Portal:Edgar Allan Poe/Selected article archive
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[edit] August 2007
"The Pit and the Pendulum" is one of Edgar Allan Poe's most well-known short stories. First published in 1842, it follows a narrator who is tortured during the Spanish Inquisition. During his imprisonment for unspecified crimes, he is subjected to complete darkness, almost falling into a nearly-endless pit in the center of his large cell. He falls asleep and wakes up tied down with a huge, scythe-like pendulum hanging above him, slowly getting closer to chopping him in half. The tale is told heavily through sensation, with Poe carefully describing sounds and smells throughout. The story is especially horrific because it is grounded in reality, rather than the supernatural. The use of a pit as a form of torture may have been inspired by the Qu'ran.
[edit] September 2007
"The Raven" is perhaps the most famous work by Edgar Allan Poe. First published in 1845 under the pseudonym "Quarles," it was an immediate success and instantly brought notoriety to Poe. The narrative poem was inspired by a talking raven in the work of Charles Dickens and used a complex trochaic octameter rhythm based on the work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In the poem, a narrator laments about his lost love Lenore when a mysterious raven enters his chamber, perching itself on a bust of Pallas. The well-known and recognizable refrain of "Nevermore," Poe explains in his essay "The Philosophy of Composition," was used because of its melancholy sounds in the long "o." Still widely anthologized today, reaction to "The Raven" has been mixed, including a complete dismissal by Ralph Waldo Emerson, though it has spawned a number of cultural references.
[edit] October 2007
The Death of Edgar Allan Poe on October 7, 1849 is one of the most mysterious pieces of Poe biography. He had left Richmond, Virginia on September 27 of that year, on his way to Philadelphia. Poe is found on October 3 in Baltimore, Maryland, delirious and wearing clothes that were not his own, barely-conscious in a gutter outside of Ryan's Tavern. Various witnesses have different interpretations of those last few days in Poe's life, but much of the extent information comes from his attending physician Dr. John Moran, who used the story of Poe's death for personal financial gain. It is according to Moran that Poe's last words were "Lord, help my poor soul."
Theories as to what caused Poe's death include tuberculosis, cholera, diabetes, rabies, heart disease, cooping, and others. Alcohol may or may not have played a role; at the time of Poe's death, he was a member of the Sons of Temperance and had vowed to stay sober and Moran himself said that Poe did not have alcohol on his breath. Poe was originally buried at the back of the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground but was later reburied under a more significant monument in 1875 - though some debate exists if the correct body is buried there.
[edit] November 2007
Graham's Magazine was a Philadelphia-based periodical created by George Rex Graham that printed during the 1840s and 1850s. Graham's was known for paying its contributors very well, with the $5 "Graham page" payment five times higher than the average. Poe become an editor of the magazine in 1841, though he criticized the fashion-plates and love tales it published. Poe was paid $800 a year for his work, significantly less than his successor Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Graham's was the first to publish "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "A Descent into the Maelström." In 1844, Graham's chose not to print "The Raven." Other contributors to the magazine included William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
[edit] December 2007
Eureka: A Prose Poem is one of Poe's last major works, published in 1848 as a stand-alone book. It developed from a lecture Poe had presented in New York and is his attempts at explaining the origins of the universe and man's relationship to God. Critics, who generally view Eureka very negatively, have debated the seriousness of the essay, which includes satirical images of well-known philosophers and scientists. Poe did not use the scientific method to reach his conclusions, instead relying heavily on his own intuition. Much of his science, in fact, is incorrect and the work is generally discredited as a scientific work. Even so, his theories presage the Big Bang theory and Black Holes. Despite it being a non-fiction work, Eureka has parallels with Poe's fiction and even borders on Transcendentalism, a movement Poe despised.
[edit] January 2008
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" introduced detective fiction to the world. Published in Graham's Magazine in April 1841, the story's protagonist C. Auguste Dupin established many elements that became common in later fictional detectives. In fact, Dupin and "The Rue Morgue" heavily influenced Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" features the gruesome and mysterious murder of two women in Paris in a room that is securely locked from the inside. After a suspect is arrested without evidence, Dupin decides to look into the crime. His only clues are the odd accounts of the language overheard by witnesses in the area and a strange hair which, he believes, is not from a human.
[edit] February 2008
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) is the second of several Poe-related horror films by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price. The story is very loosely based on Poe’s short story "The Pit and the Pendulum". Set in 16th Century Spain, the story is about a young Englishman who visits a forbidding castle to investigate his sister's mysterious death. After a series of horrific revelations, apparently ghostly appearances and violent deaths, the young man becomes strapped to the titular torture device by his lunatic brother-in-law during the film's climactic sequence.
A critical and box office hit, the film's commercial success convinced Corman to continue adapting Poe stories for another six films, five of them starring Price. The series ended in 1965 with the release of The Tomb of Ligeia. Film critic Tim Lucas and writer Ernesto Gastaldi have both noted the film's strong influence on numerous subsequent Italian thrillers, from Mario Bava's The Whip and the Body (1963) to Dario Argento’s Deep Red (1975). Stephen King has described one of Pit’s major shock sequences as being among the most important moments in the post-1960 horror film.
[edit] March 2008
Poetry (from the Greek "ποίησις", poiesis, a "making" or "creating") is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning.
Poetry, and discussions of it, have a long history. Early attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition and rhyme, and emphasised the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from prose. Poe defined it as "the rhythmical creation of beauty".
Poetry often uses particular forms and conventions to expand the literal meaning of the words, or to evoke emotional or sensual responses. Several literary devices can be used to achieve musical or incantatory effects including onomatopoeia and rhythm (which Poe uses heavily in "The Bells"). Poetry's use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations.
[edit] April 2008
The works of Edgar Allan Poe include many poems, short stories, and one novel. Poe's writing reflects his literary theories: he disagreed with didacticism and allegory. Meaning in literature, he said in his criticism, should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface; works whose meanings are too obvious cease to be art. He often included elements of popular pseudosciences such as phrenology and physiognomy. His most recurring themes deal with questions of death and mourning. Though known as a masterful practitioner of Gothic fiction, Poe did not invent the genre; he was following a long-standing popular tradition.
Poe's literary career began in 1827 with the release of 50 copies of Tamerlane and Other Poems credited only to "a Bostonian". In December 1829, Poe released Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems in Baltimore before delving into short stories for the first time with "Metzengerstein" in 1832. His most successful and most widely-read prose during his lifetime was "The Gold-Bug" which earned him the most money he received for a single work. One of his most important works, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", was published in 1841 and is today considered the first detective story. Poe became a household name with the publication of "The Raven", though it was not a financial success.
[edit] May 2008
The Treehouse of Horror series of episodes in the animated television series The Simpsons are a series of Halloween specials, each consisting of three separate, self-contained segments. These segments usually involve the Simpson family in some horror, science fiction, or supernatural setting. Considered non-canon, they always take place outside the normal continuity of the show and completely abandon any pretense of being realistic. The first Treehouse of Horror episode aired on October 25, 1990 as part of the second season and was inspired by EC Comics horror tales. As of 2007, there are 18 Treehouse of Horror episodes, with one airing every year. The episodes are known for being far more violent and much darker than an average Simpsons episode.
Episodes contain several trademarks, including the alien characters Kang and Kodos, "scary names" in the credits, a special version of the opening sequence, and parodies of horror and science fiction films. The first episode of the Treehouse of Horror series included a relatively faithful adaptation of Poe's "The Raven", casting Homer Simpson as the narrator and Marge Simpson as the lost Lenore. The rest of the Simpsons family have cameos as well.
[edit] June 2008
Thomas Holley Chivers (October 18, 1807 – December 18, 1858) was an American poet from Georgia. He is today best known for his friendship with Edgar Allan Poe and his controversial defense of the poet after his death.
Born into a wealthy Georgia family, Chivers became interested in poetry at a young age. After he and his first wife separated, he received a medical degree from Transylvania University but focused his energy on publishing rather than medicine. Edgar Allan Poe showed an interest in the young poet and encouraged his work. Chivers spent the last few years of his life defending the reputation of Poe, who had died in 1849, though he also thought Poe had been heavily influenced by his own poetry. He claimed in particular that "The Raven" and "Ulalume" were directly taken from his own work. Chivers died in Georgia in 1858.
As a literary critic, Chivers believed in divine inspiration. He encouraged the development of a distinct American style of literature and especially promoted young writers. His poems were known for religious overtones and an emphasis on death and reunions with lost loves in the afterlife. Though he built up a mild reputation in his day, he was soon forgotten after his death.
