Origins Of Poe S Critical Theory

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was one of the most diverse writers of the 19th century. While his poems and short stories first gained popularity in Europe, his fellow Americans appreciated his sharp essays and merciless literary criticism. His legacy continues until the present day and transcends the borders of literature, influencing writers of both fiction and non-fiction as well as artists and even scientists. Poe himself and many others have often described the literary theory which underlies all of his work, yet less light has been shed upon how that theory was formed. Analysing the writer's works in conjunction with the various scientific, philosophic and literary material that he is known to have read, Margaret Alterton reconstructs the genesis of the very fundament of Poe's genius.

Edgar Allan Poe’s reputation as an enduring and influential American literary critic rests mainly upon the pieces in this edition. Editors Stuart Levine and Susan F. Levine provide reading texts, detailed explanatory footnotes, variant readings, and introductions to show context. They also face frankly the contradictions in Poe’s critical dicta. Poetry is for pleasure, not truth, Poe says, but argues that poetic inspiration leads to truth. Great works, Poe says, result from studied calculation, but also from irrational, supernal sources. Both biting critic and doughty defender of American artistic achievement, Poe was contemptuous of democratic art, except when he manned the barricades in its defense. Critical Theory highlights such conflicting ideas and suggests why they are present. This edition shows that what is consistent in Poe is not any single theory. Rather, always present are wit, playfulness, concern for the strong effect, a bin of recyclable allusions, anecdotes and quotations, and a writer’s discipline. His writing on theory is of a piece with his fiction, poetry, and journalism. The Levines explain how these pieces also tie in tightly to the social, political, economic, and technological history of the world in which Poe lived.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald, course: North American Short Stories, language: English, abstract: Edgar Allan Poe's name is related to the American short story like none other in the history of American Literature. While Washington Irving is commonly seen as the creator of the short story, Edgar Allan Poe is regarded as the first to have realised its potential and the first to have created an aesthetical theory of the short story. This theory though, especially Poe's depiction of the skilful artist and his/her perfect way of creating art, gave rise to many heated discussions, which strongly shaped the image of Poe. Thus he is likely to be seen as the cold-blooded, emotionally unaffected author who creates art on demand, contriving compositions with an unparalleled precision and brilliancy. Many critics therefore rather based their criticism on the life and the person of Edgar Allan Poe, instead of his contributions to the development of literature. This work strictly wants to avoid to draw any populist parallels between the author Poe and the person Poe. The first part of this term paper therefore deals with Poe's literary theory as such. I will focus mainly on Poe's major concerns of effect and the genres of poetry and prose. Furthermore I will pose the question, what is the actual matter of Poe's theory, is it a profound concept or just a vague and hasty response to Emerson's "The Poet", with the mere purpose of provoking his contemporaries and thus to get attention? Since the formulation of a theory always raises the question of its applicability, especially on the part of its originator, the second part will scrutinise to what extent Edgar Allan Poe stuck to his own principles. Is there a discrepancy between theory and practice in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and if so how can this be explained? His short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" will provide th

Edgar Allan Poe's reputation as an enduring and influential American literary critic rests mainly upon the pieces in this edition. Editors Stuart and Susan F. Levine provide reading texts, detailed explanatory footnotes, variant readings, and introductions to show context. They also face frankly the contradictions in Poe's critical opinions. Critical Theory highlights examples of conflicting ideas and suggests the reasons they are present. What was consistent in Poe's work was not a single theory, but rather wit, playfulness, concern for the strong effect, a bin of recyclable allusions, anecdotes and quotations, and a craftsman's discipline. Poe's writing on theory is of a piece with his fiction, poetry, and journalism. The Levines explain how these critical statements also tie tightly to the social, political, economic, and technological history of the world in which Poe lived.

The Critical History of Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym: A Dialogue with Unreason traces the complex, scattered criticism of Poe's most anomalous work, as it has steadily grown in prominence to a central position in the study of Poe and American literature. The winding route the criticism of Pym has charted, as convoluted as the narrative itself, has been a history of disagreement at almost every level at which critics and scholars read texts--including the nature and genre of the work, the seriousness or levity of the author's intent, and its stature as a work of genius, hackwork, or something in between. The unique set of thematic and narrative problems the work poses has eluded every hermeneutic structure brought against it so far, consistently undermining the very reading strategies it seems to invite. The only comprehensive critical history and bibliography of Pym, this study fills a large hole Poe scholars have long felt, as it analyzes the ways in which critics and critical camps have attempted to confront, rationalize, contain, or evade its novel and disturbing features. In the process, the criticism is correlated with the popular reception and the international response. Because literary history has entangled no author with his work more than Poe, ultimately this book is as much a study of Poe as of Pym. At every point, therefore, this study embeds the critical response to Pym in the history of Poe studies in general, as well as in the larger context of American literary theory and history. Includes bibliography and index.

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the first major critics to develop and refine his critical theories through magazine articles and book reviews. Edgar Allan Poe as Literary Critic focuses on his interest in establishing an aesthetic for magazine literature, and Parks has examined Poe's criticism at length. Poe's efforts in the field of literary criticism have often been condemned as a rationalization of his own personal limitations as a writer, but this study contends that his critical theories far surpass such a narrow interpretation. Rather, Poe was “essentially a magazinist,” and therefore emphasized brevity, unity, and totality of effect and placed the highest value on literary types best suited to periodical literature.

Now in paperback—the classic, monumental biography of Poe by Arthur Hobson Quinn. Renowned as the creator of the detective story and a master of horror, the author of "The Red Mask of Death," "The Black Cat," and "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," Edgar Allan Poe seems to have derived his success from suffering and to have suffered from his success. "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" have been read as signs of his personal obsessions, and "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Descent into the Maelstrom" as symptoms of his own mental collapse. Biographers have seldom resisted the opportunities to confuse the pathologies in the stories with the events in Poe's life. Against this tide of fancy, guesses, and amateur psychologizing, Arthur Hobson Quinn's biography devotes itself meticulously to facts. Based on exhaustive research in the Poe family archive, Quinn extracts the life from the legend, and describes how they both were distorted by prior biographies.

What can there possibly be left to say about . . .? This common litany, resonant both in and outside of academia, reflects a growing sense that the number of subjects and authors appropriate for literary study is rapidly becoming exhausted. Take heart, admonishes Richard Kopley in this dynamic new anthology--for this is decidedly not the case. While generations of literary study have unquestionably covered much ground in analyzing canonical writers, many aspects of even the most well-known authors--both their lives and their work-- remain underexamined. Among the authors discussed are T. S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Faulkner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, Edith Wharton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Zora Neale Hurston, Henry James, Willa Cather, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain.