Edgar Allan Poe Influences

Despite leading a dark and tragic life, Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most known and praised literary artists of the modern era. Mark Canada describes him as a “vituperative critic, and troubled man … [who] has assumed a place … alongside William Shakespeare, Mark Twain”. Poe's works have inspired millions of writers and have resulted in major development of the Gothic genre and the invention of the contemporary Detective Fiction genre due to pieces such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “the first fictional detective, the eccentric and brilliant C. Auguste Dupin” (Canada). The Gothic influence can be seen all throughout his works in form of motifs such as loneliness, darkness, and, most prominently, death; most of these symbols are loosely

As a result, although he had already been doing so on a smaller scale, Poe took up drinking, which is widely believed to be a possible cause of his death. Poe's “Annabel Lee”, mentioned above, is his last known poem and reflects upon his feelings about the death of his wife. The poet states that they “loved with a love that was more than love” (9) and because “The angels … / went envying her and me” (21-22), “that was the reason … That the wind came out of the cloud by night, / Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee” (25-26). The prevalent sense of repetition and the hurried rhymes used throughout the poem allowed Poe to convey his love and present his imperative wish to hold his beloved once again. The poem may also give an insight into Poe's last months as the narrator of the piece slowly edges towards insanity over the loss of the beautiful Annabel Lee. As the poem begins the speaker presents cheerful thoughts and memories and slowly advances towards more unusual subjects and acts as the work continues; finally, the last stanza displays the narrator lying “down by the side / of my darling – my darling – my life and my bride, / In her sepulchre there by the sea” (38-40) suggesting a hint of madness. This can be related directly to Poe and it can be suggested that Poe might have began to lose sanity towards his later years and that Virginia Clemm's death, along with her last years, created an atmosphere of darkness in his daily life which began to bleed into his poetry. This is most obvious in his most popular poem, “which has been called the best-known poem in the Western Hemisphere,” (Canada) “The Raven”. The poem explicitly tributes darkness by use of lines such as “here I opened wide the door; / Darkness there and