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EDGAR ALLAN POE
(1809-49) |
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BACKGROUND
- Born Edgar Poe, in Boston, Massachusetts
- Edgar Poe = 2nd child, 1/19/09
- parents = professional traveling actors
- MOTHER = Elizabeth Arnold
- prominent English actress among wandering seaport actors
- (disreputable occupation)
- teenage widow;
- then married David Poe, Jr., 1806
- FATHER = David Poe, Jr.,
- actor, (lawyer-turned actor)
- good until BOOZE*
- 1810: father abandoned family
- 1811: parents die
- December, mother (24) died while acting in Richmond, VA
- father probably soon thereafter at 27
- EAP = orphan at 2 years old
- adopted by the Allans of Richmond, Virginia,
- rest of Poe children = parceled out, divided up
- JOHN ALLAN = foster-father
- (Frances Allan = foster-mother)
- prosperous merchant (tobacco merchant)
- lenient THEN severe
- baptized him "Edgar Allan Poe"
- ** BUT did not legally adopt him **
- 1815: 5: moved to England, school; Allan
in Europe on business
- 1820: 9/10: returned to Virginia,
school under EAP (good in Latin, poor student)
- adolescence:
- uncertainty @ his
future
- (no family, not heir to Allan)
- shame @ his past
- (drunk father, actors, abandoned, orphaned)
- anger @ present
- (rich playmates)
- *see "Cask" & anti-aristocracy theme
- 1824: Allan's attitude towards Poe changed for
worse (possibly, Poe took foster-mother's side in an
argument with Allan)
- 17: University of Virginia
- descent grades; self-proclaimed aristocrat:
- poet, wit, gambler, heavy
drinker
- huge gambling debts
- ("debts of honor" that Allan, who just inherited several
100 thousand dollars, refused to pay)
- left school, to Boston, enlisted
- (Boston = “family,” roots)
- 18: enlisted in US Army (as "Edgar A. Perry"),
stationed in Boston
- 1827: 1st volume of poetry published in Boston
- Tamerlane and Other Poems
- paid for w/his own money
- "By a Bostonian"
- 1829: 20: released from army (regimental sergeant
major)
- 2nd volume of poetry published in Baltimore
- Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems
- (shortened "Tamerlane," revised others, added others)
- step-mother died, briefly reconciled with John Allan
- (secured Poe's appointment to West Point, after
he passed the age limit for admission)
- 1830: 21: West Point cadet, only 8 months,
expelled (early 1831) b/c he purposefully violated minor
regulations, disobeyed orders to attend church, & cut
classes
- John Allan would not give his consent for Poe to resign
from the academy, nor would he give Poe sufficient $$$ to
maintain himself
- twins born to John Allan by Virginia woman; remarried in
October, shortly thereafter she was pregnant
- --> EAP would NOT be Allan's heir ($$$)
- --> EAP no longer needed to be at West Point to pursue
dutifully a military career
- --> got kicked out of WP
- 1831: 3rd volume of poetry published
- dedicated to "the U.S. Corps of Cadets"
- moved to Baltimore; dedicated to professional
writing
"BALTIMORE YEARS" (1831-1835):
- hard work, relative sobriety, but poverty
- lived with aunt (Maria Poe Clemm), her daughter/his
cousin (Virginia Clemm), his brother (dead 1831),
Grandmother Poe (dead in 1835, which stopped the
Revolutionary War widow's pension money $$$$)
- 1832: 5 short stories published in a Philadelphia
literary weekly
- Saturday Courier
- "Metzengerstein", anonymously
- 1833: 1st prize ($100) in Baltimore newspaper's
short story contest
- 1833: returned to Richmond, editor ($10/week) of
The Southern Literary Messenger, in which he
published his own short stories, poems, & scolding literary
reviews
- 1834: John Allan died, did not
leave POE as his heir
- 1835: secretly married cousin; 1836
publically married cousin
- 27: married 13-year-old cousin (Virginia Clemm),
- editor ($10/week, 540/year = not much) of
new The Southern Literary Messenger,
- in which he published his own short stories, poems,
- & scolding literary reviews
- in the sarcastic British style as a literary hatchet-man
- "Bitter Bierce"
- (American Idol's Simon Cowell*)
- increased its circulation, no pay, recognition,
authority
- 1836, left the magazine after a bitter argument
with its owner
- rest of career:
- wrote poetry, fiction; worked as journalist ("magazinist")
- bouts of creativity, depression, drinking binges
- (*SELF-DESTRUCTION*)
NYC:
- 1837: to NYC w/ aunt-mother-in-law & wife;
extreme poverty, selling reviews & stories
- 1838: ...Golden Pym 1st & only novel
(short, written in Virginia)
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BACKGROUND
PHILLY:
- 1838: extreme poverty, Ligeia in
Baltimore's American Museum, where other stories & poems
appeared
- 1839: literary hackwork (just like
Hawthorne)
- put his name on The Conchologist's First Book
- 1st steady job in 2 years = co-editor of Burton's
Gentlemen's Magazine (Philadelphia literary monthly)
- contributed to it "Fall of the
House of Usher," sonnet
- published his 1st collection of short stories
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
- (sold poorly, fewer than 750 copies)
- fired for another argument with owner (really,
BOOZE)
- hired as editor at another Philadelphia monthly magazine
Graham's Magazine (by recommendation by Wm. Burton)
- 1841: “The Murders in
the Rue Morgue” (in Graham's)
- *the 1st crime story
- *forefather of the American
detective story*
- 1842: left Graham's; writing, lecturing,
editing...fighting off poverty
- Virginia Poe, wife, not yet 20, burst blood vessel in
her throat, dead in 5 years
NYC:
- 1844: "The Raven"
(written in New York), newspaper work
- 1845: lectured on "Poets of America"
- editor (then owner) of The Broadway
Journal, on New York life;
- series of 5 articles on the "plagiarisms" he
found in Longfellow's work ("The
Longfellow Wars", an unsuccessful attempt to
raise readership)
- 1846, Journal = dead
- 1847: wife = dead (tuberculosis)
- POE =
- grief-stricken
- sick himself (brain lesions)
- drinking heavily
- extremely poor
- mentally unstable ... -->
- self-destructive behaviors:
- string of bad romances w/his literary admirers
- & bad publishing schemes
- Ulalume
- 1848:
- unsuccessful attempt at suicide
- (by laudanum
- he claimed in an hysterical note to one of his
suitors)
- “Anabelle Lee”
- 1849: returned briefly to Richmond, VA
- 2 decently happy months
- literati, lectures & readings
- engaged to sweetheart of teens
- Temperance Society
- moving to Philadelphia (again!) for another editing
job
- stopped in Baltimore along the way
- broke temperance pledge...
- 10/2/1849 =
- found unconscious on the street near polling
place
- (election day 10-3-1849)
- & died 4 days later (10-7-1849)
BAD BIOGRAPHY:
- Rufus Griswold's character assassination
- Poe himself:
- claimed he was born 1811, 1813
- wrote poems earlier than he had
- fabricated a Byronic trip to fight for the Greeks
for their independence
BAD LIFE:
- bad childhood
- abandoned, orphaned, adopted by cold father-figure)
- bad professional life:
- literary squabbles, poverty, bad investments
- bad friends:
- Rufus Griswold, Poe's supposed friend & literary
executor, vicious NY Tribune obituary &
biographical sketch
- Poe = demonic, depraved, "egotistical villain"
w/ "scarcely any virtue"
- altered Poe's letters (to Griswold, about
others) for support
- IRONICALLY: bad reputation fueled
sales in Poe's books (though sullied his personal
reputation)
(-)
- drunkard, drug addict, mad, one of his own crazy
narrators; "the tomahawk man" for his literary reviews,
attacked by literati (Emerson called him "the jingle man";
Henry James; false erudition; others said he lacked American
vision; literary realists hated him later; Twain disliked
him)
- Gothic terror =
- hackneyed, contrived, derivative, barely above the
popular overheated romantic fiction of the mid-century
- Poe's Romanticism =
- divorced from the realities of American life
- absurd fraud, sub-literary vulgarian
(+)
- sensitive person, Byronic hero, haunted by his own
genius, destroyed by cruel society & false friends
- established the detective story
- influenced later writers:
- Arthur Conan Doyle, Hawthorne, RL Stevenson,
- William Faulkner, TS Eliot, Nabokov,
- French Symbolist poets, GB Shaw, Baudelaire
- one of the 1st modern literary theorists in
America
- against the didactic motive for literature
- for the creation of beauty & intensity of emotion
- for importance of conscious effort, rather than
intuitive inspiration, in creating art
- pioneering aesthetician, psychological investigator,
literary technician
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POETRY
GENRES:
- (1) Poetry
- (2) Short Story
- *helped develop the genre
- typically American genre*
- (3) Novel (1)
- (4) Literary Criticism
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POETRY
POETRY:
- early poetry =
- derivative (style & subject)
- of British Romantics Shelley, Byron
- later poetry =
- original in its technique
- (subject matter still = British Romantics)
- subjective
- surreal, mystic visions
- journeys of the imagination & unconscious
- dream-worlds
- themes of loss, of beloved & ideal beauty
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LITERARY
CRITICISM
- one of the 1st of American literary critics
- the BULK of his writing
- America’s 1st literary critic:
- literary critic of insight & imagination
- NOT seen in America previously
- BRITISH examples (like his poetry):
- late-18thC Scottish Common Sense philosophers
- then Schlegel, Coleridge...
- then literary hatchet man = slashing critics in
British quarterlies
- Poe’s MOTIVES:
- aesthetic principles, increase circulation ($$)
- cruel to those he was jealous of
- kind to those from whom he wanted favor
- (*see "Cask"
and "TRUE MOTIVES")
LITERARY THEORIES:
- poetry =
- should appeal to sense of BEAUTY (soul)
- not to truth (intellect, mind)
- stirs the soul, not the intellect or heart
- against informational poetry, poetry of
ideas, any didactic poetry
- poetry's true emotion =
- vague sensory state
- --> against realistic details
- ("impressionism" of sorts)
- poetry = @ 100 lines:
- long enough to be read in 1, a single sitting
- (so reality, life doesn't interfere & ruin the
EFFECT)
- *EFFECT = #1
- poetry = should have a “unity
of effect”
- calculated precisely, planned, mathematical
precision
- length + effect + tone = all for “unity of
effect”
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LITERARY
CRITICISM
“ART for ART'S SAKE”:
- forerunner of 19thC European movement
- influenced late-19thC French Symbolists
- analytical method:
- as an author & critic
- attention to detail
- construction
- construction over didacticism
- no morals, themes, preaching (moral, ideological
generalities)
- “heresy of the Didactic”: too moralistic
- construction:
- Language, Technique, Plotting
- through calculated use of language, plotting
- --> EFFECT
- (1) create unity of effect
- (2) effect =
- not left to accident or haphazardness
- but planned down to the minutest
detail of style, subject, language, character through
author’s ...
- **RATIONAL DELIBERATION**
- calculation, careful planning, mathematical
precision
- EFFECT in Poetry -->
- BEAUTY
- (associated with sadness, strangeness,
loss)
- EFFECT in Prose -->
- reveals some TRUTH or effect
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SHORT
STORIES
- early works = hard to classify
- burlesques, "bizarreries", tragi-comic;
- imitations, satires, spoofs, hoaxes?
- CHARACTERS =
- deviant types:
- aristocratic madmen, self-tormented murderers,
- neurasthenic necrophiliacs
- *EFFECTS =
- horror (terror stories)
- awe (detective stories)
- DETECTIVE STORIES:
- *Poe considered himself a
POET foremost (his passion)
- a prose writer 2nd
- YET -->
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SHORT
STORIES
- (1) creator of modern tale of
terror
- (2) parented science fiction
- (3) fathered detective story:
- “tales of ratiocination”
- “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
- “The Purloined Letter”
- “The Mystery of Marie Roget”
- conventions:
- amateur sleuth
- solves a crime that has confounded the
authorities
- through feats of deductive reasoning
- documented by an admiring associate
- (4/5) influenced
- 19thC French Symbolists
- 20thC Surrealists
- (6) influenced by:
- ETA Hoffman, Ann Radcliffe
- Romantic poets (STC)
- (7) forefather of psychological
realism
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STYLE
- THEMES:
- sadness, strangeness, loss
- explored humanity’s Heart of Darkness
(before Conrad)
- see Hawthorne & the Good & Evil live entwined in
the human soul
- see "psychological" below
- SUBJECTIVITY:
- critic, author, poet
- personal
- psychologically true
- 1st person POV
- “journeys within his own imagination & unconscious”
- PSYCHOLOGY:
- stories “skillfully probe the dark recesses of
the human psyche”
- (Gothic)
- depict the disintegration of the human psyche
- depict the machinations of one whose psyche has
already disintegrated (CRAZY)
- GOTHIC:
- setting & subject matter
- psychological profiling
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STYLE
- *EFFECT = #1:
- written NOT to express a theme,
- BUT to produce an effect of horror in the
reader
- Setting, Structure, Characterization -->
support EFFECT
- Poe= master of
form, short story
- no object or detail is out of place, irrelevant,
accidental
- deliberate arrangement of every
detail
- mathematical precision
- planned, premeditated
- effects = “terror, passion, or
horror”
- Poe = brilliant command of this technique
- SETTING:
- quite important for EFFECT, they go hand-in-hand
- “CASK”:
- carnival: "supreme madness of the
carnival season" allows Montresor to find his victim
drunk (and dressed the fool), no servants at home, no
one to notice Fortunato's absence, no one to hear
Fortunato's screams
- crypt: sets effect of horror,
suspense: dank, moldering, bone-filled catacombs
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"CASK"
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"CASK"
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LINKS
LINKS
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