☆ many original ideas, for example: ★He disliked didacticism and allegory, though he believed that meaning in literature should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface. ★Works with obvious meanings cease to be art. ★The writer should carefully calculate every sentiment and idea.
☆ the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone
☆ The most controversial and most misunderstood°
1. Life
☆ born Edgar Poe in Boston, MA, on January 19, 1809; the second son of of actress Elizabeth Poe and actor David Poe, Jr.
☆ a cadet in West Point in 1830; a dismissal in 1831
☆ secretly married Virginia, his cousin, in 1835
☆ died October 1849 mysteriously; "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance” ; Some said his final words are: “Lord help my poor soul”.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
☆ a great writer of fiction, a poet of the first rank, and a critic of insight
☆ the inventor of the detective-fiction genre ☆ the father of psychoanalytic criticism ☆ contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction ☆ influenced French symbolists and the devotees of "art for art's sake”
2. Achievements a. an original and an remarkable critic;
"the greatest journalistic critic of his time"
☆ to cash in on his own literary practice to rationalize about literary creations
③ “The Raven” Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door Only this, and nothing more.' Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore Nameless here for evermore.
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, `Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven. Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.' Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as `Nevermore.'
☆ adopted by a wealthy Scottish merchant, John Allan (thus Edgar Allan Poe), who never formally adopted him. ☆entered University of Virginia in 1826; not finished
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating `'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; This it is, and nothing more,'
☆ representative works of criticism:
“The Philosophy of Compቤተ መጻሕፍቲ ባይዱsition” “The Poetic Principle”
b. poet: his poetry is “exquisitely refined” ① poetic aesthetics: ⅰlength: Poem should be short; “readable at one sitting” ⅱ motivation: beauty, to produce a feeling of beauty in the reader; ⅲ tone: melancholy, “the most legitimate of all the poetic tones” ⅳ form: “pure” poetry; “art for art’s sake”°; stress on rhythm “[T]he death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” ② representative poems: “The Raven” “Sonnet—To Science” (Poe was in essence a Renaissance.) “To Helen” “Israfel” “The City in the Sea” (“The Doomed City”) “Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome”