_Edgar Allen Poe _
By: Anonymous
Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe's contributions to American literature have
become increasingly more prominent as the years have passed. As short fiction
has become a more accepted genre in literary circles, Poe's theories are
studied with more passion. Although he lived a rather melancholy existence,
Poe did experience moments of joy, and desired to capture beauty through
poetical form. Indeed, what he left behind for the literary world was his
gifted genius, revealed through his poetry, fiction, and criticism. The
darkness that seemed to surround Poe's life began as an infant. Poe was born
January 19,1809 in Boston Massachusetts, the second son of David and Eliza
Poe. Soon afterward, David Poe abandoned the family. Two-years later Eliza
passed away, succumbing to tuberculosis. After her death, Poe, his infant
sister, Rosalie, and brother William were separated. William was sent to live
with their paternal grandparents. Poe moved to Richmond Virginia to live with
John and Fannie Allan; Rosalie was taken in by another family in Richmond
(Silverman 1-15) John Allan was a successful businessman; the poverty that
Poe had been accustomed to was a thing of the past. Although not extravagant
with Poe, John Allan ensured that he had a Brassfield 2 quality education.
While in living in England with the Allans, he attended private academies and
continued his education in private schools when they returned to the states.
Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia in 1826. While there, he
accumulated a large debt. He appealed to John Allan to repay the debts but
Allan refused. He believed that Poe was in debt due to gambling and his
addiction to alcohol (Silverman 29-38). The greatest contributor to Poe's
despair would have to be his self-inflicted addiction to alcohol. His foster
family's social status made his alcoholism a shameful vice, and a source of
conflict. Using it as an escape of sorts, Poe's life was greatly affected by
the substance, disrupting his work, his first engagement, and his time with
his foster family. After he left his family, he tried to make a life in
Boston, where he found his relatives poor, but giving. Reunited with his
brother, William, Poe found him dying at the haunting age of 24. His writing
became more insistent, as he found himself rejected by several newspapers. He
eventually married his cousin, Virginia, who became a symbol to him as the
ideal woman. In 1837, he moved to New York, where he engaged in literary wars
with his contemporaries. Highly opinionated, Poe was not timid about
criticizing the great poets and writers of his time. Poe continued to pursue
his writing, and in 1947, Virginia died of tuberculosis, which left him
understandably broken. However, upon her death, Poe still used her as his
muse, finding the inspiration to write of death and love and reunion. He died
on October 7, 1849 (Hart 521-2). Throughout his short-lived life, Edgar Allan
Poe compiled a collection of literature, offering poetry, short fiction and
literary criticism. In fact, perhaps even more than his poetry and short
fiction, Poe's criticism is what has endured, and has recently come into its
own. In his Brassfield 3 day, Poe was always trying to find his
place among the literati. Hart writes, "There have been strongly divergent
evaluations of Poe's literary significance, from Emerson's dismissal of him as
'the jingle man' and Lowell's 'three-fifths genius and two fifths sheer fudge'
to Yeat's declaration, 'always and for all lands a great lyric poet'" (522).
The criticism of his poetry and writing was a direct criticism on his
theories, as he implemented his theories in all of his writing. As Charles E.
May notes, "Poe's demand that inner coherence rather than external
correspondence be the criteria by which to judge the artwork and his
identification of 'plot' with form played a significant role in the creation
of his own fiction and the development of his thought" (117) His "The
Philosophy of Composition" and "The Poetical Principle" are two pieces of
criticism, which will be forever debated. Essentially, Poe believed that
length was extremely important. Poe said, "If any literary work is too long to
be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely
important effect derivable from unity of impression - for, if two sittings be
required, the affairs of the world interfere, and every thing like totality is
at once destroyed" (May 129). Thus, length was the very key to the enjoyment
of a poem or a short story Unity was a very important element in Poe's
writing. As May says, "The single unifying factor in all of Poe's works is the
concept of unity itself" (11). Poe was deeply concerned with the relationship
of words and their "effect" on the reader. He was also driven to create a
dream world, one self-contained within the writing itself, without the help of
external forces. He did not want his writing to be dependent on any outside
variable. May adds, "And the function of Brassfield 4 language
is not to mirror external reality but to create a self-contained realm of
reality that corresponds only to the basic human desire for total unity" (11).
Consequently, in Poe's writing one can find these theories at use. Now that
short fiction has become an accepted genre, Poe's theories have become even
more important. For the short story, Poe believed in an inverse approach to
writing. He believed that the writer should have one "single effect," which
motivated the entire piece of literature. The writer would come up with the
"end," and find the "means" by which to achieve it. Poe said once in a review
of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Twice-Told Tales": "A skillful literary artist has
constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate
his incidents: but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or
single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents - he then
combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived
effect" (May 124) For example, in "A Descent into the Maelstrom," Poe spends
most of the story setting up the situation. He creates a whole world, one that
is natural in its setting, but so extreme, that it becomes unnatural. By the
end of the story, the situation is finally established, with the denouement
being imminent, as well. Again, the story revolves around the one "single
effect" (Poe 48-61) With poetry, Poe believed in its power to convey the
beautiful - "Poe thought that art must attempt to convey the soul's vision of
beauty, for man could not duplicate the Great Design. He could only attempt to
reproduce the effect that an intuitive perception of perfect order would
stimulate" (Jacobs 297). As previously mentioned, he also felt that there
could never exist the Brassfield 5 "long poem." Poe said in
"The Poetic Principle,": "I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain
that the phrase, 'a long poem,' is simply a flat contradiction in terms" (May
130) In what is arguably Poe's most famous work, "The Raven," he attempts to
put his theories into practice, creating a world independent of any outside
force. He employs the mechanical in this poem and uses the Raven to express
his opinion that beauty can be found in repetition, in something as mechanical
as this. Poetry manages to convey the beauty of the human soul, and can even
be achieved by the most mechanical of devices. As Barbara Johnson observed,
"It is as though a talking bird were the perfect figure for the poetic
parroting" (Rosenheim and Rachman 43). Poe's mastery of his theories allows
him to write "a highly artificial poem that describes the signifier as an
artifice that somehow captures the genuine" (Rosenheim and Rachman 47). Again,
Poe desires to create another world, an artificial creation, but in the
process conveys the beauty he desires Edgar Allan Poe's life was one full of
despair and depression. Perhaps it was this state of mind which made him
fearless, allowing him to voice his opinion in spite of the criticism directed
at him. Today, his words are being regarded with a newfound significance, for
short fiction has become a genre in and of itself. His theories on writing
will continue to be studied for generations to come. Though his place in
literary circles was uncertain before, his place in the literary cannon is
undeniable today.
_Bibliography _
Hart, James David. The Oxford Companion to American Literature. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1983 Jacobs, Robert D. Poe: Journalist &Critic.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969. May, Charles E. Edgar
Allan Poe: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth
Editions Limited, 1993 Rosenheim, Shawn, and Stephen Rachman, eds. The
American Face of Edgar Allan Poe. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1995 Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe, Mournful and Never-ending
Remembrance. New York: Harper 1992
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