Influence of Death in Edgar Allen Poe's Work
Influence of Death in Edgar Allen Poe's Work
Edgar Allan Poe is a most influential romanticism author in the history of American literature. He is both a poet and a novelist. The life-time poverty and the experience of struggling in the sea between life and death seeking for foothold in the mainstream of American literature endued him with better understanding of pain and death, as well as with the death topic of his works. At the same time, the appetency of beauty, which was buried deeply inside of the heart of the author, made each of his works an annotation of beauty.
For a century and a half, critics had put so many comments on Poe's works, and generations of readers had been attracted by mystery, horror, dream and destiny portrayed by him. Death of beauty is always thought of the most representative scene in his works. Every time when critics talk about him, they would rather take him simply as a gothic author or an unlucky critic, and death is the topic mentioned the most. They believe that "he is only talent was for suffering". But beauty, as another immortal topic, is glowing everywhere in his works, not only the portrayal of beautiful women but also the annotation of the abstract beauty. All the five works I choose are representative ones. Annabel Lee, To Hellan, Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher all portrayed the death of beauty. As poems, the former two don't have such scaring scenes as the two tales, while they all have annotations of beauty in them. And The Raven, with no woman in this poem, delivers another kind of beauty to the readers.
My paper will start with the traditional death topic, and focuses on the annotation of beauty by the author, which is discussed less. Taking Poe as a beauty interpreter instead of a gothic storyteller, from the most superficial depiction to the innermost definition of beauty, the annotation of beauty will be discussed in layers.
Bibliography:
1)A Death with Dignity, Cois Wheeler Snow. -New York: Random House, 1990.
2)Anthology of American Literature, --Macmillan Publishing Co. 1980.
3)Gothic Radicalism, Andrew Smith. -New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984.
4)Edgar Poe & His Critics, Sarah Helen Whitman, --New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1949.