Poe's Dark Romanticism In The Poe By Edgar Allan Poe

Creating the Melancholic Tone in “The Raven” Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven," representing Poe’s own introverted crisis of hell, is unusually moving and attractive to the reader. In his essay entitled "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe reveals his purpose in writing “The Raven” and also describes the work of composing the poem as being carefully calculated in all aspects. Of all melancholy topics, Poe wished to use the one that was universally understood, death; specifically death involving a beautiful woman. The apparent tone in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” seemingly represents a very painful condition of mind, an intellect sensitive to madness and the abyss of melancholy brought upon by the death of a

Edgar Allan poe is one of the most incredible gothic writers, with a library of many famous works. He is famous for his dark and ominous way of narrating, as well as his brutal and obscure endings to his tales. Arguably his most famous works are the poem entitled “The Raven” published January 29th 1845, and his short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” published a few years earlier on January 1843. Both of these pieces of literature pulled the listener directly into Poe's mysterious world, with suspense and intensity in every line. “The Raven” and “The Tale-Heart’ written by Edgar Allan Poe both develop the gothic theme of madness by using dark imagery, similar symbolism, and torment.

Usually, fairy tales are in connection to big and illustrious happy endings. But in Edgar Allan Poe’s case, it is evident that they do not exist, for his stories more often than not bear a grotesque demeanor. His life was surrounded by death. All of the women in his life died young, including his mother, sister, and wife. By the age of three, he had experienced what most would not experience until nearly the middle or end of their lives. Living in such an atmosphere allowed Poe to reach deep into his emotions when writing. Edgar Allan Poe was known for his macabre metaphors. These metaphors challenged the reader to endeavor themselves into his simple words; coming to find the gothic elements portrayed. He most commonly portrayed love and death in his poems. Poe is even credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. Edgar Allan Poe utilizes symbolism and portrays an envious love tale, ending in tragedy to expose the speaker’s emotional state in the poem “Annabel Lee.”

The Romantic Period is characterized as an artistic and intellectually stimulating literary movement. Writers of this genre and time are considered to be those who fused the elements of romance in their writings to enhance the human experience. Edgar Allan Poe, known as the father of the modern short story, epitomizes this notion in his writings. In “Annabel Lee,” and “The Oval Portrait,” Edgar Allan Poe uses romance to illustrate the essence of death and misery and to illustrate elements in which the reader can actually feel that was is happening in the story is happening to them.

Edgar Allan Poe is a famous well known writer known for his dark and gothic horror stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and many others. The well-known author had a rough life which dealt with a lot of death, so most of his stories revolve around this idea. In “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Masque of the Red Death” Poe uses similar themes or darkness to convey tone and conflict throughout the story. His writing style is dark and revolves around one main concept: death. Edgar Allan Poe uses diction and syntax, setting and conflict, and characterization in his writing style to develop his stories.

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.

The first of these devices I will be referring to for the Raven and the Pit and the Pendulum is repetition. One of the most prominent examples in the Raven is as follows ; “Darkness there and nothing more / Merely this and nothing more / ’Tis the wind and nothing more!”(Poe, 24, 30, 36). These lines in the poem connect to the Raven showing the descent into madness with the literary device of repetition. Like many people who go mad, the narrator constantly repeats himself, doubting his own words. The words “nothing more” are always repeated at the end of each stanza, which indicates that the narrator is consumed with the loss of his Lenore, and so he is going crazy trying to console himself and live with the fact she isn’t with him anymore, and she is dead and he can’t do anything about it. As well as the Raven, the Pit and Pendulum uses repetition in multiple scenes in the story to display the reader’s distress and one of these examples is as follows, “Down -- steadily down it crept. Down -- certainly, relentlessly down. Down -- still unceasingly -- still inevitably down” (Poe, 14) .This use of repetition is one of the driving forces that are used to cultivate the narrator’s descent into madness- the inevitability of death and how he can do nothing to avoid it. As the pendulum swings lower and lower, the narrator contemplates his death and how eventually it will happen to everyone, and is frightened to what will await him when he dies, for he fears he will go to hell. This also ties to the importance of imagery that Poe uses in the story to show his signature madness a number of his characters shows.

The Raven tells a story of a man with much grief over this loss of his love, Lenore. As the poem opens, the narrator is trying to find peace through his books. He states, “…while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,” (862). The setting, a chamber in a house, is described in such a way that creates a very dark, almost melancholy style. The narrator, while trying to find comfort for his loss, hears a tapping at his window. As he opens the window, a raven, a long time symbol of death, flies in, and refuses to leave. Poe uses the symbol of the raven, and his repeating word of “nevermore”, to show that the narrator will never get over the loss of his love, Lenore.

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

Although now seen as the father of the modern horror story, Edgar Allan Poe was previously viewed as a drunken failure. Within Poe’s writings much of his own life riddled with guilt, anxiety, alcohol, depression and death shines through resulting in works that appear unrelated yet once dissected prove similar. This is true for Poe’s works “The Raven” and “The Black Cat”. Poe’s examples of gothic fiction share the use of the color black and a rapid digression of the narrator 's sanity while seemingly unveiling Poe’s internal pain. Despite these similarities, Poe’s works also differ immensely. “The Black Cat” focuses around death while “The Raven” is fixed around discovering the reasoning for a bird 's arrival. Moreover, gothic themes seen within “The Raven” do not necessarily remain constant when compared to “The Black Cat”.

Have you ever lost a dear love? Have you ever felt the presence of fear or loneliness? Have you ever needed a spiritual touch from heaven? A remedy that can help young Americans to help cope with these questions would be the reference of to the poetry written by Edgar Allan Poe. If EAP was a doctor he would recommend the patient to “Take this kiss upon the brow!” and call me in the morning (Thompson 52). The real-life hardships that this author endured have given substantial evidence that his pen was much more than ink (Poe 162-163). Authors like Hawthorne and Melville challenged Poe’s repertoire in this era, but did not have the same effect. While present and past American readers were introduced to poetic works of numerous authors

Edgar Allan Poe was a prominent writer during the era of Romanticism, but Poe’s poems focused primarily on the Dark Romanticism, developed under Romanticism. The era of Romanticism was commonly described as showing raw emotion, but there was still a conflict in the story. The purpose of Romanticism was for the writer to feel free; there were no rules when it came to this form of writing. Dark Romanticism was looking at the gothic side of stories rather than the heroism stories, which focused more on death, and the flaws of humans. Dark Romanticism also focused on the evil aspect of writings rather than the heroic part to stories. Edgar Allan Poe’s poems are shown more in this type of writing rather than the typical Romantic writings. When looking more into Dark Romanticism readers are able to see how Poe could have connected his personal turmoil to his poems. The University of Delaware’s library says, “Suffering for offenses against God, man and Nature, the hero-villains wander the earth, alone and misunderstood. Their personal torment in a vast universe is emphasized by desolate settings of icebound seas, jagged mountains and bottomless abysses: imagery that would inspire artistic, literary, and musical compositions,” (Dark Romanticism). This quote shows readers that writers during the Dark Romanticism era used their own sufferings in order to make the stories seem more dramatic and almost human. Looking into the poems “Annabel Lee” and “The Raven”, readers are able to see

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) born in the United States was a poet, writer, critic, and journalist recognized as one of the greatest exponents of the Dark Romanticism (Ultan and Olson, 51). Dark Romanticism is an American literary subgenre emerged in the nineteenth century from the philosophical movement called transcendentalism. Dark Romanticism, broadly speaking, rely very little on perfection as an innate quality of the human being, a key idea of the transcendentalists (Howard, 1). As consequence, its characters are prone to sin and self-destruction, since by nature, they are not wise or divine beings. One of the most representative authors of the current is Poe, who is

Additionally, “The Pit and the Pendulum” is a nail-biting narration of a prisoner being kept in a dungeon. Unaware of what his fate will be, the narrator assumes he will suffer death by hanging, until he explores his unlit surroundings and finds he is in a dungeon with a deep pit in the floor and a pendulum like scythe swinging from the ceiling above. Left to die, the narrator is saved in his last moments of despair by General Laselle who has taken over the prison as part of his crusade to end the inquisition. Perhaps one of Poe's most aspirant pieces of writing, the narrator in the “The Pit and Pendulum” never relinquishes himself to what the reader may view as an inevitable, certain death.

Poe’s writing style was much like that of Hawthorne’s, but drew from the darker side of romance creations. This gothic mood believed in the dark truths of the human heart, which are the ends and motivations for many of his stories. Human corruption and violence ends in murder in “The Black Cat”. Gothic writings move more into the supernatural side, which lets observer of the see a living person in the picture at his first, sleepy glance.