mad man.
Works Cited
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Myers, Eunice. “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition
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“The Fall Of The House Of Usher.” Short Story Criticism. Vol. 22. Web. 6 May 2012.
Poe’s frightening stories acts as helpful inspiration for entertainment in the present, and for many years to come. The timeless relevance of his work, and its merciless scrutiny of the human condition, solidifies its place in history and its position of high admiration. In conclusion, the extraordinary-fleeting-tragic life of Edgar Allan Poe will forever remain on record as the tale of an orphan, a gentleman, a soldier, and one of the most prominent literary figures in American history.
Edgar Allen Poe is known for his dark yet comedic approach toward the his theme of his stories. Likewise, Poe’s themes have gathered many fans due to his impression of reasoning in his stories. The author uses thinking and reasoning to portray the theme. Poe’s unique diction comprehends with the theme of the story. Poe has a brilliant way of taking gothic tales of mystery, and terror, and mixing them with variations of a romantic tale by shifting emphasis from, surface suspense and plot pattern to his symbolic play in language and various meanings of words.
A mutual understanding towards many of Poe’s works is that the loss of a lover brings about insanity, but the truth is that in Poe’s works the loss of a young lover leads to depression. This is a theme that is played out in more than one of Poe’s works, but it is most prevalent in the depressing poem Annabel Lee. The speaker is conflicted with losing what is his whole world and his childhood lover. While all is well with both him and the girl alive, an insurmountable depression takes hold once the winds blow out to carry her to the grave. This is a theme that plays out often in his works and has been observed as one of his main inspirations. Within Peter Coviello’s research, he comes to the conclusion that “Within [Poe’s] world, only very young girls, who are not yet encumbered by the revulsions of adult femininity, seem capable of providing a site for stable heterosexual male desire in Poe.” Rather than using a full fledged adult as his lover, he engineered a child into his poem so the lover does not harness the potential to mutate into a monstros...
New York: A.C. Armstrong & Son., 1884. xv-xxvi. EPUB file. Sova, Dawn B. "Poe, Edgar Allan.
The vision of the mind is easily portrayed through the art of literature, painting a picture with the stroke of words. The natural inspiration that influences the creation of these works is derived from the life and the experiences of the creator. For some, these tales become stories and those stories become novels, but for one man it meant so much more. The works of Edgar Allan Poe became his life; he expressed every feeling and every moment of his existence through ink and paper. Poe involved his entire life in his writing, leaving no element of the story untouched by his trademark of a past. His work became so unique and unorthodox, yet it did not lack the attention it deserved. The American critic, Curtis Hidden Page, suggested that “the essence of his work is logic, logic entirely divorced from reality, and seeming to arise superior to reality” (Quinn 31). The foundation of Poe’s stories seems simple enough, but beneath the surface remains unanswered questions and undiscovered truths, which have yet to be uncovered. The people and experiences throughout Edgar Allan Poe’s lifetime have influenced various themes including: insanity, revenge, death, and guilt which can be distinguished through a collection of his works.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992.
Thomson, Gary Richard, and Poe Edgar. The selected writings of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Norton & Company, 2004
Poe next took up residence in Baltimore with his widowed aunt, Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia, and turned to fiction as a way to support himself (Walker 2). In 1832 the Philadelphia Saturday Courier published five of his stories, and in 1833, MS. Found in a Bottle won a fifty dollar prize given by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor (Walker 125). Poe, his aunt, and Virginia moved to Richmond in 1835. Poe became editor of the Southern Literary Messenger and married Virginia, who was not yet 14 years old (Jacobs 61). During this time Poe published fiction, such as Berenice, but most of his contributions were serious, analytical, and critical reviews that earned him respect as a critic (Jacobs 64).
Kennedy, Gerald J. A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001
Edgar Allan Poe was a man considered by many to be the personification of Death. He is regarded as a true American Genius whose works seized and frightened the minds of millions. However, Poe greatly differed from other acclaimed authors of his time. He had a unique writing style that completely altered the reality surrounding his readers. Rather than touch their hearts with lovable fictional characters he found a way of expressing himself that no other author had at the time. Poe’s combination of demented genius and difficult past experiences led him to become one of the greatest writers of all time.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of America’s most celebrated classical authors, known for his unique dealings within the horror genre. Poe was a master at utilizing literary devices such as point of view and setting to enhance the mood and plot of his stories leading to his widespread appeal that remains intact to this day. His mastery of aforementioned devices is evident in two of his shorter works “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado”.
Throughout Edgar Allan Poe’s life, death was a frequent visitor to those he loved around him. When Poe was only 3 years old, his loving mother died of Tuberculosis. Because Poe’s father left when he was an infant, he was now an orphan and went to live with the Allan’s. His stepmother was very affectionate towards Edgar and was a very prominent figure in his life. However, years later she also died from Tuberculosis, leaving Poe lonely and forlorn. Also, later on, when Poe was 26, he married his cousin 13-year-old Virginia, whom he adored. But, his happiness did not last long, and Virginia also died of Tuberculosis, otherwise known as the Red Death, a few years later. After Virginia’s death, Poe turned to alcohol and became isolated and reckless. Due to Edgar Allan Poe’s loss of those he cared for throughout his life, Poe’s obsession with death is evident in his works of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher”, in which in all three death is used to produce guilt.
No matter what your interpretation of “The Fall of the House of Usher” may be, it is almost impossible to deny it as one of the greatest short stories ever written. It stands as one of the many great testaments to the literary genius of Edgar Allan Poe and helps affirm his high ranking of American history.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1941. Internet.
Shulman, Robert. Poe and the Powers of the Mind. Vol. 37. N.p.: The John Hopkins