"Edgar Allan Poe and the

Art of Crafting Tension,

Atmosphere, and
Psychological Depth"
Presenter: Marveh Farhang
Course: Short Story
Course Instructor: Dr Zohreh Ramin
"All that we see or seem
is but a dream within a
dream"
 Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
American short story writer, poet, critic and editor
A life plagued with grief and misfortune
Influenced by Romanticism and the Gothic tradition
Usage of violence and horror to explore the
paradoxes and the mysteries of love, grief, and guilt
while resisting simple interpretations or clear moral
messages
Richly evocative language that creates an atmosphere
of suspense and dread
 One of America’s first practitioners of short story
 The inventor of the detective fiction genre with the
publication of The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), The
Mystery of Marie Roget (1842) and The Purloined Letter
(1844)
 Tales of Ratiocination
 Influenced Arthur Canon Doyle, Agatha Christie and H. P.
Lovecraft
 Significant contribution to the emerging genre of science
fiction with The Balloon-Hoax (1844)
Poe as a Critic
 Worked as a magazine editor
 Set standards for judging literary works
 Detailed technical examination
 Modified his critical approach borrowing from
Schlegal, Coleridge and other Romantics
 Anti-didacticism and the heresy of the Lake
school
 “ End of poetry is or should be instruction”
Poe’s Critical Theory
 “The Importance of the Single Effect in a Prose Tale” (1842)
 “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846)
 “The Poetic Principle” (1850)
 “The tale proper, in our opinion, affords unquestionably the
fairest field for the exercise of the loftiest talents, which can be
afforded by the wide domain of mere prose.”
Poe’s Critical Theory
 Shortness and brevity
 “The novel deprives itself of the immense force derivable from
totality.”
 Unity of effect and impression
 Drew his ideal of unity of effect on Aristotle’s idea of the three
unities
 Each word and sentence should have a purpose
 Non-essentials should be eliminated
Poe’s Critical Theory
 The importance of the ending
 Methodology and the notion of artistic intuition
 “Most writers — poets in general — prefer having it understood
that they compose by a species of fine frenzy — an ecstatic intuition
— and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep
behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of
thought — at the true purposes seized only at the last moment…”
The Account of “The
Raven”

 The logical progression of his creation of

“The Raven”
 The number of verses
 The tone and effect
 The refrain
 The talking animal
 The theme
“The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the
most poetical topic in the world.”
Poe’s “constructiveness” and “The Fall of
the House of Usher”

 Poe has been criticized by many for his “structural art”

 In “The Philosophy of Composition” he calls himself a mechanic
 Henry James: “Enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly
primitive stage of reflection”
 T.S. Eliot referred to Poe as having “the intellect of a highly gifted
young person before puberty”
 “The Fall of the House of Usher” is probably his best demonstration
of his “constructiveness”
 “ The Fall of the House of Usher”

 The house
 “The Haunted Palace”
 “The Mad Trist”
 “Mise en Abyme”

 “ The Fall of the House of Usher” three parts:

1. Introducing the house and the Ushers
2. Developing Roderick aesthetics and his relationship with Madeline
3. The build up to the reappearance of Madeline and the fall of the house

 “The Hunted Palace” three parts:

1. Description of the beautiful palace
2. The king that resides in the palace
3. Evil finds its way into the palace and ruins it
 “The Mad Trist”
 Doubling and reflection
 The repetition of words: “very trifling and very temporary variation”;
“there grew in my mind a strange fancy – a fancy so ridiculous”; “Our
books – the books which, for years”
 Emphasis on the arrangement of words and sentences
 Different interpretations of the house
 Poe’s proto-deconstructionist vision
 The start of the story, like that of the house, is always already in a
state of collapse
 A show of control
 The influence of Roderick on the narrator
 A symbol of the cyclic nature of the story

 “While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened --there came a fierce

breath of the whirlwind --the entire orb of the satellite burst at once
upon my sight --my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing
asunder --there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice
of a thousand waters --and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed
sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "HOUSE OF USHER."
 References
Allan Poe, Edgar. The Fall of the House of Usher. Prabhat Prakashan, 1973.

Lawrence, James Cooper. “A Theory of the Short Story.” The North American Review, vol. 205,

no. 735, 1917, pp. 274–86. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25121469. Accessed 22 Apr.

2024.

Levine, Robert S. “Edgar Allan Poe.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 9 th ed.,

W.W. Norton, vol. B, 2017, pp. 604-608

 References
Peeples, Scott. “Poe’s “constructiveness” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The Cambridge

Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes, Cambridge University Press, 2002,

pp. 178-190.

Scofield, Martin. “Edgar Allan Poe,” The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story,

Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 43-55