Essay about Edgar Allen Poe's Gothicism

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” Poe believed that a story had to have the reality of horror with in. All of his stories had gothic horror in them. Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories, “The Black Cat” and “The Masque of the Red Death” are good examples of gothic literature because they involve paranormal activity, insane characters, and terrifying deaths.

Gothic literature was a popular writing tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is still used today. Gothic literature explores the wicked, perverse and dark desires. Gothic conventions can include burial alive, ghosts, hysteria, ruined bodies, tales within tales, undead characters, underground spaces, and more. Gothic themes are guilt, sex, violence, death, and cosmic struggle. Gothic stories or poems should inspire terror or horror. Edgar Allen Poe was one of the many well-known Gothic writers. In his stories he uses a variety of themes to carry out the gothic theme.

In normal life, people will sometimes suffer from depression or sickness caused by the loss of a loved one in a romantic or family relationship. This has been a part of life for hundreds of years and it is a way that authors like Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner and Horacio Quiroga connect with people all throughout the world. Using exaggerated scenarios, these authors communicate how much of an impact isolation or abandonment can have on a person physically or mentally decaying.

The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone.

Gothic literature contains many thematic elements such as horror, death, and even at times romanticism. This type of literature incorporates various different elements, in order to evoke the emotions of terror. There are many authors who are extremely talented and are still remembered and read in classrooms today. These are authors like Edgar Allan Poe, best known for his mysterious poems and short stories, Richard Matheson and Horacio Quiroga, who have all incorporated psychological problems and violence themes in their short stories in order to fascinate the readers and add suspense to the story. These three gothic authors correlate the themes of violence and the psychological/ mental issues in order to depict anticipation and terror

A virtuoso of suspense and horror, Edgar Allan Poe is known for his Gothic writing style. His style is created through his use of punctuation, sentence structure, word choice, tone, and figurative language. Punctuation-wise; dashes, exclamation marks, semicolons, and commas are a favorite of Poe. His sentences vary greatly; their structures are influenced by punctuation. Much of his word choice set the tone of his works. Figurative language colors his writings with description. Such is observed in the similarities between two of his most well-known short stories, “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Edgar Allan Poe has a distinctive and dark way of writing (Poe & Kennedy, pp.22). His mysterious style of writing appeals to passion and sentimentality. Poe’s most prominent works of fiction are gothic. His stories tend to have similar recurring theme of either death, lost love or both. Poe’s psychologically thrilling stories examining the depths of the humanoid psyche earned him much fame throughout his lifetime and after his death. And this distinctive style of writing made him possess his own style of wiring (Arbor, pp.71). There is a psychological concentration which is an important characteristic of Poe’s literatures, particularly the tales of horror that encompass his best and well-known works, such as The Black Cat and The Raven which

Symbols play a great importance in many of Edgar Allan Poe’s literary works because each symbol adds detail to the story. Although some symbols are obvious others are hidden, like a mystery waiting to be solved. Even though Poe’s literary works weren’t appreciated in his time, they have become wildly popular and read amongst many people today. After reading Edgar Allan Poe’s

Edgar Allan Poe, the author of many famous short stories and poems, should be considered as a writer of gothic literature. The first example of this can be seen in his story “Hop-Frog”, as shown when the protagonist, Hop-Frog, says, “‘a king who does not scruple to strike a defenseless girl and his seven counsilors who encourage him in the outrage’” (Hop-Frog 10). This fits gothic literature because it shows that the story does actually have a moral. Gothic stories must have a moral, and Poe explains his moral in this line by explaining why the king deserves to be burned. After bullying Hop-Frog and his friend Trippetta for years, the king is finally being turned on. Another example to show that Edgar Allan Poe is a gothic writer is seen in

Edgar Allan Poe is a well known American author whose works continue to influence literature today. His difficult life was impactful on his writing. He is mostly known for his dark writings, but he was also a talented adventure author. Poe’s past and the influence it had on his writing makes him an interesting author to research. “The Tell Tale Heart” as well as “The Pit and the Pendulum” are two of Poe’s well known short stories. “The Pit and the Pendulum” is written in a way that makes the reader feel as if he is a part of the story. “The Tell Tale Heart” is an extremely suspenseful story that keeps the reader intrigued. Edgar Allan Poe’s life illustrates that personal struggles can transform into great literature. His

stories, madness again is playing a key role in the plot. In this short story Poe used

Coupled with an ingenious, artistic imagination and a strong command of language and stylistic technique, Poe’s poetry and short stories were a catalyst for Gothic fiction and transformed the future of American literature. Although his writing style was heavily criticized by notable 19th-century writers, his suspenseful tales of death/loss, beauty, and insanity made him one of the most influential modern writers. His poetry and prose evoke an intense psychological thrill ride that both frightens and enthralls readers of his genre. Repetition (alliteration, consonance, and assonance) and rhythm/meter (internal and external rhyme) are crucial linguistic elements that Poe experiments with in “The Raven;” these elements accentuate the haunting musicality that is conjured up when the poem is read out loud (Poetry Foundation). Diction, synonymy (denotation and connotation), modals, and intensifiers are also crucial elements that Poe experiments with in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat;” these elements accentuate the recurring theme or idea of “madness.”

Irony and repetition are formal elements that are often used in literatures to produce intentional effects by the writers. In the short story The Black Cat, written by Edgar Allen Poe, Poe uses irony and repetition to produce numerous gothic effects. While Poe uses formal elements such as irony and repetition in The Black Cat, he demonstrates how these formal elements produces gothic effects such as the unknown, uncanny, haunting, and terror. The purpose of this essay is to illuminate Poe’s use of irony and repetition through out the story, and to refer to specific examples from the story on how these formal elements contribute to the production of these

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809. His parents were actors. After he was born, his father abandoned him and his mother died before he was three. This left Edgar Allan Poe a foster child. Poe 's father was an alcoholic and an insovent actor. Thus, Poe had a miserable life, starting with his childhood, he lost his parents since he was a little child, and I would say that affected his mind; he became focused on death, because of the effect of all those lost that he had, and his obsession with death and loss can be seen in most of his writing, we can see that most of his writing there are patters and

Throughout the years of reading Poe's narratives, one becomes aware that it targets gothic fiction and physiological concepts. Having this sense of background Poe manages to create unique pieces with additional help of writers experiences. Many speculate that Poe's influence pieces behind The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether came from Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Charles Lever. In Charles O' Malley written by Charles Lever the main character, Mr. Sparks joins a club in where people pretend to be different types of characters, acting as an hourglass, a playing card and a red Indian(Mabbott). In The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof Fether, the guests interpret the patient's delusions in which represents their character in the asylum.