Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849

1
Edgar Allan Poe1809-1849

• English 2
• Mr. OConnell
• Loyola High School

2
Introduction

• Emerson To be great is to be misunderstood
• His ideas were in conflict with the spirit of his
  age
• Took refuge as a lonely and misunderstood artist
• His neurotic personality often mirrored that of
  his fictional characters

3
Childhood

• Born in Boston, January 19, 1809
• Parents
• David Poe (deserted wife 18 months later)
• Elizabeth Arnold Poe (died in 1811)
• Became ward of the Mr. Mrs. John Allan family
  (never legally adopted)
• John Allanrich tobacco exporter
• Mrs. Allanspoiled Edgar with the affections of a
  childless wife of an unfaithful father
• Led to tensions and jealousiesestranged Poe from
  Mr. Allan

4
Education

• Received a genteel and thorough education in
  Virginia and abroad
• Lived in England and Scotland (1815-20)
• Attended a prestigious classical prep school
• Attended the University of Virginia
• Mr. Allan removed him b/c of gambling debts
• Entered the Army as Edgar A. Perry
• Entered West Point Academy in 1830
• Felt out of place and grew sick of the Academy
• Received a Dishonorable Discharge for neglecting
  his duties

5
Love Life

• Age 11 infatuated with Jane Stith Stanard, a
  classmates mother
• Led to the poem To Helen
• High School considered himself engaged to Sarah
  Elmira Royster
• She engaged another while Poe was at UVA
• September 1835 Secretly married his 13-year-old
  cousin, Virginia Clemm
• 1849 Consented to marry Sarah Elmira Royster,
  his childhood sweetheart

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Early Writings

• 1827 Tamerlane and Other Poems
• Signed By a Bostonian
• 1829 Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems
• 1831 Poems (New York)
• 1831 to 1835 Lived as a hack writer in Baltimore
• Lived in poverty and struggled
• October 12, 1833 published MS Found in a
  Bottle and won a 50 prize
• Heralded the success of his short story formula

7
Writing Career

• Editor for Southern Literary Messenger
  (1835-1837 Richmond, VA)
• Brilliant editor, attracted attention for his own
  critical articles
• Personal instability quarreled with staff
• 1838-1844 Period of greatest accomplishment
  (Philadelphia)
• Editor of Burtons Gentlemans Magazine, Grahams
  Magazine, and The Saturday Museum

8
Writing Career

• Well-known in literary circles for critical
  articles
• Published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
  (1840)
• 1843 Earned fame (and 100) for The Gold Bug
  in Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper
• Left Philadelphia and moved to New York and found
  sporadic employment
• Again lived in grueling poverty

9
Writing Career

• In New York, Virginia sick with tuberculosis
• Poes eccentricities increase begins to drink
• Candid reviews and critical articles gained him
  many enemies, who ruined his reputation
• Despite this, in 1845 published The Raven in
  the Evening Mirror and in The Raven and Other
  Poems
• 1846 Virginia died
• 1848 Published Eureka, deemed a work of a
  demented mind, in which he attempted to unify the
  laws physical science with those of aesthetic
  reality

10
Death

• His life ended, as it had been lived, in events
  so strange that he might have invented them
  (Perkins et al, 529)
• Consented to marry Sarah Elmira Royster
• Left for Philadelphia on business
• Six days later found unconscious on streets of
  Baltimore
• Died in delirium four days later Oct. 7, 1849
• Obituary Died of congestion of the brain

11
Contributions

• During a short life of poverty, anxiety, and
  fantastic tragedy Poe achieved the following
• establishment of a new symbolic poetry, which
  encompassed only 48 poems
• the formalization of the new short story
• the invention of the story of detection and the
  broadening of science fiction
• the foundation of a new fiction of psychological
  analysis and symbolism
• the development of an important critical theory
  and a discipline of analytical criticism

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Literary Philosophy

• Emphasis on art that simultaneously appeals to
  REASON and EMOTION both head and heart
• Influenced the course of creative writing and
  criticism
• Art an object created in the cause of Beauty
• Involves the utmost concentration and unity, with
  the most scrupulous use of words
• Works directed toward universal human response
• Like Hawthorne, Poe used symbolism
• Unlike Hawthorne, Poe taught no moral lessons
  except the discipline of Beauty

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Source

• Perkins, George, Sculley Bradley, Richmond Croom
  Beatty, and E. Hudson Long, eds. The American
  Tradition in Literature. 6th ed. New York Random
  House, 1985.