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Edgar Allan Poe
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His Life ...

• Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19,
  1809
• second son of three children
• father David Poe, mediocre actor and heavy
  drinker, who left family in summer 1810
• mother Elizabeth Arnold Poe, charming and
  talented actress died of tuberculosis in
  December 1811 aged 24

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Edgar Allan Poe's mother
"Poe was not quite three, but he always
remembered ... his mother vomiting blood and
being carried away from him forever by sinister
men dressed in black."
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His Life ...

• 1811 foster parents John and Frances Allan, a
  successful and ambitious Boston merchant
  (childless)
• treated Poe like a son, but never adopted him
• 1815 The Allans move to England private
  schools Poe athletic and brilliant student
• But estranged and insecure because of his lowly
  origin
• Oedipal relationship with foster mother
• fell in love with beautiful mother of school
  friend

• fell in love with beautiful young neighbour

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E.A. Poe's foster parents
John Allan
Frances K. Allan
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1818-1820 Manor House School in Stoke Newington
near London
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His Life ...

• 1826 University of Virginia instead of being a
  clerk

• Poe studied French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin
  (excellent marks)

• not enough money from Mr Allan difficulties ..

• took to drinking and gambling over 2000 debts!

• no help from Mr Allan break - and discharge from
  university

• no money 1827 entered army back in Boston

• good soldier top rank in no time!

• 1830 entered West Point after death of Mrs Allan
  and reconciliation with Mr Allan

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His Life ...

• 1831 letter to remarried Mr Allan
• "You sent me to West Point like a beggar. The
  same difficulties are threatening me as before in
  Charlottesville - and I must resign."

• deliberately misbehaved got court-martialed
  left WP in 1831

• went to NYC no job great difficulties, no help
  from home wanted to join the Polish army!!!

• refuge with his aunt, Mrs Clemm, in Baltimore

• 1833 assistant editor of Southern Literary
  Messenger at Richmond

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His Life ...
Mrs Clemm
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His Life ...

• emotional instability resorted to 'the bottle'
  occasionally but never wrote and worked when
  drunk "for he was very frugal and of a sober
  inclination, but he was extremely sensitive and
  given to excruciating fits of depression"

• was often drunk in times of stress and after only
  one glass "lost all sense of dignity and
  decency."

• Poe got fired and after a lot of begging hired
  again

• 1836 married his cousin Virginia (aged under 14!)
  in Richmond marriage never consummated Poe
  happy!

• period of intensive production for Poe

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His Life ...
Platonic love with child-wife Virginia
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His Life ...

• 1837 The Poe moves to NYC (with family) after
  being fired for drinking
• 1838 back to Philadelphia where he became
  coeditor of Byrton's Gentleman's Magazine in 1839
  (fired in 1840)
• 1841 chief editor of Graham's Magazin (fired in
  1842)
• 1842 Virginia vomiting blood
• 1844 back to NYC
• 1845 coeditor of Broadway Journal (folded up in
  1846)
• 1846 The Poes move to cottage near NYC

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His Life ...
Fordham Cottage where Poe wrote THE RAVEN
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His Life ...

• 1847 Virginia dies
• 1848 Poe woos Sarah Helen Whitman (Provid. RI)
  only brief engagement!
• Platonic entanglements with A. Richmond and S.
  Lewis
• Attempted suicide in Boston
• 1849 from NYC to Philadelphia (wild spree!) in
  July on to Richmond where he meets his former
  sweetheart (now a widow) Sarah Elmira Shelton and
  gets engaged
• Happy summer with childhood friends (only few
  relapses)

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His Life ...
Teenage Sarah Elmira Royster drawing by E.A. Poe
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His Life ...

• Poe had some forebodings of death when he left
  Richmond on 27th September to go to Baltimore
• There, after toasting a lady at her birthday
  party on 3rd October, he began to drink heavily.
  This proved fatal, for Poe had a weak heart.
• 7th Oct 1849 Poe dies at Washington College
  Hospital

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His Life ...

• E.A. Poe is buried in Westminster Presbyterian
  churchyard in Baltimore.

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His Works
The artist / writer

• Age of Romanticism
• the occult and satanic
• love, nature, death
• His own faculties and talents
• superior power of imagination
• elaborate technique of writing
• expert and appraiser of contemporary literature
• idealism and musical gift as a poet
• outstanding storyteller and dramatist

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His Works ...

• His character
• strange duality gentle and devoted vs.
  irritable, self-centered and relentless (esp. as
  a critic) depending on whether one was friend or
  foe
• a coexistence of two persons in Poe?
• harrowing nightmares, inner visions of dark
  crimes, appalling graveyard fantasies loomed in
  his unstable being (E.B.)
• "in ordinary circumstances the poet was a
  pleasant companion" (E.B.)

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His Works ...

• LYRICS
• "To Helen", "Annabel Lee" "To One in Paradise"
  "The Raven"
• PROSE HYMNS to beauty and love
• "Ligeia" "Eleonora" "Israfel" etc
• gtgtgt Poe was an idealist and a visionary
• sensitive to the beauty and sweetness of women
• yearning for the ideal both of the heart and the
  imagination
• took his readers to mystical shores "through
  eerie
• thoughts, impulses, or fears" (E.B.)

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His Works ...

• TALES OF DEATH
• "The Fall of the House of Usher" "The Masque of
  the Red Death" "The Premature Burial" etc
• TALES OF WICKEDNESS (REVENGE) AND CRIME
• "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Tell-Tale Heart"
  etc
• TALES OF SURVIVAL AFTER DISSOLUTION "Ligeia"
• TALES OF FATALITY "The Man of the Crowd"
• TALES OF RATIOCINATION
• "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" etc

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His Works ...
The duality of Poe's character is reflected in
his tales which he himself divided into two
groups TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION written
by the self-destructive romantic artist, the
passive dreamer indifferent to the real world
around him TALES OF RATIONCINATION written by the
lucid, self-controlled analyst and conscientious
craftsman
"I often dwelt medidatively upon the old
philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul..." (A. Dupin in
Rue Morgue) The rational powers vs. the
irrational powers ..
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His Works ...
Maelzel's Chess-Player man or machine? (an essay)
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His Works ...
As a critic, Poe laid great stress upon
correctness of language, metre, and structure. He
formulated rules for the short story, in which he
sought for the ancient unities i.e., the short
story should relate a complete action and take
place within one day in one place. To these
unities he added that of mood or effect. He was
not extreme in these views, however. He praised
longer works and sometimes thought allegories and
morals admirable if not crudely presented. Poe
admired originality, often in works very
different from his own, and was sometimes an
unexpectedly generous critic of decidedly minor
writers. from E.B.
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His Impact

• Poe's genius was not recognized in the United
  States for about two generations after his death
  - for the following reasons
• how he wrote and what he wrote about was much too
  'modern' for Americans - both writers and
  readers, and it ignored all known (and 'holy')
  literary traditions and ideals
• his character, his behaviour and manners did not
  fit the social and moral norms of his day
• he was a man of and from the South - in times of
  anti-slavery campaigns and the Civil War

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His Impact

• The Reverend Rufus Griswold
• Thinking he was a real friend Poe asked him to
  handle the marketing of his complete works after
  his death. However, eaten up by hate, envy and
  jealousy Griswold started a smear campaign and
  managed to make Poe the best-hated poet of his
  day and long after.
• Publications of friends like Mrs Whitman (in
  1860) could not change anything - the public
  wanted a scapegoat. Crucify him!

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His Impact
But "Poe's genius was early recognized abroad.
No one did more to persuade the world and, in the
long run, the United States, of Poe's greatness
than the French poets Charles Baudelaire (left)
and Stéphane Mallarmé, who were themselves
influenced by Poe.
The French poets translated Poe's works after
studying English (!) and spread his fame to South
America and Russia.
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His Impact
Indeed, his role in French literature was that of
a poetic master model and guide to
criticism. French Symbolism relied on his
"Philosophy of Composition", borrowed from his
imagery, and used his examples to generate the
modern theory of "pure poetry".
Poe's ARTHUR G. PYM inspired Jules Verne (left)
to write his famous utopian novels, the first
science-fiction novels ever.
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His Impact
Like in the USA, Poe did not have a chance in
puritan England under Queen Victoria. The tide
turned slowly when J. H. Ingram published a fair
Poe biography in 1890. Writers influenced by Poe
were Swinburn and Oscar Wilde (The Picture of the
Dorian Gray)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fashioned his famous
detective, Sherlock Holmes, after Poe's Auguste
Dupin in 'Rue Morgue', the world's first
detective story of that kind.
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His Impact
"The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" left a
deep impression on F. Dostojewskij (read his
"Raskolnikow"). However, Poe's rather pessimistic
outlook on the future were not received
favourably in Soviet Russia.
America has now forgiven Poe all his
'sins'. Freud's theory of the human mind helped
to understand his biography. Today Poe is the
representative of Romanticism (most of his
contemporaries are forgotten!) and the so-called
'Dark Tradition' (Am. nightmare).
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His Impact
Now hailed as the father of the "short story",
the only genuine American literary genre, the
sculpture of this "Southern gentleman" (!) can be
seen in the "Hall of Fame" in New York.
1949 America's lost son was finally accepted and
welcomed home.
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His Impact

• Today
• Poe's works
• are turned into video clips and films
• are put on stage
• are used as lyrics by rock bands (The Alan
  Parson's Project)
• are read and discussed in English classes all
  over the world