Edgar Allan Poe

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses the most important influences on Edgar Allen Poe's creativity. The paper looks at his personality, the death and sickness of the most important women in his life and the social problems he was confronted with, especially those related to his career as an editor. The paper shows how these aspects of Poe's life are crucial to the interpretation of his work, accounting for his originality and his pessimistic view of life.

From the Paper:

"The controversial American poet Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 in Boston and dies forty years later in Baltimore, under unknown circumstances. Poe's eventful and unusual life seems, in a way, as peculiar as his work, and it is considered by many of his critics and interpreters as the main source of influence for his art. His life is marked by the deaths of many of his beloved relatives and friends: his parents, both actors, die when the poet was only two years old, his foster mother dies a little later, then his brother, and finally his wife Virginia, at the age of twenty two, after having been married to Poe for nine years. The frequent drinking, his poor health, his poverty and his social inadaptability all contribute to his formation as a writer."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Felman, Shoshana. "On Reading Poetry: Reflections on the Limits and Possibilities of Psychoanalytical Approaches." In Edgar Allan Poe: Modern Critical Views, edited by Harold Bloom, pp. 119-39. New York: Chelsea House, 1985.
• Hayes, Kevin J. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Hoffman, Daniel. "'O! Nothing Earthly ...'/ The Poems." In Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.
• Kaplan, Louise J. "The Perverse Strategy in 'The Fall of the House of Usher'," in New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, ed. Kenneth Silverman, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 45-64.
• Kennedy, J. Gerald. "The Horrors of Translation: The Death of a Beautiful Woman." In Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing, pp. 60-88. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.

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