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Literary analysis of poe
Literary analysis of poe
Edgar allan poe bio essay
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Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King are famous for their works in horror. Who are these authors and why do they write these horrifying tales? Edgar Allan Poe’s life and literary works are more ominous than Stephen King’s life and literary work.
Edgar Allan Poe had a morose story of his life. His life started out with his parents dying when Poe was only three years old. He was adopted by a wealthy tobacco merchant, John Allan and his wife, Frances Valentine Allan. John Allan raised Edgar Allan Poe to be his own, yet Poe wasn’t an Allan much. Poe decided not to go into business for college yet that was the only reason John would pay for Edgar to go to college. So, Edgar Allan Poe had to pay for college on his own. He decided to take up gambling to pay for college which did not work out so well. He was striving for studying literature to become a writer which John Allan disagreed with becoming a writer as a profession. When Edgar Allan Poe got a little older, he could not afford to go to college. He tried to find family to stay with which he turned to Baltimore. Poe tried to stay with one of his cousins that just stole everything Poe had on him. Edgar Allan Poe was poor, alone and homeless, he turned to his Aunt Maria Clemm that lived in Baltimore, Maryland. Aunt Maria treated Edgar like a son, Poe felt as if she was a second mother to him. Poe lived with her and her daughter, Virginia. Which Virginia at first was Edgar’s delivery woman of letters to love interests but then Virginia became Edgar’s love interest. According to Poe Museum’s website, Poe took Virginia and Aunt Maria Clemm to Richmond, Virginia, Edgar Allan Poe’s childhood hometown. This is where Poe decided to marry Virginia when she was only thirteen years old and Poe was...
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...s life and literature is far darker to Stephen King. King’s mind is creative and it reimagines horror but Poe was the first to create that sense of imagining what will happen next. The authors are fantastic horror writers of the genre.
Works Cited
"Edgar Allan Poe Museum : Poe's Life, Legacy, and Works : Richmond, Virginia." Edgar Allan Poe Museum : Poe's Life, Legacy, and Works : Richmond, Virginia. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 May 2014.
"Edgar Allan Poe." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 13 May 2014.
"Famous Quotes by Edgar Allan Poe." BrainyQuote. Xplore, 2001. Web. 15 May 2014.
Giordano, Robert. "Edgar Allan Poe, Short Stories, Tales, and Poems." Poestories. N.p., 27 June 2005. Web. 15 May 2014.
King, Stephen. Doctor Sleep: A Novel. N.p.: Scribner, 2013. Print.
"Stand by Me Interview with Stephen King." Amc.com. N.p., 08 June 2008. Web. 16 May 2014.
Isn’t it strange how two authors can be alike in so many ways but can be very different from each other? In my paper you will see similarities and differences about two well-known writers: Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King. There are many similarities in both men's work. The most noticeable similarity is the genre of their stories.
Many describe Edgar Allan Poe’s life as a mire tragedy that produced a genius. Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19 of 1809 in Boston Massachusetts. Poe was described as a handsome or an attractive man; “Poe, himself, is a very good looking fellow” (Simms qtd. in The Poe Log). His clothing was described as simple and black; “He dressed always in black, and with faultless taste and simplicity” (Weiss). He had pale color skin with a good complexion. His hair color was as dark black as a raven’s wing. When he was three years old his biological parents, David and Elizabeth Poe past away. David and Elizabeth Poe had three children Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie. When his parents died he was adopted by his step mother and father the Allan’s; they were tobacco exporters of London. Poe lived a luxurious childhood, going to good academic schools, even moving with his family to London, and continued his studies at a boarding school. When he was a teenager they moved back to US, because the Allan’s tobacco company was failing. He continued his high school career at local private academies. There he had a huge crush on a school friend’s mother. The mother die and Poe took it personally. After he was all grown ...
Poe next moved to Baltimore, Maryland with his widowed aunt, Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia. Poe used fiction writing as a means of supporting himself, and with in December 1835, Poe began editing the Southern Literary Messenger for Thomas W. White in Richmond. Poe held this position until January, 1837. During this time, Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, in Richmond on May 16, 1836.
Edgar Allen Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother and father where both actors, David and Elizabeth Arnold. They had financial difficulties, which soon caused the father to abandon the family. Poe's mother soon had another child; however, she was having physical conditions causing her death on December 8, 1811. Becoming orphans, both Poe and his sister were split up in family friend’s houses. Poe went to live with the Allan's. As Poe grew up he started having problems with his John Allan, his foster father, which caused future problems. Poe's first step to start a career was attending the University of Virginia in 1826. "Allan failed to provide Poe with enough money for necessities such as furniture and books and Poe soon ran up a tremendous gambling debt and began drinking, despite his very low tolerance for alcohol" (Loveday 2). After a time he moved to Boston, "The Great Literature Capital." What was helping Poe start of his career, where the big hopes of one day becoming a writer despite the harsh life he had since he was little. Poe's work has had an impact on literature. Throughout his most famous pieces of literature, "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Raven," and "The Cast of Amontillado," we see common factors that influenced these types of works through his plots and characters. "Madness, alienation, and mankind's long love affair with morbidity were the his subjects, and he didn't mind admitting to being more to being more than half in love with easeful death, to mangle a line from his favorite poet, Tennyson," (Allen 2).
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809. He was born to two poor actors, David Poe and Elizabeth Arnold Poe. David Poe was born to a good Baltimore family. He was known as a heavy drinker, and soon after Edgar was born, left his mother and Edgar’s two other siblings. Elizabeth was thought to be charming and talented, but she died an early death. She died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. Edgar was only three years old. The death of his mother ruined Edgar for the rest of his life. Edgar’s brother, WIlliam Henry Leonard Poe, also came to be a poet, but he had a n early demise. His sister, Rosalie Poe, grew up to teach penmanship. Edgar and his siblings were separated from each other after the death of their parents).Shortly after, Edgar was taken in by John and Frances Allan. John was a successful tobacco merchant. Edgar moved to England with the Allans and went to school in England from 1815 to 1820. Edgar and David did not see eye to eye at all. John wanted Edgar to be a businessman and a Virginian gentleman, but Edgar aspired to become a writer. By the time Edgar began college at the University of Virginia in 1826, he barely communicated or received support from the Allans. Edgar was a wonderful student but a terrible gambler. He soon accumulated a considerable amount of debt because John sent him to university with a measly amount of money. He did not have enough for expenses which led him to gambling. He was so poor and desperate that he burned his furniture to keep warm. Humiliated, he returned home to Richmond to discover that his fiancée, Elmira Royster, was engaged to another man. His stay at the Allan mansion was cut very short because of the increasing tension b...
Edgar Allan Poe was an excellent horror, suspense, and mystery writer of the eighteenth century. His use of literary devices and different literary techniques makes this writer important to American literature. This paper will show how Edgar Allan Poe has made an impact on Society and American literature as well as how Edgar Allan Poe developed the short story. I will also discuss and analyze some of his works and techniques he uses in his short stories and poems.
Meyers, J. (1992). Edgar Allan Poe: his life and legacy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons Frank, F. S. (1997). The Poe encyclopedia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press..
Ingram, John Henry. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions. New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1965.
Edgar Allan Poe, the man known as the father of horror stories. His short stories and poems are known to be gloomy, dark, and morbid. Most people are not aware that many of his works are reflections of his own life. Throughout his whole life, Poe experienced numerous tragedies. Many of his hard experiences can be seen in his poems Annabel Lee, Alone, and Israfel. His short stories were also affected by his past. The Raven also has small depictions of Poe’s life. A tragic past, consisting of a lack of true parents and the death of his wife, made Edgar Allan Poe the famous writer he is today, but it also led to his demise and unpopularity.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: The Modern Library 1992
King owes his success to his ability to take what he says are “real fears” (The Stephen King Story, 47) and turn them into a horror story. When he says “real fears” they are things we have all thought of such as a monster under the bed or even a child kidnapping and he is making them a reality in his story. King looks at “horror fiction...as a metaphor” (46) for everything that goes wrong in our lives. His mind and writing seems to dwell in the depths of the American people’s fears and nightmares and this is what causes his writing to reach so many people and cause the terror he writes about to be instilled in his reader.
Magistrale, Tony. "The Art of Poetry." Student Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Westport, Conn. ;London: Greenwood, 2001. 39-41. Print.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most influential writers of the horror genre in American history. His horror stories have impacted numerous authors and their stories over the years. Various people have tried to copy his way of writing style, but they have failed to achieve the success he did. Even though Poe is no longer living, his impact on American literature can still be felt today.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966. Print.