Edgar Allan Poe Research Paper

Edgar Allan Poe:A Romantically Grotesque Poet

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality”-Edgar Allan Poe. Horror is something not entirely new to Poe and many other writers of his age. During the Romantic time period of American literature, poet and fiction writer Edgar Allan Poe was known for his controversial, dark, and gothic writing style.

All of Poe’s works fall under the Romantic/Dark Romantic category style of writing. Dark Romanticism is a subgenre of Romanticism (Caffery, Cait). Romanticism is the artsy and literature movement that focuses on the emotional aspect in human beings. Though it may seem that Romanticism and Dark Romanticism may be the same but slightly different, the reality

Some of the pieces that made him popular as he is now is his pieces Tamerlane and Other Poems in 1827, The Narrative of Author of Gordon Pym in 1838, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840, and finally the one that made his mark in American literature The Raven and Other Poems in 1845 (May, Charles). All of these pieces have a certain style to the way the story is told, the details within it and how it is portrayed; that style is called Dark Romanticism. Within that there are “three main themes - lost love, death, and loneliness - are found throughout many of Poe’s works” (Burlingame, 69). For Poe some of influences or rather the men whom he admired were William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope (May, Charles). Though it took him a long time to get recognized in the United States it didn’t take the French long to notice his geniusness. The French poets Charles Baudelaire and Stephane Mallarme looked up to Poe as a poet (Schopen, Irmgard). Poe played a big role in French literature as a “poetic master model and guide to criticism” (Schopen, Irmgard). Sadly, although he did quite a bit of work during his lifetime, he never received any

Though he does criticise Poe’s lifestyle and his mental state he also praises Poe for his creativity and writings. He also shines light upon Poe’s natural ability to lie to others, this ability “stood him in good stead with his writings” (Olson, Ray). His creativity could be seen in his pieces The Mystery of Marie Rodger and The Purloined Letter, these pieces “seemed to be the direct inspiration for Sherlock Holmes” (Olson, Ray). Ray Olson further continues to pick at Poe’s pieces, he cracks down on some of Poe’s most famous pieces and clears up the fact that although they had a creepy element there were no supernatural creatures within them. All in all “horror stories are the best of Poe’s fiction, but the best of the poems are better” (Olson, Ray). From another critic named Herman Charles, Poe was a “worldwide influence” and to writer James Russell Lowell was “three fifths genius and two fifths sheer fudge” (2). Charles demonstrates how Poe who is “considered to have founded modern American criticism” is influential in South African literary criticism and just criticism in general (2). In South Africa the literary texts are similar to the ones Poe had during his age, this led Charles to use Poe as a literary model because of the way Poe used non bias criticism to lead the way for future creativity freedom. To Poe American literature was