The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Research Paper Example

The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe, leaving a remarkable literary legacy on the fields of science fiction and horror, is currently regarded the pioneer of the modern detective story. He is also greatly renowned as a poet (Kennedy, 2001). His psychologically gripping stories exploring the profundities of the human consciousness gained him remarkable prominence. His life was tarnished by misfortunes early in life and it can be discerned in his own works’ dark emotions, an anguished and at times fearful fascination with brutality and death and absolute admiration of the pleasant yet terrible enigmas of life (Magistrale, 2001). Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809 (Kennedy, 2001, 19). Personal misfortunes were, sadly, a persistent episode during his lifetime. He never met his father who abandoned his mother. His mother died from tuberculosis. After his parents’ death Edgar was adopted by Frances and John Allan, a rich trader in Richmond, Virginia (Kennedy, 2001). From the very beginning of Poe’s authorial vocation, he adored creating verses for the most important persons in his life. Soon after, when he reached maturity and understood life’s unpleasant realities, his narratives became more disquieting and darker, possibly because of his overindulgence in alcohol and drugs (Magistrale, 2001). His horror tales are still regarded as one of the most chilling and frightening tales ever written, and, due to this, several literary scholars contemplated on the possible sources of these dark themes. Numerous literature activists and historians have assumed that his problematic love life was the root whereas others have pointed to his drug and alcohol addiction (Magistrale, 2001). The root of his unusual literary genius is most probably a mixture of these assumptions; however, the main contributing force is the death of several of the nearest and dearest people to him and the maltreatment he suffered from other people; this, reasonably, casted a shadow on his viewpoint (Kennedy, 2001). Because personal misfortune was a persistent shade of Poe’s life, his artistic creations manifested the darkness infused by such unending grief. Poe implanted this in his famed masterpiece Alone (Hoffman, 1998, 38): “From childhood’s hour, I have not been as others were; I have not seen as others saw; I could not bring my passions from a common spring.” As mentioned above, several of the most significant persons in his life were a vast source of influence because of their deaths. His reaction to death consistently included more heightened addiction to alcohol and drugs (Kennedy, 2001); hence, it is difficult to make a decisive difference between the influences of Poe’s individual loved ones. Nevertheless, since the deaths happened prior to the drugs and alcohol addiction, it was only death which occupied the utmost position in his life, bringing about series of self-destruction that sooner or later put an end on his own existence (Kennedy, 2001). In spite of his personal misfortunes, nevertheless, he stays as one of the most treasured and broadly celebrated of all American authors. His disturbing and frightening tales and poems will survive through ages and be read by innumerable people from various societies and different eras, a reality which would have certainly given some spring of calm for this agonized, gifted, and disturbed individual. Almost every well-known author that came after Poe, embodying practically all national literatures, was familiar with him, and writers who were not personally influenced by his idea were compelled somehow to recognize it, if simply in a feat of denial (Kennedy, 2001). The reputation and significance of Poe as an author were at first freed from the nasty rumors of Rufus Griswold, his literary architect, by the determined attempts of Charles Baudelaire, a French writer (Magistrale, 2001). The influence of Poe on 19th century French literature was instant and intense. He was one of the several American authors that French culture has recognized without conditions. Until the 20th century, the French renditions of Poe’s works and associated literary analysis were the spring of the literary renown of Poe in France, all over Europe, and across the globe (Magistrale, 2001). The French, from the very start, especially Baudelaire, were fascinated by the works of Poe. Baudelaire discerned in Poe the skillful personality of the artist wrestling against capitalist culture as if caught in “a vast prison in which he [Poe] ran about with the fevered restlessness of a creature born to breathe the air of a sweeter-scented world” (Kennedy, 2001, 54). In the narratives of Poe like A Man of the Crowd and The Imp of the Perverse, Baudelaire discovered full affirmation for his central conviction, most elegantly expressed in the verses of Flowers of Evil, that the new metropolis had become a site empty of significant social life and interaction (Kennedy, 2001). Baudelaire became persuaded that in these narratives Poe had conceived the original flâneur, a 19th century nobleman who “feels everywhere at home; [who] sees the world, is at the center of the world, and yet remains hidden from the world” (Magistrale, 2001, 88). In the second half of the 19th century, the significance of Poe traversed the path from France to contribute to the forming of arts of the English PreRaphaelites: Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Dante Rossetti, and Charles Swinburne (Magistrale, 2001). The well educated Beardsley was enthused by Poe’s issues of incredible overindulgence and the exquisiteness of oddity (Quinn, 1941). A lot of Beardsley’s works articulates artistically the conceptual emotions of Poe’s deeply troubled stories and the domineering look of his enigmatic femme fatales (Quinn, 1941). Similarly, 19th century Russia was seriously thoughtful of the developments of French culture; hence it is not unexpected that Poe influenced Russia through the French translations of Baudelaire (Kennedy, 2001). Indeed, the power of genuinely grand literary artistry surpasses its author, and at times even the purpose or motive the architect for it. Since the death of Edgar Allan Poe, his literary creations have caught the interest and recognition of the most unwelcoming audience. References Hoffman, D. (1998). Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. New York: Louisiana State University. Kennedy, J. (2001). A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Magistrale, T. (2001). Student Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Quinn, A. (1941). Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Read More