Buy custom essay on Edgar Allan Poe’s Life and How It Effected His Work

The genre of Gothic literature rose in Britain in the late 18th century. This genre explores the dark sides of human soul and nature. It tells about death, nightmares, ghosts, alienation and haunted landscapes. Edgar Allan Poe brought this type of literature to America. Most of his famous works are Gothic. Edgar Allan Poe followed this genre to appease the public taste (Royot 57).
There are some suggestions that Edgar Allan Poe share identities with his characters. Many depictions of his personages blend in with characters of his stories (Gargano 165). To some extent this is true. Edgar Poe tried to overcome the lack of will of his characters. Through them he tried to get rid of this feature in his own character. He gave them the power of thought and thus glorifies the will.
Edgar Allan Poe was not only highly praised but criticized as well. That does not only concern his literary works, but his behavior as well, as he was egocentric and selfish. These negative features of his character alongside with many other originate in his childhood spent with John Allan, whose character was also very unstable. Thus, William Butler Yeats once called Poe “vulgar”; Ralph Waldo Emerson said about Poe’s best novel “The Raven”: “I see nothing in it” and called Edgar Poe “the jingle man” (Emerson’s Estimate of Poe). Aldous Huxley compared “too poetical” works of Poe with wearing diamond tings on every finger (Huxley 32). buy custom essay
Still what do we really know about Edgar Allan Poe’s life? How did he live? What bothered him and what was his life in reality? There are more questions than answers. Very small number of facts is verified. There are more legends, myths and conjectures in his biography than certainties. Everything that is written about him is more our fantasies than real truth. He got only nine dollars for his best poem “The Raven”, however all the reading society of America appreciated it at once, still not knowing the name of the author. Edgar Allan Poe was not happy to become famous in his life. But coming after death, his fame not only lives today, but continues to grow and takes new forms. According to what poets usually say, they dream about fame after death. That is their utmost desire of men of art. If it is true, for Edgar Allan Poe this dream has come true. The symbolists of the beginning of the 20th century considered him to be their forerunner; his influence can be traced in the works of almost all modern American poets. His works are translated on almost all world languages; still none of the translations can convey the melody of Poe’s language. The stories by Edgar Allan Poe mark him as an originator of both detective and horror fiction. Many anthologists name him “the architect” of the contemporary short story. Besides, he was one of the first literary critics to focus on the importance of style and structure of the literary work. He was also called the forerunner to the “art for art’s sake” movement (Edgar Allan Poe).
And, after all, nevertheless there were times in his life when he had nothing to eat, he had a lovely young wife and beautiful little daughter, and that is much more valuable than material wealth. Only one glance to the poems dedicated to Poe’s wife let us know that Edgar Allan Poe would never change his happiness with beloved wife for earthly blessings. It is she who is referred those wonderful bold and happy words of “Annabel Lee” that deny Death for the sake of Love:
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea. (Edgar Allan Poe)

Works cited
Edgar Allan Poe. Annabel Lee. Poem Hunter.com. 9 Aug. 2010 <http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/annabel-lee/>
Edgar Allan Poe. Poets.org. 9 Aug. 2010, <http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/130>
“Emerson’s Estimate of Poe”. The New York Times. 20 May, 1894.
Gargano, James W. The Question of Poe’s Narrators. Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, Ed. Robert Regan. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967.
Huxley, Aldous. Vulgarity in Literature. Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, Ed. Robert Regan, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1967.
Ostrom, John Ward. Edgar A. Poe: His Income as Literary Entrepreneur. Poe Studies 5.1, 1982.
Royot, Daniel. Poe’s Humor. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Stableford, Brian. Science fiction before the genre. The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, Eds. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.