12.11.

2003
Lecture 5
EDGAR ALLAN POE


He was chronologically classified with authors like James Fennimore Cooper,
Washington Irving, etc. he was aware of the discontinuity between the Old and the New
world. He was trying to look back and see what the reasons for this discontinuity may be.
He was the first to emerge from the Old South. A critique of contemporary society, a
cultural critique, he was isolated from his contemporaries and was not among the people who
believed in democracy. He was ahead of his times in the sense that he foresaw 20
th
century
issues and has been described as someone who absorbs.
Poe was not a Jacksonian democrat, nor a social optimist; he admired democratic society
but distrusted democracy. For him it was based on utilitarian philosophy. He did not believe
in industrialisation. In most of his writings we see the recreation of a place which is not a
specific one. Nationality is uncertain. A world of its own is what we see. We can in no way
connect it to the existing world.
His writings started a tradition of writing that developed into southern literature:

- high formalism of style;
- idealisation of women;
- scorn for democracy/progress;
- marked uneasiness about the age of the machines.

Many critics prefer to see him as an individual writer, not as a part of a trend. He tried to
capture the fragmentation of the cultural age. He was dramaticising the demonic side of the
19
th
century. The nationalist label did not go for him. He was seen as the first international
writer. Those who held Poe as the writer who had made profound discoveries were the French
symbolists. They established his reputation as a writer. On e of them wrote a sonnet devoted
to him (Malarme) the image of the archetypal poet a man with a mission, which was to
redeem common language, turn it into a poetic one again.
They referred to his critical theory and called him that great literary engineer. He
believed in reason; his preoccupations were nervous breakdowns, frustration, and stories of
horror. His grandfather was a successful businessman, donating money for the purposes of the
war / nation. His father ran away and became an actor. His foster family never adopted him
legally so he could not be the heir of the family fortune. They took him to England where he
studied. After their return in America, they were even poorer.
Poe enrolled in the University of Virginia. He started gambling in order to gain some
money for his education. He never acquired the sense of belonging to a family.
He entered West Point Academy to acquire military education, but didnt like it there, so
he did anything possible to get himself expelled. He decided he would make his living with
writing.
Poe published his first two collections Tamerlaine and other Poems (1827), Al
Maray???, Tamerlaine and Minor Poems (1829).
He took up a lot of jobs in various magazines. He began a spectacular career as a
journalist. He started several literary boards and was very critical.
Firstly, he worked as editor of the Southern Literary Magazine. Secondly for the
Gentleman Magazine. He bought the Stylus before his death.
All his life Poe was in a dire position, never managed to financially secure himself,
which added to the insecurity in his writings. He married his 13-year old cousin (Virginia) in
1835, which is seen as his attempt to start a family. She died in 1847. After her death, he
started drinking heavily. After his death, his manuscripts went in the hands of his good
friend Rufus Griswold, who published them as a biography and a collection. Thus the image
of Poe as a diabolic man, a moral monster responsible for his wifes death aroused. Griswold,
however, published only a part of the letters. When all Poes writings were published, his
good qualities as an editor and writer were revealed.
Literary wars was a kind of a literary scandal. None of these were reflected in his
writings. He started writing a burlesque imitating the fashionable literature of the time. He
was aware that a writer should not just imitate. He did it to earn some money. It was about
copying other peoples styles. He claimed it was half-banter, half-satire. Satire implies
intellectual judgement, not just emotional response.

2 approaches: a) a fascination with what was fashionable;
b) on the other hand, a studied reflection on the popular fiction of
the times, i.e., sensational prose.

For Reynolds it was a kind of sensational approach. A well-expressed sensationalism.
Poe started writing prose with the intention of publishing a collection of another literary
club. Poe invented The Folio Club. He wanted to publish a collection of all the members, who
were actually fictional ones. Instead, he published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.
The preconceived effect contrasts with the Romantics idea of the free imagination. With Poe,
however, we encounter the idea that the reason governs both life and the writers production.
A writer, therefore, deliberately conceives. The writer deliberately constructs a preconceived
effect. The preconceived effect of a short story should be horror. Poe was seeking financial
success. When he was accused that his stories were too horrible, he replied that in order
to be appreciated, you have to be read. He was influenced by, but was not an imitator of
Gothic stories. He oppressed his heroes much more than the usual Gothic characters would
be. He described the budding cultural situation characterised by this loss of identity,
frustration, anxiety, and fragmentation. In German Gothic literature, those stories would be
happening in the desert. With Poe, it is about the interior, the soul. In southern American
Gothic the main character is a female. Female sexuality produces the horror. A sensitive male
protagonist is beset by innocent but terrifying women. A heightened grotesqueness is evident.
The horrible woman comes in many different colours. Many critics characterise them as witty
grotesques. The male protagonists are obsessed with the idea of death. Poe tried to
investigate the idea of being alive in thought, though rottening in body. The characters are
mad. The typical hero leans on fragments of the past. That is why Poe has been accused of
decadence. This is applied to an over-civilised over-refined consciousness (European trait).
The characters want to go beyond physical limitation. These characters die drained out of
their energy, which the women were responsible for.
Poetry: he claims that beauty should be the predominant theme in poetry. It goes with
death. It is also connected with strangeness. Poe is the father of the detective stories. All of
them are based on the idea that using ones brain, one can find out everything. He is the first
science-fiction writer; he first rose above the silly optimism as a prominent critic.