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Edgar Allan Poe and his passion for beautiful women who die
Role of beautiful women in the works of edgar allan poe
Role of beautiful women in the works of edgar allan poe
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Beauty and the Divine in Edgar Allen Poe's To Helen
To Helen presents beauty as necessary for apprehending the divine. Poe celebrates beauty, specifically the beauty of a women, as represented by two women known for beauty in Greek legend (Helen of Troy and Psyche). Helen's beauty escorts him to Hellenistic culture and values, which brings him to Psyche, who illuminates the divine.
To Helen
by Edgar Allan Poe
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
The Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! In yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-Land!
According to legend the abduction of Helen of Troy brought about the Trojan War. Helen is known for her beauty and has endured as a symbol in literature for beauty itself.
Poe often idealized women in his writing, particularly deceased women. Helen is representative of Poe's ideal woman. Poe considered beauty an important aspect of poetry, as the means to affect the soul.1
Here Poe compares Helen's beauty to a ship that takes a wanderer home. This could be an allusion to Odysseus in Homer's The Odyssey. After the Trojan War Odysseus tries to sail home, but encounters many adventurous difficulties along the way. Thus the metaphor is that Helen's beauty is for Poe what a ship was for Odysseus. Though Odysseus was away from home because of the Trojan War, which occurred because of Helen, Poe considers Helen the means by which ...
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... of the woman, but her emotional and spiritual beauty. Like Psyche and Cupid, such love can be eternal. For the narrator, this involves finding his own soul because this woman lit a lamp to reveal the divine. Once a mortal and later a goddess, Psyche joins two worlds (the real and the ideal) and, like Helen, escorts the narrator home just for having seen her.
Poe implies that the divine is found beyond beauty and beauty is the outpouring of the divine. Psyche, as a representative a beauty and as a representative of Hellenistic values, and as a representative of the ideal woman is the means through which the narrator sees what is divine.
Works Cited
1From the Web of American Poetry, teaching notes of Wes Chapman, 9-18-01
2Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated: 2001. Online.
3 Lewis, C.S. Till We Have Faces. Appendix.
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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.
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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...
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Osteoporosis is a bone disease of that causes a decrease in bone mass. In osteoporosis the bones become weak and fragile. Since the bone mass is decreased, the bones have more of chance of fractures. The bone is continuously breaking down by cells which is known as osteoclasts and rebuilding by other cells known as osteoblasts. Osteoporosis happens once the reabsorption causes the bones to reach a fracture threshold. Any fall or lifting action that would not ordinarily bruise or strain the common person would break one or additional bones in somebody with severe osteoporosis. “Women of fair, freckled complexion with blonde or reddish hair, and women from northwest European background have a higher incidence of osteoporosis than the general population” (Rosdahl, 2012, p.1248). Osteoporosis most commonly happens in postmenopausal women. Some risk factors include age, menstrual status, smoking, sedentary lifestyle caffeine use, and alcohol consumption.
Literary elements are a major part in the world of writers. A great author will use literary elements to capture the audience attention into what they are reading. This was true with Edgar Allan Poe; he incorporated literary elements into his short stories. In “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe uses a great deal of different literary elements to entice the audience into his horror stories. Literary elements such as imagery, irony, and symbolism were well put to use in Poe’s stories.
Edgar Allan Poe was not your typical poet. He had a very depressing life, and that has influenced the majority of his works. He was in the military, had his wife die prematurely, and had the constant struggles of life crashing down on him. Edgar Allan Poe was a great writer who used mystery and lost love as popular themes to intrigue many readers to pose questions regarding death and romance. His parents supported him, allowing him to be educated, but that would eventually lead to failure.
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Not only does Ligeia's unusual beauty represents the main theme throughout the story, but the text reflects Poe's rejecting the "ordinary", a common theme in literature. The writer rejects classical values and welcomes supernatural through unusual, mysterious beauty.
How Women and Mental Illness Were the Main Contributors to the Eminent Darkness in Edgar Allen Poe’s Writing