Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)

1) a) Why have Poe's life and work often been associated with mystery?

Perhaps it had a lot to do with the success of his originality and creativity in infusing a tired genre of literature with an excitement and vitality that no other author of the time was capable. His tale of buried treasure, 'The Gold Bug' created quite a sensation at the time of its publication and required several reprints. Then, his introduction of the brilliant French sleuth C. Auguste Dupin with his intuitive and deductive reasoning to resolve unsolvable mysteries clearly established Poe as the premier mystery writer.

b) A Summary of Poe's life

Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809. He was the son of two actors who both died within the first year after he was born. A couple named "Allan" gave him a good home and a good education, but in his teenage years, Poe often quarelled with his father and left home as soon as possible. He had several jobs, but lost them because of drinking. Poe died in 1859 at the age of 40.

2) English and American Romantic writers

England: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Sir Walter Scott

America: Nathanael Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman

3) What is Romanticism?

Romanticism is an intellectual movement that flourished in Europe between the middle of the 18th and 19th centuries. It rejected the notions of the enlightenment that had dominated European thought since the early 18th century.

The most dominant charateristic of the Romantic movement was the rejection of the rational and the intellectual in favor of the intuitive and the emotional. In the nineteenth century, a romance was a prose narrative telling a fictional story that dealt with its subjects and characters in a symbolic, imaginative, and non-realistic way. Typically, a romance would deal with plots and people that were exotic, remote in time or place from the reader, and obviously imaginary.

4) What is a gothic story?

Gothic means that the author emphasizes the grotesque, the mysterious, the horrible, the ghostly, and the fear that is aroused in the reader. A gothic story or a ghost story will often have a setting that will be in an old, decaying mansion far out in a countryside. The mansion is filled with cobwebs, strange noises, bats, and an abundance of secret panels and doors. Poe uses every literary trick possible to give us eerie sensations. He also utilizes shadows to create dark and scary images, trap doors that consume the protagonist, and underground passages that are smelly, slimy, and pitch-black. All of these effects are created for one reason: to give the reader a sense of the ghostly and the supernatural.

Gothic stories written by Edgar Allan Poe are f.e. "The Fall of the House of Usher" or "Ligeia".

5) America's first significant literary critic

Edgar Allan Poe is considered to be America's first significant literary critic or, at least, the first major writer in America to write serious criticism about the theory of composition, and about the principles of creative art. He was also the first to develop a set of principles about what he thought was acceptable in art and what should be rejected in art.

Poe consistently placed emphasis on

the unity of effect,

his rejection of allegory and didacticism,

the narrative poem being a non-poem,

the shortened length of a work of art,

the appeal to the emotions,

the ideal subject matter for art, and

the importance of emotional responses.

Poe utilized his theories in order to determine whether an author's works, including poetry and short stories, were great works of art, or failed to appeal to one's sense of beauty.

In conclusion, although many people do not agree with Poe's theories or principles, they nevertheless have been the subject of continual discussion. However, some of Poe's theories may seem to be obsolete at times when compared to current theories of new works, but as long as romantic literature is read, Poe's critical theories and principles will continue to be important.

6) a) Originator of detective fiction

Edgar Allan Poe wrote the first detective stories. Differing to other stories, there firstly was a detective who solved a crime instead of the police.

b) Tales of Ratiocination

Poe invented the term 'tale of ratiocination.' The ratiocination (reasoning) is not just for the detective, however, Poe also intended it for the reader. In fact, the story becomes one in which the reader must also apply his/her knowledge and deduction alongside those of the detective. Poe introduces one of the basic elements of the detective story -- the presentation of clues for his readers.

c) Two of his most important detective stories are "The murders in the Rue Morgue" and the "Purloined letter".

The murders in the Rue Morgue

Two women are horribly murdered while occupying a fourth story room of a house on Rue Morgue. The room appears to be locked completely from the inside without any way for the killer to have exited. The police cannot find a motive for the killing and deem the murder insoluable. Mr. Dupin solves the mystery through a process of deduction. He discovers that the murders were committed by an orang-outang that had escaped it's sailor owner.

The Fall of the House of Usher

In 'The Fall of the House of Usher,' the narrator goes to the House of Usher, the home of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher. This man suffers from illness both emotional and physical. In addition, Roderick's sister, Madeline Usher, is on the verge of death. When she does die, the two men bury her in the crypts below the house. One night, they hear her coming out. When she appears in the narrator's bedroom, Roderick dies from fear and the narrator flees, just as the house itself crumbles to the ground.

d) Was there a living model for Dupin?

Dupin appears in three of Poe's most famous detective stories, 'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' 'The Mystery of Marie Roget,' and 'The Purloined' Letter.' In each of these tales, he visits the scene of a crime that the local French police have examined without profit and gathers clues that have escaped their attention. Dupin combines analytical with creative intelligence, the mind of the mathematician with the soul of a poet. He is also an outsider, who lives a reclusive life and merely appears in the common stream of society to do what he enjoys, engaging in detective work and demonstrating the inadequacies of conventional authority, without becoming engaged in issues of justice. Given all this, it can be speculated that Poe may well have had himself in mind when he created this character.

7) How did Poe die?

The death of Edgar Allan Poe is a mystery. Many theories exist as to what killed him at the age of 40. Some theorize alcoholism or a brain lesion. Some suspect violence. However, it is probably a combination of factors that led to his early death. It is known that Poe was found raving and disheveled outside a pub in Baltimore on October 3, 1849. He was also supposedly carrying around $1500, which was not found on him at his death, giving rise to theories that he was mugged and beaten. Some also believe he was 'cooped,' forced to go from poll to poll, voting for certain candidates, and this overwhelmed him. However, his actions for the five days prior to his being found are not known, nor is it known how he ended up in Baltimore. He was taken to a hospital, and died three days later. Because Poe had a well-documented alcohol problem as well as addiction to opium and laudanum, it is generally assumed this caused, if not contributed greatly, to his death. In addition, around 1847, Poe had been diagnosed with a brain lesion and an erratic heartbeat. The official cause of death as cited in a Baltimore paper was 'congestion of the brain.' However a newer theory proposes he had rabies, given his behavior documented in the hospital. His last words were reportedly, 'Lord help my poor soul.'

8) I'm interested to go on working on Edgar Allan Poe and to read maybe one or two detective stories, but I don't think that I would like the Gothic stories very much.