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Major works in fiction:
"The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839)
"The Masque of the Red Death" (1842)
"The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843)
"The Purloined Letter" (1844)
"The Cask of Amontillado" (1846)
"The Black Cat" (18??)
"The Pit and the Pendulum (18??)
Biographical Notes
Poe was born in Boston in 1809 to parents who were actors. His father disappeared before he was two, his mother died before he was three, and he was raised by the John Allan family in Richmond, Virginia. He was given a good primary education in Richmond and in England, where the Allans lived from 1815 to 1820. At seventeen, Poe entered the University of Virginia but spent only one year there--Mr. Allan cut off his funding because he had run up excessive debts, and because Allan thought little of Poe's literary aspirations. Allan "had no patience with Poe's character," which was dreamy, impractical, and dissolute. After leaving UVA, Poe went to Boston, where he published his first volume of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems, in 1827. He joined the army and rose to the rank of sergeant major. In 1829, Poe entered West Point, but he was expelled for "bad behavior." 1829 also saw the publication of his second volume of poems, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems, which like the first volume met with little success. After a failed attempt to join the Polish army, Poe lived with his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm, and his young cousin, Virginia, whom he married in 1836 when she was only 13. Poe made a name for himself writing experimental tales, and he worked for several notable magazines both as contributor and editor. Heavy drinking got him fired from at least two magazines, and bouts of depression and abuse of alcohol and recurred on a regular basis. Through his poetry, his short fiction, and his critical essays and reviews Poe established himself as an important early icon in American literature. Poe died under mysterious circumstances in Baltimore, where he was found in a coma on the street during an October 7, 1849 local election--Baltimore elections were notorious for "drinking and brawling and political skullduggery of all kinds." Poe's death has often been blamed on his getting caught up in election-related foul play (He was found near a poll-booth.), but it is more often now believed he simply collapsed in an alcoholic stupor on the street and died the next day of pneumonia.
Influential Achievement
Poe's influence was profound and widespread. His greatest historical importance probably lies in his theory of both fiction and poetry as means to accomplish certain artistic effects, and in his opening of the realms of psychology and the bizarre for artistic exploitation. He is one of the earliest theorists of the short story, and he is often seen as one of the genre's founding fathers. His exploration of psychology and the bizarre opened up new possibilities for subsequent authors, critics, poets, painters, and composers, and he enabled fuller access to dreams, fantasies, and unconscious impulses that had not been thought viable concerns by previous artists.
Critical Tradition
Poe's critical reception has remained divided since his own day. Some have seen his subject matter as too bizarre and eccentric for him to be appreciated as a serious artist. On the other hand, many critics have recognized the technical artistry of the tales and their solid links to American culture. Far into the 20th century Poe's works were condemned on the basis of immorality in his personal life. Recent attention to psychological approaches to literature have established Poe as an important artist of the irrational and demonic impulses in life and whose heroes were precursors of the twentieth -century man--psychically disoriented and offering insight into "the disintegration of modern personality."
In "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846), Poe gives his theory of artistic creativity in recounting the creative process behind his poem, "The Raven." Poe says he began composing "with the consideration of effect," striving always for originality and vividness. Poe's most famous tales and poems do deliver certain "effects," usually involving specific aspects of madness or horror.
Famous Poe stories and their "effects":
"The Cask of Amontillado"—revenge drives a man to chain his enemy and entomb him alive in catacombs.
"The Fall of the House of Ussher"—tale of madness of Roderick Ussher, who buries his sister alive—the cracked house that crumbles and falls symbolizes the cracked Ussher mind represented by both brother and sister.
"The Black Cat"—symbolic tale of perversity, or alcoholism, or conscience, as inescapable: crazy narrator kills cat, then wife, then is revealed to police by cat's meow—the cat is entombed behind false wall.
"The Telltale Heart"—much like "The Black Cat," told by a mad narrator who killed an old man who had an irritating evil eye. The corpse is buried beneath floorboards, but then his heart beats so loudly that the narrator confesses to police.
Re: our readings
"MS in a Bottle": it may help to know the legend of the ship, The Flying Dutchman, which is supposed to appear to sailors on doomed ships just before their ships sink.
"The Oblong Box": a very primitive mystery story--perhaps not a very successful one.
"The Purloined Letter": generally considered the best of Poe's three C. Auguste Dupin mystery stories, has prominent features of much later purely "deductive" detective fiction, including a hero that recurs in several stories, a less than brilliant police investigator, and a "Watson-like" narrator who serves as foil and recorder for the brilliant detective-hero.