Edgar Allen Poe was born on January 19, 1809 to business actors King Poe, Jr and Elizabeth Poe in Boston, MA. He became an orphan at the age of three after his dad deserted him and his mother passed from tuberculosis. He grew up to become an American author, small history author, editor, writing critic and one of the individuals of the American Romantic Movement.
Poe changed the world through his writings. His riveting classics have had a large effect on English society in the world of writing, and still on the art world, beyond literature. The extent of Poe’s influence on creation is obvious when one realizes the numerous and different artists who were deeply influenced by Poe. Poe’s strange and nightmarish work greatly influenced the horror and fiction genres.
Poe’s work:
Edgar Allen Poe, as well as, Nathaniel Hawthorne perfected the English gothic writing genre. They both have different conceptions within their work but they often wrote the same ideals. American gothic literature is dark; it deals with rational and irrational situations and often deals with the supernatural. Through their writings, you can tell that Poe and Hawthorne were very dark minded men.
Poe’s writing involved death and fear. His, “Masque of This Red Death” involves a prince surrounded by death. It is no wonder that nearly the whole collection of Poe’s writing involve death given his childhood experiences. Poe was inspired by the deaths he experienced throughout his lifetime and those advertises with wealth he encountered.
In the poem, “The Raven,” Edgar Allen Poe uses good imaginary to depict the feeling of fear, of sorrow and of rage, rage brought on by the failure of a love, Lenore. In this poem, a young writer who is mourning the loss of his beloved Lenore, when short there was a knocking on his room when he starts to examine it, he soon discovers that there is nothing there. That moves on repeatedly until this entry of the raven, which utters the word “Nevermore.” The only word the raven knows how to say is: nevermore. Even though the man knows the raven can only say one word, he begins to ask him questions out of sorrow for his dead mistress. With each question, he receives the same response, but this same response means something different to him. You can tell the man is desperate and deep in sorrow as he indulges into torturing himself with this raven. He goes from believing the bird is trained to only say one word, to believing the bird is actually a prophet sent from God. The man tortures himself to the point that he demands the raven to leave but the raven stays perched on his door and the poem comes to a sudden end.
Poe’s, “Ulalume,” is about a man who also lost his wife and is wondering is a very dreary landscape. He appears to be walking in this dreary landscape with his soul, named Psyche. The man and his soul see a bright light right before they run into his wife’s tomb; They then become saddened and begin to ponder on the meaning of the light. The man attempts to convince his soul that the light is a good sign, but his soul disagrees and become frightened of the light. The man and his soul learns the light is actually ghost who they believe had the intentions of keeping him from the casket of his wife. You get the feeling that the writer is completely losing his mind due to the loss of his wife.
