Edgar Allan Poe

 

Who is he?

 

      Born January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts

•       His father left the family in 1810 and his mother died the year after.
•      He was later adopted by John and Frances Allan. John was a tobacco exporter.
•       John sent Poe to top boarding schools and he later went to University of Virginia where he was doing amazing academically.
•       After a year, Poe was forced to leave university as John refused to pay his debts acquired from his gambling habits.
•      He returned to Richmond for a bit and his relationship with John was unsteady.
•      Poe moved to Boston in 1827, and enrolled in the US army – where he wrote several poems such as, Tamerlane and Other poems – he didn’t receive any attention or fame during this time of his life.
•       After joining the US military, he got into the academy but was forced to leave due to lack of financial support.
•       He then moved to his Aunt Marie Clemma’s house in Baltimore, Maryland.

Poe got married to Virginia Clemm,a his 13 year old cousin in 1836 and published his story “The Raven”.

2 years later she died of tuberculosis.

– Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849. His cause of death was unknown.

 

Poe’s style, Forms and Themes

 

Forms

Known for writing poems and short stories.

  Themes

– Mystery, Macabre and Gothic (Death)

 

– Poe is to be considered to be the inventor of detective fiction.

– Poe best known fiction works are gothic.

  Style

-His recurring themes is death ( Physical signs, Decomposition etc..)

– Most of his works are considered to be Dark Romanticism

 

Some of Edgar Allan Poe’s works

 

-The Cask of Amontillado ( short story)

– Red Death (short story)

– Tell tale Heart (short story)

– Black Cat (short story)

– Annabel lee ( Poem)

– Berenice (Short Story)

 

Quotes

 

“Sleep, those little slices of death—How i loathe them”

 

“Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute”

 

“ And being so young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy”

Emulation

 

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief –oh, no! — it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it was welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself — “It is nothing but the wind in the chimney –it is only a mouse crossing the floor,” or “It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp.” Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel — although he neither saw nor heard –to feel the presence of my head within the room.

 

Bibliography

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe#Literary_style_and_themes

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/telltale.html

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4624490.Edgar_Allan_Poe