Edgar Allan Poe, an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, is revered as one of the key figures in the American Romanticism movement. The following is an introduction to the literary writer Edgar Allan Poe that I have collected and compiled. I hope it will help You have help.
A brief introduction to the writer Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (1809～1849) is most famous for his suspense and thriller novels. Edgar Allan Poe is one of the pioneer short story writers in the United States, and is recognized as the creator of mystery novels, and is even regarded as one of the co-creators of science fiction. He was also the first known American writer to make a living solely as a writer, and thus suffered from chronic financial difficulties and difficulties. His short stories are roughly divided into three categories: horror stories, murder mysteries, and scientific mysteries. He pioneered detective novels and is known as the "father of detective novels". On October 7, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore at the age of forty. The cause of death is unknown and there are many theories. His works also frequently appear in popular culture such as literature, music, film and television. Most of Edgar Allan Poe's residences during his lifetime have been preserved as museums to this day.
The creative career of literary writer Edgar Allan Poe
In May, he married Virginia Clem, who was about to turn 14. Mrs. Clem continued to live with the Poes as housewife. Wrote more than eighty book reviews for the Southern Literary Courier, including two that spoke highly of Dickens; published or reprinted his novels and poems, which were frequently revised. Borrowing money from relatives to allow Clem and his daughter to run a boarding house, he planned to sue the government for the return of his grandfather's war loan to the country; both plans fell through. Despite the help of White and James Kirk Bolding, he could not find a publisher willing to publish his "Folio Club", which he had expanded to sixteen or seventeen chapters. (Harper Brothers told him: "The readers in this country are obviously special") Preferring that the entire book contain only a simple and coherent story?)
A dispute with White over salary (roughly $10 per week) and editorial autonomy led to his writing in 1837 Resigned from the Southern Literary Courier in January. The family moved to New York to find a way to make a living, but failed to find an editor's position. Mrs. Clem runs a boarding house to help support the family. Published poems and novels, including "Ligeia" (which Poe later called "my best novel"); resumed writing "Arthur Gordon", which had been serialized in two parts in the Southern Literary Courier. Pym" and wanted to write it into a novel that could be published independently. Harper's Press published "The Story of A.G. Pym" in July 1838. Poe moved his family to Philadelphia. If you continue to work as a freelance writer, you will be broke and still unable to find an editorial position, and you will consider giving up your literary career.
Due to financial difficulties, he agreed to use his name as the author of a shell collector's manual "Basics of Conchology". Began publishing the first articles on cryptanalysis in the Alexander Weekly Courier. On the condition that he agreed to adopt the editorial policy of William Burton, the founder and owner of "Gentleman's Magazine", he began to do some editorial work for the magazine. One signed work per month and most of the review articles required by the journal are provided; early works include The Fall of the House of Usher and William Wilson. At the end of 1839, "Strange Stories" (2 volumes) was published by Leigh Blanchard Press in Philadelphia. The book included all 25 short stories that had been written at that time. The unsigned "Rodman's Diary" was serialized in the "Gentleman's Magazine" from January 1840, but the serialization of this unfinished long story was stopped midway due to a quarrel with Burton in June and his dismissal. In an attempt to create "Penn's Magazine" where he would entirely manage editorial affairs, he circulated a "plan" for this purpose, but the plan was shelved due to lack of financial support. In November 1840, George Graham purchased Burton's "Gentleman's Magazine" and merged it with his "Treasure Box" into "Graham's Magazine"; Poe published "The Man in the Crowd" in the December issue of the magazine. 》.
Became editor of Graham's Magazine starting with its April 1841 issue (annual salary of $800 plus literary fees); published the first of his so-called "mysteries", "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" case". This went on to create new novels and poems, and a series of articles on cryptanalysis and authentic copying. Subscribers to Graham's Magazine more than quadrupled by the end of the year. Inquire about pursuing clerical positions with government agencies in Tyler. He revived the plan to found Penn's Magazine, for which he hoped to obtain Graham's financial support and invited Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Kennedy and other writers to contribute regularly. In January 1842, Virginia nearly died after a blood vessel ruptured while singing, and she never fully recovered. Meet Dickens. Spring publications included "The Masque of the Red Death" in Graham's Magazine and a favorable review of Hawthorne's "Old Tales," and an article in the Saturday Evening Post, Poe In this article, I try to guess the ending of the novel based on the first 11 chapters of "Barnaby Larch" that Dickens is serializing (he guessed correctly who the murderer was, but wrong in other respects). Resigned from Graham's Magazine in May 1842, and was succeeded as editor by Rufus Wilmot Griswold (later the custodian of Poe's writings). Unable to persuade the Philadelphia publisher to publish an expanded version of Weird Tales, the two-volume edition was revised and renamed Weird Tales. Works published in the fall include The Pit and the Pendulum.
At the invitation of James Russell Lowell, he regularly contributed to his new magazine "Herald". "The Tell-Tale Heart", "Lenore" and an article later titled "An Interpretation of Rhythm" were published in the Herald, but the magazine ceased publication after only three issues. Traveled to Washington, D.C., intending to interview for a low-level position in Taylor's government agency and to gain subscribers for his own proposed magazine, now renamed Stylus. He lost his job search because of his drunkenness; his friends had to put him on a train back to Philadelphia. He continued to write satires, poems, and reviews, but was struggling to make ends meet and tried to borrow money from Griswold and Lowell. In June "The Golden Scarab" won a $100 prize in an essay contest in Philadelphia's Daily Dollar and became an instant hit; numerous reprints of the novel and a screenplay adaptation made Poe famous as a popular writer. "The Legend of Edgar A. Poe", the first and only volume in a series of small books, was published in July, including "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Man Who Was Used Up" . Became friends with Philadelphia Gothic novelist George Lippard. In November, he started a lecture tour called "Poets and Poetry in America". Fall releases include "Black Cat."
Moved to New York and published "The Balloon Hoax" in the New York Sun, which greatly enhanced his rising popularity. Despite past setbacks, he continued his plans for Stylus, envisioning a readership that would include well-educated people on the countless farms throughout our vast South and West. Lowell invited him to write a personal essay for the magazine, and Poe replied: "I do not think that human efforts have any noticeable effect on human beings themselves." Compared with 6,000 years ago, humans are just more active now, but not happier, not smarter. ?Writing the unfinished "History of American Literary Criticism" and continuing to give lectures on American poetry. In October, he joined the editorial department of New York's "Der Spiegel" and wrote articles for the newspaper about the literary market, contemporary writers and appeals for international copyright laws. In November, he began to publish a series of short comments in the monthly "Democratic Review".
"The Crow" was published in the "Der Spiegel" on January 29, 1845 and won unanimous praise from the public and critics. Newspapers and periodicals rushed to reprint it, and many people followed suit. Entering the New York literary circle, he met Evert Dekink, who selected 12 of Poe's short stories and compiled them into a "Collected Stories" published by Wiley and Putnam in July. The book's popularity encouraged the publisher to publish "The Crow and Other Poems" in November.
At the same time, he began to write for "Broadway Magazine" and became the editor of the magazine in July. Soon after, he became the editor of the magazine with money borrowed from Griswold, Halleck, Horace Greeley and others. Journal owner. He has republished revised editions of most of his novels and poems there, and has published more than sixty literary essays and reviews, as well as reviews in the Southern Literary Courier and an article in the American Whig Review A long essay about "American Drama". In the poem, he expresses his admiration for the poetess Frances Sargent Osgood. Articles criticizing plagiarism involved Longfellow, the most famous of those criticized, leading to a private controversy known as the "Longfellow War" (January-August), which discredited Poe and alienated poets like Longfellow. Friends like Will. May lecture in New York on "Poets and Poetry in America". The boos he received when he expounded the "Al-Araf" in the Boston lecture hall in October, and the insulting ridicule of Boston in his answers, further damaged his reputation and further increased his reputation. Virginia became increasingly ill in the fall.
Edgar Allan Poe’s literary style
Edgar Allan Poe’s horror novels are characterized by romanticism. Throughout Edgar Allan Poe's horror novels, most of his story themes reveal the dark side of human consciousness and subconsciousness, which is obviously very different from other romantic writers of the same era. Edgar Allan Poe used a special literary form such as horror novels to deeply depict and present the mental state and psychological characteristics of people in an unrealistic state, trying to reveal the spiritual causes of modern people in an unrealistic and irrational way of expression. Suddenly?. With the help of imaginative, terrifying and weird storylines, he expresses the crisis of human nature through rhetorical means such as exaggeration, metaphor and symbolism, which not only arouses readers' strong interest in reading, but also shocks the soul and makes people think.
The romantic characteristics of Edgar Allan Poe's horror novels are also reflected in his unique creative style. Different from the optimistic, confident and enthusiastic style of mainstream writers such as Emerson and Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe expressed his unique romantic inspiration by showing death and ugliness, and expressed his views on the world and the world through symbols and metaphors. understanding of human nature. His horror novels are often set in abyss, castles, dark rooms, storms or under the moonlight. The characters are tortured by loneliness, consciousness of death and mental abnormality. They read as creepy and chilling as a nightmare. Edgar Allan Poe's writing style is exquisite and his words are well used. By conceiving and designing thrilling plots, he tries his best to depict bizarre events and horrific scenes that ordinary people can't imagine to readers in his horror novels, creating artistic conception, exaggerating the atmosphere, and accurately achieving the goal. The intended artistic effect of the work.
Edgar Allan Poe’s creative principle is his theory of effect. His choice of death as the theme of his literary creation was determined by this creative principle of his. Poe believed that whether he is creating poetry or novels, writers must pay attention to the unity of effect, must always think of the predetermined ending, and must make every plot essential. He once explained his creative principles in "Review of Hawthorne's Retelling of the Story": A smart artist does not incorporate his own thoughts into his plot, but carefully plans in advance to come up with something unique and relevant. He connects these plots with different effects, and then creates such plots, and everything he does will maximize the realization of the pre-conceived effects. Make every event, every descriptive detail, and even every word and sentence receive a certain unified effect, an expected effect, an impressionistic effect. He emphasizes the emotions and effects that works can evoke on readers. In "The Philosophy of Creation", he believes that the primary purpose of a story is to emotionally grab the reader's heartstrings and produce the most exciting effect.
The theme of death is expressed through the rigorous and compact structure and the simplicity of the work. Edgar Allan Poe Poe's works are exquisite in form and sophisticated in technique. In "On Hawthorne's Retold Story," Poe emphasized the simplicity and unified effect of the work. In his writing, he also kept the plot and structure highly concise. There were usually only two or at most three characters in the novels, and there were no digressive details or irrelevant decorations.
In his view, a skilled writer must have a well-thought-out plan before writing, select and organize the plot to achieve the desired effect, and there should not be a word whose intention is directly or indirectly unrelated to the pre-conceived idea. In order to better reveal the theme of death, he resolutely excluded plots that were irrelevant to the theme, and required that the works must have exquisite artistic forms and must embody the principle of high unity of content and form. He believes that in order to ensure the unity of effect, the first thing to consider is the length of the work. He said that a poem or novel should not be too long and should be able to be read in one sitting. Otherwise, earthly matters will interfere with readers' reading and appreciation and destroy the unity of the work's effect. To this end, he carefully designed the structure in order to achieve the perfect unity of form and content.
When constructing the plot of humorous novels, Edgar Allan Poe clearly absorbed the narrative mode of frontier humorous stories. Sometimes the narrator was involved in the development of the story, and sometimes the narrator was kept outside the story. It is to travel inside and outside the story, not only to feel the inner thoughts of the protagonist, but also to objectively narrate the story using the realistic Baicuo technique. The difference is that Edgar Allan Poe's stories are more rigorous, more refined, and more focused. The pursuit of effects, the means are more diverse and rich, showing a stronger literary nature, thus greatly improving the literary taste of American humor literature. Although the humor master Mark Twain criticized Edgar Allan Poe, the narrative mode of his humorous novels is obviously similar to Edgar Allan Poe's novels.
There are many funny characters in Edgar Allan Poe's humorous novels. If we examine the prototypes of these characters, we will find that their creations are actually Edgar Allan Poe's original and funny parodies of many well-known characters. In the process of parodying characters, Edgar Allan Poe always liked to use irony and puns to express his satire on the characters' words and deeds; sometimes in order to highlight the funny and humorous personality of the characters, Edgar Allan Poe would even Use rewriting or inversion to process language.
Edgar Allan Pope wrote sixty or seventy short stories in his life. Although he only wrote four or five mystery novels, he is universally recognized as the "originator of mystery novels." His representative works "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Mystery of Marie Roger", "The Purloined Letter" and "The Gold Bug" are all regarded as the pioneers of this type of novels and have had a great influence on later generations.
Haycraft, an expert on detective novels, believes: "The location of the crime is arranged in a tightly locked darkroom; the process of solving the crime is based on rigorous logic and immersive reasoning, which has become the way Edgar Allan Poe wrote detective novels. mode. ?This model has been imitated by detective novelists from all over the world for 140 years. Even Inspector Cuff in the masterpiece "The Moonstone" by the British writer Collins, known as the "father of detective novels", was also inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. produced under the influence.
Most of Poe's novels have elements of the Gothic tradition. Its characteristics mainly highlight the life-like details reflected in the novel's narrative and the magical and fantasy narrative plot, without losing the sense of reality in the narrative. The control of contingency in the narrative plot all exudes the unique aesthetic appeal of the weird and terrifying factor. It is through the aesthetic acceptance of these aspects that we can see how the tradition of early British Gothic novels influenced Edgar Allan Poe's creation. The impact comes from above.
It is worth mentioning that Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic novels are also of great practical significance. They reflect the alienated psychological state of people in the current society: loneliness, fear, anxiety, trouble, Despair etc. Lonely and anxious people naturally have a desire for a sense of sublimity based on their psychological needs for "self-preservation": people long to be in a certain safe zone, where destructive objects can cause actual threats and harm to people, and with At the same time, you can enjoy the aesthetic pleasure caused by horror, thrills, darkness, etc.
Poe played an important role in the development of science fiction. Some critics believe that Poe invented science fiction.
Sam Moscove, who gave the honor of pioneering science fiction to Mary Shelley, wrote in "Explorers of the Infinite": Poe's total influence on science fiction is incalculable, but his contribution to this genre is unfathomable. His greatest contribution to the development of the genre was that he set forth the rule that all extraordinary things, both east and west, must be explained scientifically. When Hugo Gernsback was trying to explain what article he wanted to publish in Amazing Stories, the first science fiction magazine, he named three writers, including Poe.
Generally speaking, Poe's science fiction novels are both rich in imagination and fascinating, and also have scientific theoretical basis and are convincing. Many famous science fiction writers in later generations, including Jules Verne, the founder of the two major genres of modern science fiction, the originator of hard science fiction, and Welles, the representative of soft science fiction, all admired Poe. There are also more or less traces of imitating Poe in their works. Therefore, Chen Liangting called Poe the pioneer of science fiction, and Shi Chengrong also believed: The great writer who wrote real science fiction is the American Edgar Allan Poe. ?It is worth noting that Poe's science fiction novels are not ordinary popular science books. Like his other novels, they are also a tortuous artistic expression of Poe's real life.
The so-called "pure poetry" of Symbolism was first put forward by Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe believed that there is no poem in the world and there can be no poem that is more thoroughly noble and extremely noble than this poem itself. This poem is a poem. In addition, Nothing more? This poem was written purely for poetry. ?
Edgar Allan Pope believed that music is fundamental to poetry. Through its meter, rhythm and rhyme, music becomes such an important opportunity in poetry that it refuses to Without it, the combination of unwise music and pleasant thoughts is poetry, music without thoughts is just music, and thoughts without music are prose by virtue of their certainty. ?What poetry imparts through its musicality is a vague and unclear emotion, which is exactly the purpose of poetry. ?It is in music that the feelings of poetry are excited, so that the struggle of the soul is closest to that huge The goal? The creation of divine beauty. ?
Edgar Allan Poe's ideas and practices on the musicality of poetry had a profound impact on French Symbolism, so much so that musicality became a very important unique artistic feature of Symbolism.