Edgar Allen Poe is considered to be one of the leading writers of the Gothic Romantic period of literature. One of Poe’s famous short stories, The Fall of the House of Usher, creates a dark and sorrowful atmosphere, with a deep story of connection between brother and sister intertwined within. Poe conveys this atmosphere through powerful and elaborate use of diction, to tie into the overarching theme of tradition. Poe is renowned throughout history for his beautiful and elaborate use of diction and symbolism. He uses copious amounts of description to conjure up vivid scenes in the reader’s mind.
Running Head: LITERARY CRITICISM Literary Criticism of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque Of The Red Death James Williams Thornwood High School Edgar Allen Poe was born on January 19th, 1809. His family had many actors such as his mother. Poe’s father however, was a lawyer. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was three years old and then his father abandoned him.
That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. Fore I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. To most people these days, he’s considered to be the person who wrote about talking Ravens and Death. Granted he did write about those things, but Edgar Allan Poe was much much more than just that. Edgar Poe was born on January 19, 1809.
People thought back to his literary works acknowledging the fact it was almost always portraying something. Poe was born on January 19th, 1809, the parents being David Poe Jr. and Eliza Poe. From an early age Poe never really had the best childhood or a great life due to his parents mistreating him for so long. When Poe was two years of age, his father abandoned him and his mother, but not too long after both David and Eliza Poe died coincidentally around the same time. This left Poe with no one to stay with or take care of him so he got adopted.
According to Robert Giordano, Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston Massachusetts (Giordano). When Edgar was at the age of three years old, his father left his family, and his mother died following shortly after. These traumatic events could possibly have influenced his writings later
Surrounding environment takes a big role in shaping a person and creating one’s personalities. Edgar Allan Poe, an American writer, is an excellent example for this. Poe’s parents died shortly after he was born and he was taken in by John and Frances Allan, though they never really legally adopt him. With a life full of obstacles, he needed to bear the sadness of his parents’ death and face financial problems all by himself, but still, Poe managed to live a successful life out by himself. He holds fame in the ring of American Gothic genre, digs out people’s darkest sides and puts them into words, and, without himself knowing, influences countless people with his works.
Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809, Boston, Massachusetts, he was a short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor. Poe was the son of actors, but his father left his family when he was young and his mom followed to die when he was the age of three. After the death of his mother Poe was separated from his siblings and went to live with John and Frances Allan. There he lived on a tobacco farm which was located in Richmond, Virginia which led him to go to the University of Virginia in 1826. While he was in college he found that he couldn’t fully afford it so he picked gambling and ended up in deep debt.
Edgar Allan Poe’s frightening gothic style poetry and short novels about fear, love, death and horror are prominent to Gothic Literature and explore madness through a nerve-recking angle. The incredible, malformed author, poet, editor and novelist is recognized for his famous classical pieces such as “The Raven”, “Berenice” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, pieces of work that mystically yet magnificently awakens readers with a gloomy spirit. Awakening the subject of madness through written work was viewed as insane during Poe’s times. Yet Poe published some of the worlds most magnificently frightening pieces of literature throughout history. In the following essay I will examine and cautiously analyze
Poe’s Use of Symbolism and Allusion Edgar Allan Poe is often regarded as the “Father of Gothic Literature,” and rightfully so. He composed a myriad of works that are now viewed as staples in the world of literature. With writings such as “The Raven,” “The Bells,” “The Black Cat,” and, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” he has changed the way readers indulge themselves in literature. Within each of his works, Poe provides the reader with a glance into his personal life, whether it be his preference of day over night, or some of his deeper struggles within himself, including substance abuse and his Survivor’s guilt over the death of many people who were dear to him. This is exemplified in his works, “The Raven,” and “The Black Cat,” where he uses symbolism
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author; he mainly focused in genres such as short stories and poems. Poe didn’t have much of an academic background in literature but, he excelled in it. Some people believe that his success was mostly due to the fact that his life was very sad, filled by a series on misfortunate events, such as being an orphan, suffering from poverty and being constantly surrounded by death. In his works, Poe portrays narratives that are characterized by their mystery and macabre. The topic of death was ever present in his work, constantly describe with dark moods and somewhat terrifying settings.
The ominous poem “The Raven”, written by Edgar Allen Poe, creates suspense throughout by using a combination of different literary devices, such as hyperbole, repetition and pathos. Although the use of literary devices helps create the mood, the way Poe incorporates a variety of structural elements, which include multiple stanzas, longer sentences and the similarities of structure between the poem and a story, help create a darker mood. The poem is set during the mid nineteenth century, at what is referred to as the witching hour, also known as midnight. The setting alone creates a very dark, suspenseful mood. “The Raven” crafts the idea of suspense by using a range of different types of literary features.
Poe uses analogies and irony in “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” to compose effective and suspenseful short stories and poems(Thesis). Poe’s utilization of analogies, comparisons between two unlike things, help make “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” more exciting and full of surprises. In the poem, “The Raven,” a raven flies into the narrator’s room, giving hope to the narrator that he will soon see his lost love, Lenore, again. However, it is hard for the narrator to find trust in the raven, as the raven’s “eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming” (104). As demons are generally associated with evil and cruelty, the comparison of the raven’s eyes with a demon’s eye suggests the actually devious nature of the raven.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most influential writer of all time, as he was one of the first writers to explore darker themes through literature such as death and revenge. He has revolutionized the gothic genre for years to come. Throughout the many gothic works of Edgar Allan Poe including, The Raven, The Cask of Amontillado, and many more; Poe gives a unsettling tone which defines most of his writing. Poe tries to do this through incorporating specific literary techniques like erie imagery and cryptic diction.
Though Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories like, The Cask of Amontillado, to his poems like, The Raven, Poe’s shows his writing style to use physical imagery and connotative syntax to show ,imagery in his writing. Throughout his life, Poe had always lived through the most chaotic and evil of time. His parents died while he was 3 years old. After his parents died, he lived with another family member who never accepted him as their own son. Later on in life, Poe had served in the military and at that point he started writing poems.
For Poe, this genre might have offered him the chance to write about his sorrows, since, at the time The Raven was written according to Joy Lanzendorfer of Mental Floss6, his wife was deathly ill, he had already lost many to tuberculosis and he must have known, in his bosom’s core, that he was to sadly let another one of his beloved go. This is where both the genre and a dark, ebony omen come into play. It can be said that the gothic genre allows us to discuss quite painful subjects through use of copious symbols and parallels and that we can see the effects of such heartbreaking things on the human mind, that we can gradually follow the decline, the decay one might go through after the traumatising event of losing someone close to oneself. The raven, further, is of importance for it, according to Poe, symbolised “mournful and never-ending remembrance. ”7, the type we see in the poem when the bird repeats ‘nevermore’.
