Edgar Allan Poe

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Edgar Allan Poe

• 1809-1849

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Edgar Allan Poe

• Born in Boston on January 19, 1809
• Mother, Elizabeth Arnold Poe, was a successful
  actress
• Father, David Poe, Jr., was a less successful
  actor due to alcoholism

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Edgar Allan Poe

• Poes father abandoned his family around the time
  of his 2nd birthday
• Elizabeth Poe took Edgar and his 2 siblings,
  William Henry and Rosalie, to Richmond, VA in
  1811, where she died later the same year
• Poe was separated from his siblings and placed in
  the care of a childless couple, John and Frances
  Allan (Poe was never leagally adoped by the
  couple)

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Edgar Allan Poe

• John Allan was a Scottish/English merchant who
  kept a tight hold on the familys purse strings,
  but also recognized the value of education
• In 1815 he took his wife and Poe on an extended
  business trip to England
• In England, Poe spent his childhood at
  prestigious boarding academies
• It was in England that Poe first became
  acquainted with the Gothic literature that was
  popular in Europe at the time

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Edgar Allan Poe

• The Allans returned to Virginia in 1820, where
  Poe continued his education at private schools
• Poe was an excellent student and a superior
  swimmer and marksman, but he was not popular
• He was made fun of for being the son of 2 actors
  (a disreputable occupation) and an unadopted
  stepson of the Allans

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Edgar Allan Poe

• Poe received support and encouragement from the
  mother of a classmate, Jane Stith Stanard, but
  she died of a brain tumor when he was fifteen
  years old
• More so than Elizabeth Poe or Mrs. Allan, he
  looked upon this woman as his idealized mother,
  and her untimely death was the apparent cause of
  his first extended period of psychological
  depression, during which he often visited her
  grave
• Around this time, John Allan's trading firm
  suffered a series of financial setbacks, the
  company itself was dissolved, and Poe's
  stepfather took to extramarital affairs and to
  the bottle

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Edgar Allan Poe

• In 1825, John Allan inherited a large sum of
  money, and this abrupt reversal of fortune
  enabled him to enroll Edgar at the University of
  Virginia
• Shortly before his departure for college, Poe
  began to court a fifteen-year-old woman named
  Sarah Elmira Royster
• Whether the two were engaged before he left for
  college is unclear that he was serious about his
  intention to marry Sarah is fairly certain

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Edgar Allan Poe

• Poe entered the University of Virginia in 1826 at
  the age of seventeen, concentrating on classical
  and modern languages
• He found it difficult to maintain a gentleman's
  life style on the relatively meager allowance
  that John Allan furnished to him so he took to
  gambling and compiled debts of honor amounting to
  some 2,000, an enormous sum in the 1820s
• John Allan refused to pay these debts Poe left
  school and returned to Richmond, where he worked
  for a time in Allan's counting house
• When he tried to renew his courtship of Sarah
  Royster, her parents first told him that she was
  abroad he eventually learned that his first
  fiancée had become engaged to another young man

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Edgar Allan Poe

• Alienated from his stepfather and rejected by
  Sarah's family, the headstrong Poe set out on his
  own, moving first to Baltimore in March 1827 and
  then back to the city of his birth, Boston, where
  he took the first of several pseudonyms, calling
  himself Henri Le Rennet
• It was in Boston that Poe wrote the first poems
  that would eventually bear his real name
• Without a regular source of income, Poe joined
  the army at the age of eighteen, enlisting under
  the fictitious name of Edgar A. Perry

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Edgar Allan Poe

• While he was stationed at Fort Independence, Poe
  prevailed upon a local publisher to print his
  first volume of verses, Tamerlane and Other
  Poems. By a Bostonian, in 1827 under the name of
  Edgar Perry
• To these, he would eventually add six new poems
  for a volume that would be published in Baltimore
  under his real name at the end of 1829
• By then, however, tragedy struck Poe's life once
  more in February 1829, Poe's stepmother, Frances
  Allen, died, the third mother figure in his life
  to suffer an untimely death

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Edgar Allan Poe

• The death of Frances Allan set the stage for
  reconciliation between Poe and John Allan
• Poe entered West Point in July 1830, but a few
  months later, he learned that John Allan had
  remarried a woman with children and realized that
  he would never receive any inheritance from his
  stepfather
• Poe resumed his losing ways at cards, drank
  heavily, and neglected his duties, refusing to
  leave his room at the Academy for days on end he
  was dismissed from West Point in March 1831
• Poe took up residence at the home of his aunt,
  Maria Clemm, with her young daughter (and Poe's
  cousin), Virginia Clemm, and Poe's paternal
  grandmother, Elizabeth Poe
• Shortly thereafter, he brought out a third slim
  volume of poems like its predecessors, this
  third book was comprised of verses on
  conventional romantic subjects, notably the myth
  of an idealized world of beauty and joy
  recaptured as dreams and memories.
• Unfortunately, like his first two collections, it
  failed to receive any reviews. Poe applied for
  editorial and teaching positions but was
  unsuccessful in his effort to gain regular
  employment.

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Edgar Allan Poe

• In 1831, Poe entered into a new stage in his
  fledgling literary career
• The tastes of the American reading public had
  turned from romantic poetry and toward humorous
  and satirical prose
• By June of that year, he had submitted five comic
  pieces to the Philadelphia Saturday Courier
• Poe received entree to the Southern Literary
  Messenger, in which he published his first true
  horror story, "Berenice," in 1835
• Shortly thereafter, he became an editor of this
  journal, to which he would contribute additional
  tales, poetry, and scores of book reviews
• Many of the latter were extremely abrasive
  having secured a permanent position in the
  literary world, Poe quickly made enemies that
  would come back to haunt him, even after his death

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Edgar Allan Poe

• When John Allan took ill in 1834, Poe traveled to
  Richmond in the hope of some positive resolution
  of his conflict with his erstwhile stepfather
• The dying man, however, would have none of it and
  refused to see Poe
• A year later, Poes grandmother, Elizabeth Poe,
  died and Poe moved from Baltimore back to
  Richmond with his aunt and cousin
• On May 16, 1836, Poe married his cousin Virginia
  Clemm, who was just thirteen years old at the
  time
• Poe, his bride, and his mother-in-law then moved
  to New York City, where they would remain for
  about 18 months before relocating again, this
  time to Philadelphia

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Edgar Allan Poe

• The year 1837 marked the start Poe's most
  productive period as a fiction writer during the
  next eight years, Poe composed most of the tales
  of terror with which he is customarily identified
  
• In 1840, Poe financed the publication of
  twenty-five short stories as Tales of the
  Grotesque and Arabesque. But sales of this volume
  were surprisingly poor its appearance was
  neglected by other reviewers, many of whom Poe
  had already alienated through his criticism of
  their talents and tastes
• After several unsuccessful attempts at full-time
  employment, in 1842, his young wife, Virginia,
  suffered a burst blood vessel and contracted
  tuberculosis
• In March 1843, he went to Washington, D.C., in
  search of a job with the federal government. But
  he was waylaid by an extended drinking binge, Poe
  taking to the bottle with increasing frequency
  after Virginia became ill

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Edgar Allan Poe

• In 1845, Poe's career received two additional
  boosts
• The first came after Poe and his family moved
  back to New York City, taking residence at a
  cottage in Fordham, and began to write poetry
  again. It was in New York that he wrote "The
  Raven." The poem was a popular sensation, and it
  gave him a new source of income, reciting his own
  verses (and later lecturing) to paying audiences
• During the remaining years of his life, Poe wrote
  virtually all of his most famous poems
• The second boost came when James Russell Lowell
  wrote a laudatory essay about Poe that appeared
  in Graham's Magazine. With Lowell's assistance,
  Poe became the editor of the Broadway Journal

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Edgar Allan Poe

• Poe now watched as Virginia's health deteriorated
• In his own words, he suffered "the horrible,
  never-ending oscillation between hope and
  despair"
• On January 30, 1847, Virginia Poe died
• Poe lapsed into depression and hard drinking
• He pulled out of this descent, turning to the
  composition of theoretical works about
  literature, human nature, and the cosmos at large
  
• He became conditionally engaged to the somewhat
  older Sarah Helen Whitman, but their relationship
  ended abruptly when he called upon her in a
  drunken state

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Edgar Allan Poe

• Contrary to popular belief, in his final year
  (1849), Poe's life was relatively stable
• He continued to earn a living through his
  lectures and recital performances, and he visited
  friends that he had made in Philadelphia,
  Baltimore, and Richmond
• In fact, Poe spent two months in Richmond,
  calling upon Sarah Shelton, who had become a
  widow and reportedly accepted his proposal of
  marriage

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Edgar Allan Poe

• On October 3, 1849, an election day, Poe was
  found deliriously ill, lying half-conscious in
  the street (in Baltimore) outside of a polling
  place and a few yards away from a tavern
• Whether Poe was drunk or not has never been
  conclusively determined
• He was taken to a local hospital, still in a
  delirious state and calling for a polar explorer
  of the day named Reynolds
• He uttered his final words and epitaph, "Lord
  help my poor soul," on October 7, 1849, and was
  buried the next day in Baltimore's Presbyterian
  Cemetery

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Edgar Allan Poe

• While the enormous popularity of Edgar Allan
  Poe's famous short stories and poems continues to
  highlight his creative brilliance, Poe's renown
  as the master of horror, the father of the
  detective story, and the voice of "The Raven" is
  something of a mixed blessing
• Today, Poe is known, read, and appreciated on the
  basis of a comparatively narrow body of work,
  roughly a dozen tales and half as many poems
• He wrote for the masses, using his learned
  artistry to reach the common people of his day
  and to then elevate their minds while
  intensifying their emotional reactions
• Along with Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, Poe
  ranks among the foremost literary stars in the
  firmament of popular American culture. A century
  and half after his death, Poe is instantly
  identifiable, stands without rival, and remains
  (with effort) immensely enjoyable

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Edgar Allan Poe

• Poe, in fact, wrote nearly seventy short works of
  fiction
• He is duly credited with creating the detective
  story genre and with transforming the Gothic
  mystery tale of the Romantic Period into the
  modern horror or murder stories centered in the
  outlying regions of human mind and experience
• But he also wrote several comic and satirical
  pieces, literary parodies, sketches, and
  experimental stories

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Edgar Allan Poe

• Poe developed a theory of composition that he
  applied to both his short stories and his poems
• Its most basic principle was that insofar as
  short fiction and poetry were concerned, the
  writer should aim at creating a single and total
  psychological/spiritual effect upon the reader
• The theme or plot of the piece is always
  subordinate to the author's calculated
  construction of a single, intense mood in the
  reader's or listener's mind, be it melancholy,
  suspense, or horror
• There are no extra elements in Poe, no subplots,
  no minor characters, and no digressions except
  those that show the madness of deranged
  first-person ("I") narrators
• Ultimately, Poe took writing to be a moral task
  that worked not through teaching lessons, but in
  simultaneously stimulating his readers' mental,
  emotional, and spiritual faculties through texts
  of absolute integrity

22
Lenore (1831)

• Lenore is a poem reflecting on the death at a
  young age of the fair Lenore
• Most likely, the Lenore remembered in this poem
  is the same who is mourned in The Raven
• Lenore is a poem with at least two different
  speakers
• The second and fourth stanzas are enclosed in
  quotation marks the first and third, while not
  marked, are clearly spoken by a character or
  characters, not by an omniscient narrator
• Beyond the quotation marks and a noticeable shift
  in tone and attitude, there is no indication who
  is speaking anywhere in the poem
• Most critics have assumed that the poem presents
  a dialogue between Guy De Vere, Lenores grieving
  lover, and the family or priest of the dead woman

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Berenice (1835)

• The story follows a man named Egaeus who is
  preparing to marry his cousin Berenice
• He has a tendency to fall into a periods of
  intense focus during which he seems to separate
  himself from the outside world
• Berenice begins to deteriorate from an unnamed
  disease until the only part of her remaining
  healthy was her teeth
• Egaeus begins to obsess on her teeth
• Berenice dies and Egaeus continues to contemplate
  her teeth
• Deep in thought, he is interrupted by a servant
  who tells him Berenice's grave has been disturbed
  
• Poe was forced to self-censor the work due to its
  violent nature

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Ligeia (1838)

• Edgar Allan Poe's celebrated "Ligeia" one of his
  finest treatments of romantic love frustrated by
  deathmay be a story that asserts the power of
  the human will or "Ligeia" may be a story that
  demonstrates the destructive power of delusions
• At the story's climax, is Ligeia's resurrection
  from the dead a supernatural event, or an
  hallucination by a man demented from obsessive
  grief and excessive opium, or both?
• The text of the story supports both readings and
  has thus inspired a lively debate among literary
  scholars
• The two interpretations seem to argue in opposite
  directions that the human will is so grand that
  it can overcome all other forces in its exercise
  of godlike supernatural power, or that human
  consciousness is so easy a prey to raw emotion
  and narcotics that it cannot even perceive what
  is real
• Human will is either powerful or puny

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The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)

• One of Edgar Allan Poes most famous short
  stories, it is a psychological portrait of a mad
  narrator who kills a man and afterward hears his
  victims relentless heartbeat
• It is simultaneously a horror story and
  psychological thriller told from a first-person
  perspective
• It is admired as an excellent example of how a
  short story can produce an effect on the reader
• It exemplifies Poes ability to expose the dark
  side of humankind and is a harbinger of novels
  and films dealing with psychological realism

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The Raven (1845)

• Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth
  centuries, The Raven has become one of
  Americas most famous poems, partly as a result,
  of its easily remembered refrain, Nevermore
• The speaker, a man who pines for his deceased
  love, Lenore, has been visited by a talking bird
  who knows only the word, Nevermore
• The narrator feels so grieved over the loss of
  his love that he allows his imagination to
  transform the bird into a prophet bringing news
  that the lovers will Nevermore be reunited, not
  even in heaven
• In The Philosophy of Composition, Poes own
  essay about The Raven, he describes the poem as
  one that reveals the human penchant for
  self-torture as evidenced by the speakers
  tendency to weigh himself down with grief

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Annabelle Lee (1849)

• Written in 1849, "Annabel Lee" was published the
  same year, just two days after Poe's death on
  October 7
• Using a melodious narrative form, the speaker
  laments the death, many years ago, of his beloved
  young bride Annabel Lee
• His loss moves him to state that envious angels
  caused the girl's death to separate the young
  married couple
• He tells briefly of her funeral and entombment
  "in her sepulchre by the sea"
• The narrator then reveals that he has been unable
  to accept their separation since her death, he
  has spent night after night at her tomb, an
  astonishing and perverse example of the
  immortality of young love