Edgar Allan Poe Presentation PDF

EDGAR ALLAN POE  LIFE  Edgar Poe was born in Boston in 1809, son of travelling actors.  In 1810 his father left the family and his mother died of alcohol consumption in 1811.  Brought up by the Allans, his name became Edgar Allan Poe.  Went to the University of Virginia in 1826.  Ran into deb...

EDGAR ALLAN POE  LIFE  Edgar Poe was born in Boston in 1809, son of travelling actors.  In 1810 his father left the family and his mother died of alcohol consumption in 1811.  Brought up by the Allans, his name became Edgar Allan Poe.  Went to the University of Virginia in 1826.  Ran into debt by gambling.  Left for Boston where he published his first collection of poems: TAMERLANE AND OTHER POEMS. Little success.  Entered the military academy of West Point but remained only seven months.  LIFE  Abandoned by his foster family.  Moved to Baltimore, where his aunt, Marta Clemm lived.  Fell in love with his cousin Virginia.  They got married, she was 14 and he was 27.  Virginia died in 1847.  He took to drinking and died in 1849. POE’S REPUTATION  Accusations of perversion, alcoholism and drug addiction in America.  The French poet Charles Baudelaire translated Poe’s tales → European appreciation of his work.  The French poet Stéphane Mallarmé́ translated Poe’s poems into French: → a forerunner of the Symbolist movement. →  Poe’s main contribution to literature → the short story → began the genre of the detective story. MAIN WORKS  The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), his only novel.  Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840).  The Raven (1845), the poem which made him famous.  The Philosophy of Composition (1846), the essay containing his aesthetic theories. SOME OF POE’S BEST KNOWN STORIES  POE’S CREATIVE SPIRIT He saw the human self as divided into: INTELLECT CONSCIENCE SOUL Each of them was concerned with: Truth Duty Beauty  POE’S CREATIVE SPIRIT Poetry was a means to the discovery of beauty It was the only way Its most suitable It had nothing to do tone was sadness to give order to the with truth or morals and melancholy shapeless world  POE’S TALES They can be divided into two groups: Tales of ratiocination or detection Tales of mystery and imagination Development of the detective story. Contain some Gothic Creation of a private elements. detective, Monsieur Dupin. The horror comes from inside the self and not Solution of crimes using from the outside. logical reasoning and psychological analysis.  THE SETTING CLOSED SETTING CHARACTERS RARELY SEEN IN DAYLIGHT. in a small place CONFINEMENT walled into cellars buried prematurely  THE CHARACTERS They withdraw from the conventional aspects of life. They cultivate a life of their own, cut off from the world. They lose contact with reality. They develop an exceptional acuteness of the senses. They become mad, and often die, as a result of expanded consciousness. The Fall of the House of Usher.  THE THEMES  PERVERSENESS, the impulse to annihilation which rules the dark side of human behaviour;  The fusion of BEAUTY and DEATH, of CREATION and DESTRUCTION;  The DOUBLE, which anticipates the The Black Cat. modern idea of ‘split personality’;  The attraction to DEATH. THE SINGLE EFFECT The Philosophy of Composition (1846) contains the principles of the short story: BREVITY: the story should be read in a single sitting. The characters: shown at some The Tell-Tale Heart. revealing moments of crisis, not while developing and maturing. THE SINGLE EFFECT  The setting: simplified or circumscribed  The ‘single effect’ The Tell-Tale Heart. a keynote, a person or an object to arouse the reader’s curiosity and interest.