Edgar Allan Poe Influences

Edgar Allan Poe said, “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world” (good reads, 1). Although not many of Edgar Allan Poe’s works surrounded the idea of the death of a woman, most of his poems, if not all, portrayed death. He became renowned for his stories and poems about mystery and horror (bio, 1). The extent of Poe’s influence on our culture is immense. He, in fact, was nicknamed “Father of the Detective Story”, because of all of his brilliant tales of mystery and adventure (bio, 1). Throughout Poe’s life, he went through many rough patches and struggled with poverty (bio, 1). His life works, though gruesome and bleak at times, still fascinate people to this day. Edgar Allan Poe proves to stay

Poe went on to assert that poetry is “concerned with indefinite sensations, to which end music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception.” This is

4 one of the first proclamations of the belief in art for art’s sake that, through Poe’s action, would have a passionate effect on the course of nineteenth century French poetry (Ackroyd Peter,

There he published his third volume of verse, Poems, which intensified his fascination in writing about death and psychological instability; this became his trademark. For instance, his poem “Irene” features a disturbed young man who, at midnight, grieves over his lover’s corpse (Poetry Foundation, 1). Though dreary, this poem, just like many of Edgar Allan Poe’s works, related to people’s situations and that is why many adore him in the 21st century. Yet again, this poem and countless others were not recognized until after his death. In an effort to improve his financial living, Poe tried to write fictional stories since those seemed to be more popular and sold better (Encyclopedia Virginia, 3). This turned out to be a wise decision because this is how Edgar Allan Poe started to write Gothic-style horror and suspense stories (Encyclopedia Virginia, 4). In 1831 he entered five of them in a contest endorsed by the weekly newspaper in hopes of winning a prize. To his dismay, Edgar did not win the competition, but someone thought that his stories were so good, so the person published them anonymously in 1832 (Encyclopedia Virginia, 4). A year later one of Poe’s stories that were anonymously published, “Ms Found in a Bottle,” which was about a midnight accident at sea and a mysterious ship that disappears out of the “watery hell,” won a competition sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. One of the