Edar Allan Poe

A Reflection of the Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe is a name even the literary illiterate know, but not many people know Edgar Allan Poe the person. When reading the works of this poetic genius many might think that he had a vivid imagination or just a morbid soul. The truth is that the works of Poe are based on his own life, the life of an orphan who suffered from an obsessive compulsive disorder and who eventually became diseased by alcoholism. Understanding Poe the man, who had true medical problems that caused erratic behavior and depression among many other things, is to have an understanding of the true meaning hidden behind the words of his poetry.

Poe earned his place as a major figure in American letters for his tales of the bizarre and fantastic, short stories that are structurally brilliant and considered precursors of many forms and themes in subsequent American and European literature (Bloom, Harold p.491). Born of impoverished parents and orphaned at the age of two, Poe lived a brief and tragic life: a life whose legend has often proved an overpowering influence on the critical reception of his work (Bloom, Harold p.491).

Before Poe was three years old both of his parents died, and he was raised in the house of John Allan, a prosperous exporter from Richmond, Virginia, who never legally adopted his foster son. Poe attended many of the best schools at that time. At the University of Virginia he distinguished himself academically, but after little more than only one year he had to leave because of financial debt and lack of adequate funds from Allan. Poe went on to enlist himself in the army where he finished and published his first poetry collection Tamerlane and Other Poems. These works received no recognition. When his second set of works appeared in 1829, it received only slight attention. Also in 1829 Poe was honorably discharged from the army, having attained the rank of regimental sergeant major, and was then admitted to the United States Military Academy at West Point (Gale Research p.1). However because Allan would neither provide Poe with sufficient funds to maintain himself as a cadet nor give the consent necessary to resign from the Academy, Poe gained a dismissal by ignoring his duties and violating regulations (Gale Research p.1).

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...roversy over the sanity, or at best the maturity of Poe (Paul Elmer More called him “the poet of unripe boys and unsound men”), it was the question of the value of Poe’s works as serious literature (Gale Research p.5).

Edgar Allan Poe’s personal life, especially the stories surrounding his drinking and early death, are dealt with extensively by Poe’s contemporary critics as well as those writing in the twentieth century (Bloom, Harold p. 491). In their confusion of the man and his literary creations, certain critics have ascribed to Poe a morbidity of character and a cruel and unnatural temperament. (Bloom, Harold p. 491). This critical attitude was adumbrated by the publication of Poe’s letters under the direction of R.W. Griswold, his literary executor (Bloom, Harold p.491). Griswold, for reasons unknown, sought to defame Poe by falsifying his letters and printing forged material that portrayed Poe as a bizarre and menacing character (Bloom, Harold p. 491). Although he was ultimately vindicated through the scholarship of A.H. Quinn and others, it has been the work of modern scholars to reestablish Poe’s reputation based on the work and not the man (Bloom, Harold p. 491).