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Edgar Allan Poe: A Gothic Literary Analysis

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Gothic literature first began in the 18th century by Horace Walpole, who wrote The Castle of Otranto. After the first piece of work, the people instantly became intrigued by the genre and just wanted to read more. One of the most famous authors, was Edgar Allan Poe, who captured the audience with his intriguing and persuasive text. All the authors of this era created suspense through various literary devices that they used to also grab the reader’s attention. Imagery and repetition are both used throughout “The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Raven”, and “The Birds”, which all are suspenseful stories. Imagery and repetition was a major part in “The Pit and the Pendulum”, by Edgar Allan Poe. It really was able to lure the reader into what’s to …show more content…

The text was “It was a wall, seemingly of stone masonry-very smooth, shiny, and cold.” (Poe 308), which brought lots of suspense as to what else there could be in the room. Poe also used repetition in the story to create lots of suspense. “Down-...Down-...Down-...” (Poe 315,316), which was the statement that began three straight paragraphs. This creates suspense by showing that the pendulum keeps swinging and moving downward, slowly moving to killing the person on the table. Edgar Allan Poe uses imagery and repetition in “The Pit and the Pendulum”, as well as in “The Raven”. Both “The Raven” and “The Pit and the Pendulum” have large amounts of imagery as well as repetition that make the book more descriptive. The imagery that Poe used all throughout “The Raven”, allowed the …show more content…

All three of these gothic pieces of works, contained multiple amounts of repetition and imagery. In “The Birds”, Daphne du Maurier used the quote “Something black rose from behind them, like a smudge at first, then widening, becoming deeper. The smudge became a cloud; and the cloud divided again into five other clouds, spreading north, east, south, and west; and then they were not clouds at all but birds.” (Maurier 6). This imagery allowed the reader to have fear by knowing that the birds would be coming towards the narrator any second. This quote also used sight imagery which connects to the quote from “The Raven” about the setting. All three of the imagery related quotes from the stories put fear into the reader’s eyes, while having a suspenseful thought. The repetition that Maurier used was able to foreshadow into the future. “He went upstairs and worked there the rest of the morning, boarding the windows of the bedrooms, filling up the chimney bases,” foreshadows because if Nat had to put so much effort into securing the house, it would be evident that the birds would be able to get through the obstacles somehow. Especially in a gothic piece where there is a ton a fear represented throughout the story. This is similar to the other pieces because it puts fear into the reader, as they hope for the best of the narrators. On the other hand, it has it 's differences between the pieces because it foreshadows, where “The Pit and the Pendulum” has suspense and happens quickly,

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The imagery of the first poem greatly contrasts from the overall tone. In “A Barred Owl,” Richard Wilbur describes an owl frightening a child and waking her from her slumber. Wilbur sets the scene with dark imagery: “The warping night air brought the boom/ Of an owl’s voice into her darkened

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In one case, “He had dark hair and eyes, and a perfectly pointed triangle of a nose that made him look like one of the ravens that circled over the orchard sometimes.” (pg. 5) As well, this shows a terrific example of imagery. The book uses figurative language exquisitely. The book states, “Tonight, she skated under the moon and listened to the music of ice. Welcome to winter, it said.

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First, the common theme of “The Raven” is grief,agony, and heartache. With dialogue like “while I pondered,weak and weary”shows that emotion. The narrator is sad about his lost love Lenore. Which is parallel to when Poe’s wife was deadly ill.

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This precisely explains the darkness of the room because it is mentioned that there was no light of any kind. Another source of imagery that conveys a haunting mood is the sentence in the first paragraph

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Edgar Allan Poe’s work has been admired for centuries. One of his most famous works, The Raven is one many people gravitate towards. This 108 line poem consists of assonance and religious allusions to contrast many different types of religion including Christianity and Hellenism. This gives the audience an inside view on Poe’s religious views, or lack thereof. Poe starts off this poem with assonance when he uses the terms “dreary,” “weak and weary.”

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Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride” tells the famous story of the titular character and his warning of the British invasion, and Poe’s “The Raven” tells the tale of a harrowing experience with a black bird who incessantly repeats the ominous word “Nevermore” (48). Longfellow’s story of Paul Revere comes before the author’s lifetime; however, while Poe’s tale seems to come from the relatively recent past. Despite this difference, both poets are effective in drawing the reader into their respective stories and invoking interest with descriptions of a valiant night ride and an unusual visit from a mysterious, almost supernatural creature. The narrative form is necessary for both of these poems, which are meant to convey a distinct set of consecutive events in a relatively chronological order, and the use of the lyric form might have caused the intentions of each to become too abstract. “Paul Revere’s Ride” uses a great deal of transitional phrases such as “meanwhile” and “then” (Longfellow 15, 24), and Poe also uses the latter to move from one related plot point to another (19).

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Some of the literary devices used is repetition which adds more of an impact to the reader and draw them into the speaker’s thoughts and feelings. Symbolism by using the Raven as a symbol for death, sorrow and a constant reminder that his love is gone which connects the reader with the speaker on a more visual and emotional level. He also uses alliteration to add emphasis and importance to the speaker’s which the reader gets excited, scared or at least anxious for what will happen next. “The Raven” became one of the best known piece of literature because of the many literary devices, especially repetition,symbolism, and alliteration, to impact the reader on many levels of

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Secondly, in “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the narrator compares his sleep, to that of death, and gives the Pit human characteristics. As an example,Poe writes, “A deep sleep fell upon me-- a sleep like that of death(67)”. In the quote, the narrator describes his sleep as being so deep, that it could be compared to death it self. Maybe it could have been a bit of foreshadowing to his own death, or that of the inquisitors who held him

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The Romantic Period was an artistic, literary movement that started in Europe at the end of the 18th century. The Romantic movement was partly a reaction to the industrial revolution that dominated at that time; it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. After a grueling revolutionary war, America finally gained its independence from the great British. Nevertheless, Americans have grown dependent on the British throughout the many years of colonization. It was at this dire times that Romanticism reached America.

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By telling the poem “The Raven “in first person point of view we learn that the narrator is alone Because we hear his thoughts as well as his spoken words we learn of the loss of his beloved, “For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—“ the poem continues to chronicle the narrators search for the source of the noise. Without the first person point of view the narrators madness and anxiety would not be clear, Poe made it clear that the loss of a loved can create madness that can last forever. In the poem “The Raven,” Edgar Allen Poe uses repetition to builds suspense.

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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.

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The story is dedicated to a loss one of Poe. In “Poe Museum,”(2017) it says “Most famously, poe completely transformed the genre of the horror story with his masterful tales of psychological depth and insight not envisioned in the genre before his time and scarcely seen it since.” In Poe’s story “The Raven,” he gets in the reader’s head with his recurring themes and his way of portraying the sense of fear with his poetic lyrics. The mood he creates with his setting makes it seem very down because the story takes place in a dark room where the raven flies in through a window.

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Edgar Allan Poe is an influential writer who is well known mainly for his dark and mysterious obscure short stories and poems. Throughout this essay I will analysing how poe uses a series of literary terms such as diction and anaphora in order to convey a bleak, eerie mood and tone. Poe uses these terms in order to contribute to his writing in a positive way, creating vivid images and a cheerless mood. In Poe’s poem, “The Raven”, he uses words such as lonely, stillness, ominous and fiery to add to the building up apprehension within the poem. In addition, he also uses repetition to create fluent yet unruffled, tragic feel for the reader.

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At a glance, it might seem that the works which have been analysed in this study are indisputably similar. A Gothic novel as revealed through the various illustrations explains to the readers a world filled with terror, horror, madness, mystery and unsolved crime. The gothic fiction germinated in the latter part of the 18th century. Various causes have been ascribed for the Gothic origin and development.

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