Free Essays on Edgar Allen Poe

In Edgar Allan Poe’s poems he writes about death and darkness. Throughout his poems, â€Å"The Raven† and â€Å"The Bells†, Poe writes of death, darkness, and evil. Many say he writes about this because of his childhood problems. (Slovey p. 15) As you continue to read, it will show how others feel about his writings and his desire to write about death. In Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, The Bells, Poe tells how bells can play a part throughout death and this causes readers to dislike the poem but it also has a positive effect on readers when Poe tells of bells being used as symbols of love. For example, some feel that Poe’s desire for death makes the poem less interesting. W.M. Auden tells how the Bells was less interesting but was more successful because the subject is nothing but an excuse for onomatopoeic efforts. Also, some feel that Poe writes about death and darkness because of his drinking problems he had. (Slovey p. 22) Anthony Caputi feels that thi s poem marks the high tide of Poe’s ineffectuality and also bears testimony to his immense gift for poetic conception and thereby confronts us with the peculiar problem of Poe. (Poetry Criticism). In addition, some feel this poem has a sense of good and beauty to it. Floyd Stovall writes how Poe defined poetry as music combined with a pleasurable idea and the poets truth is an excitement of the soul and it is the product of the contemplation of beauty. So in Poe’s poem, The Bells, he writes of death and evil but also of good and love that leaves a positive and a negative effect on readers. In Edgar Allen Poe’s ,The Raven, Poe uses a sense of darkness and evil throughout the poem by using the black bird as a symbol of evil. Some readers cannot understand how this poem has became so popular considering the evil that was used throughout the poem. Allen Tate says he can add very little to criticism of The Raven written in many passages that are wonders how it can be a great poem and how... Free Essays on Edgar Allen Poe Free Essays on Edgar Allen Poe Edgar Allen Poe Edgar Allen Poe, a great 19th-century American author, was born on Jan 19, 1809, in Boston, Mass. Both his parents died when he was two years old, and he was taken into the home of John Allan, a wealthy tobacco exporter of Richmond, Va. Although Poe was never legally adopted, he used his foster father's name as his middle name. After several years in a Richmond academy, Poe was sent to the University of Virginia. After a year, John Allan refused to give him more money, possibly because of Poe's losses at gambling. Poe then had to leave the university. In 1827 he published, in Boston, Tamerlane and Other Poems. This was the first volume of his poems, and was published anonymously. The book made no money, and next Poe enlisted in the United States Army under an assumed name. After he served two years, his foster father arranged for him to be honorably discharged and to enter the United States Military Academy, also known as West Point. But, within six months, Poe was dismissed because of neglect of duty. Poe then began to write stories for magazines. In 1831, he published Poems by Edgar A. Poe, which he dedicated to the cadets of the U.S. Military Academy. In 1833, he won a cash prize for the story MS. Found in a Bottle. In 1835, he jointed the staff of the Richmond Magazine, Southern Literary Messenger. Within a year, the circulation of the magazine increased seven times thanks to the popularity of Poe's stories. Soon, however, Poe lost his job with the magazine because of his drinking. In 1836, he married beautiful Virginia Clemm, the 13-year-old daughter of his aunt. The following year he lived in New York City and the next year he drifted to Philadelphia. There he became associate editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. He contributed literary criticism, reviews, poems, and some of his most famous stories to this magazine. In 1840, Poe published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, a two-volume set of his stories.... Free Essays on Edgar Allen Poe Poe is unquestionably one of the great American writers of all time. He was far ahead of his time with his vision of a special area of human experience the "inner world" of dream, hallucination, and imagination. There is a distinct connection between Poe's nightmarish life and his works. His fictional works resemble a distressed individual who has a pattern of dreams night after night with the same repeating tone of terror. Critics interpret his works as being a search going deep into himself and arriving at the unplumbed mystery of his innerself. He has accomplished himself with that search and characterized the twentieth century with his art. Few poets followed their own theories more completely than Poe. His popularity is due to his consistency in producing a universal appealing effect. "A Poe setting, atmosphere, or situation is instantly recognizable." All of his poetry is based on carefully thought out principles of artistic creativity, and his biggest concern as a poet was the effect he could produce on the reader with those principles.Poe's poetry covered these themes in a way that they all compliment each other. The theme most revolved around by the others is ideal beauty. In using marshalling verse, imagery, rythym, rhyme, and subject matter a poet tries to capture the impression of beauty. Poe's simple definition for beauty was this: "The pleasurable excitement of the soul as it reaches for a perfection beyond this earth." When attaining the unattainable, supernatural beauty a poet cannot use ordinary logic or reason, he must grasp it only aesthetically, not rationally. Poe felt that for a poet to seek appropriate images for ideal beauty he should avoid concrete, ordinary objects of everyday life. Realms of dream, fantasy, the subconscious, and glimpses of life after death are more appropriate images. Poe's simple task in poetry was to induce a state ... Free Essays on Edgar Allen Poe Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and lived in six Eastern cities. Edgar went to the University of Virginia. The student life of the University was more social than academic. The young men drank too much, gambled too much, fought for the sheer enjoyment of violence, and rampaged over the campus at all hours. This was the worst possible environment for young Poe with his emotionally unstable temperament. He was unusually susceptible to alcohol; one mild drink sent him into a state of wild excitement. He gambled recklessly, incurring debts he could not begin to pay. He went to Boston, where he managed to publish a collection of his poems in pamphlet form, Tamerlane and Other Poems. Desperate for money, he joined the army under the name of Edgar A. Perry. In 1833 The Saturday Visitor of Baltimore announced a literary contest with prizes of fifty dollars for the best short story, and twenty-five dollars for the best poem. Poe submitted a gr! oup of stories. One of the stories, MS. Found in a Bottle, won the story prize, and his poem would have won the poetry prize except that the judges decided not to award both prizes to the same contestant. John P. Kennedy, took an interest in Poe and befriended him by helping him sell a story to the new Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond. Poe joined the editorial staff of the magazine and soon became its editor. He has many problems with drinking and therefore his job was on and off. Soon after moving to New York, his poem, The Raven, was published in the New York Evening Mirror. It was reprinted in a number of magazines, and at once became extremely popular. The Raven is not by any means Poe's best poem. The best of his poetry is pure magic.... Free Essays on Edgar Allen Poe Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and lived in six Eastern cities. His father was David Poe, a Baltimore actor. His actress mother, Elizabeth came to the United States as a kid. The parents were not that talented; they played small roles in rather third-rate theatrical companies. Because they both had small parts they barely managed to make a living. Edgar was the second of their three children. When the third child was born, the father died, or disappeared, and Mrs. Poe went to Richmond with the two youngest children. The oldest boy, William Henry, had already been left with relatives in Baltimore. Mrs. Poe was in the last stages of tuberculosis. Weakened by the disease and worn out with the struggle to support her children, she died. Edgar, two years old, and the infant, Rosalie, were left as orphans. It was pure luck that Mrs. Frances Allan, the wife of a merchant in Richmond learned about the Poe babies. She had no children of her own and liked ha ndsome little Edgar a lot more than his sister. She took him home with her, and another family took his little sister Rosalie. Mrs. Allan would have liked to adopt Edgar, but her husband was unwilling to commit himself. At that time people thought acting was immoral. John Allan could not help regarding the little son of actor parents as a questionable person to inherit his name and the fortune he was busy accumulating. He was willing however, to support the child, and in time came to be proud of Edgar's good looks and intelligence. When Edgar was six years old, Mr. Allen's business took him to Scotland, the country from which he had come originally. The family stayed in Scotland and England for five years. Edgar was eleven when the Allans returned to Richmond. Richmond in back then in the 1820's was a good place for a boy to live. It was still a small enough town for the fields, swamps, and woods to be close by. Boys swam in the river and in the little creek... Free Essays on Edgar Allen Poe Poe: The Darkness Edgar Allen Poe is the most well-known author of his time. Edgar Poe’s ancestors were agriculturists and artisans on one side, and actors on the other. Poe was born on Jan. 19, 1809, in Boston ( Encyclopedia Americana Pg. 274). Edgar’s future mother was performing in Virginia, where she was being observed by a young man by the name of David Poe. Soon Eliza Arnold, a young actress, fell in love with David, and he with her. Only six months after the death of her first husband, Eliza and David were married. Edgar’s father joined Eliza’s acting troupe and was greatly criticized by an 1806 notice. â€Å"The lady is young and pretty, and is blessed with both singing and acting talents. Her husband is literally nothing.† This was not the only time that David was badly criticized. (Soon enough, the same types of criticism would plague Edgar later during his first literary disputes) (Meyers Pg.3). Edgar was born in a humble lodging house near Carver Street, south of Boston Common, on January 19,1809. On the back of a watercolor sketch which Poe treasured, his mother wrote: â€Å"For my little son Edgar, who should ever love Boston, the place of his birth, and where his mother found her best, and most sympathetic friends.† Later in adulthood however, Poe had a strong dislike for the city. He hated its ruling literary class-their stuffy morality, vague transcendental philosophy, abolitionist movement, and sterile domination of the American literary scene. After becoming extremely poor, the Poe’s left five week old Edgar in Baltimore with his paternal grandparents, David and Elizabeth continued their theatrical jobs. David Poe made his last stage appearance in October 1809. By July 1811-when Edgar was two and a half years old, his dad deserted the family, and was neither seen nor heard from ever again. After being deserted, Eliza was left with overwhelming demands from her job, constantly having to move, taking car... Free Essays on Edgar Allen Poe In Edgar Allan Poe’s poems he writes about death and darkness. Throughout his poems, â€Å"The Raven† and â€Å"The Bells†, Poe writes of death, darkness, and evil. Many say he writes about this because of his childhood problems. (Slovey p. 15) As you continue to read, it will show how others feel about his writings and his desire to write about death. In Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, The Bells, Poe tells how bells can play a part throughout death and this causes readers to dislike the poem but it also has a positive effect on readers when Poe tells of bells being used as symbols of love. For example, some feel that Poe’s desire for death makes the poem less interesting. W.M. Auden tells how the Bells was less interesting but was more successful because the subject is nothing but an excuse for onomatopoeic efforts. Also, some feel that Poe writes about death and darkness because of his drinking problems he had. (Slovey p. 22) Anthony Caputi feels that thi s poem marks the high tide of Poe’s ineffectuality and also bears testimony to his immense gift for poetic conception and thereby confronts us with the peculiar problem of Poe. (Poetry Criticism). In addition, some feel this poem has a sense of good and beauty to it. Floyd Stovall writes how Poe defined poetry as music combined with a pleasurable idea and the poets truth is an excitement of the soul and it is the product of the contemplation of beauty. So in Poe’s poem, The Bells, he writes of death and evil but also of good and love that leaves a positive and a negative effect on readers. In Edgar Allen Poe’s ,The Raven, Poe uses a sense of darkness and evil throughout the poem by using the black bird as a symbol of evil. Some readers cannot understand how this poem has became so popular considering the evil that was used throughout the poem. Allen Tate says he can add very little to criticism of The Raven written in many passages that are wonders how it can be a great poem and how... Free Essays on Edgar Allen Poe Best known for his poems and short fiction, Edgar Allan Poe deserves more credit than any other writer for the transformation of the short story from anecdote to art. He virtually created the detective story and perfected the psychological thriller. He also produced some of the most influential literary criticism of his timeimportant theoretical statements on poetry and the short storyand has had a worldwide influence on literature. Poe's parents were touring actors; both died before he was 3 years old, and he was taken into the home of John Allan, a prosperous merchant in Richmond, Va., and baptized Edgar Allan Poe. His childhood was uneventful, although he studied (1815-20) for 5 years in England. In 1826 he entered the University of Virginia but stayed for only a year. Although a good student, he ran up large gambling debts that Allan refused to pay. Allan prevented his return to the university and broke off Poe's engagement to Sarah Elmira Royster, his Richmond sweetheart. Lacking any means of support, Poe enlisted in the army. He had, however, already written and printed (at his own expense) his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), verses written in the manner of Byron. Temporarily reconciled, Allan secured Poe's release from the army and his appointment to West Point but refused to provide financial support. After 6 months Poe apparently contrived to be dismissed from West Point for disobedience of orders. His fellow cadets, however, contributed the funds for the publication of Poems by Edgar A. Poe...Second Edition (1831), actually a third editionafter Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829). This volume contained the famous To Helen and Israfel, poems that show the restraint and the calculated musical effects of language that were to characterize his poetry. Poe next took up residence in Baltimore with his widowed aunt, Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia, and turned to fiction a...