Biography of Edgar Allan Poe | Poet, narrator and critic.
(Boston, USA, 1809 - Baltimore, id., 1849) Poet, Narrator and American critic, one of the best storytellers of all time. The image of Poe as morbid cultivator of literature of terror has hampered occasionally fair appreciation of its literary importance. Indeed it was the great master of the genre, and inaugurated in addition the police story and science fiction; but, above all, it appreciated and revitalized the tale from his theoretical as in his praxis of literary writings, demonstrating that its expressive potential had nothing to envy to the novel and short story giving dignity and prestige that modern has.
Biography
Edgar Allan Poe lost his parents, itinerant actors of theater, when he was just two years old. The small Edgar was educated by John Allan, a wealthy man of business in Richmond. Poe's relationship with his adoptive father was traumatic; also the early death of his mother would become one of his recurrent obsessions. From 1815 to 1820 he lived with John Allan and his wife in the United Kingdom, where he began his education.
Edgar Allan PoeAfter returning to the United States, Edgar Allan Poe went on to study in private schools and attended the University of Virginia, but in 1827 his love of game and drink brought the expulsion. Shortly after he left the position of employee that his adoptive father had assigned to it, and traveled to Boston, where he anonymously published his first book, Tamerlane and other poems (Tamerlane and Other Poems, 1827).
He enlisted in the army, where he remained two years. In 1829 appeared his second book of poems, to the Aaraaf, and obtained by influence of his adoptive father, a manager at the Military Academy of West Point, from which a few months he was expelled by negligence in the line of duty.
In 1832, and after the publication of his third book, poems (Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, 1831), moved to Baltimore, where married his young cousin Virginia Clemm, who was then fourteen years old. Around this time he joined as editor in the newspaper Southern Baltimore Messenger, in which different narrations and his poems appeared, and that under his leadership would become the most important newspaper in the South of the country. Later he collaborated in several magazines in Philadelphia and New York City that had been installed with his wife in 1837.
His work as a literary critic, incisive and often scandalous earned him some notoriety, and their original insights about the story and the nature of poetry would gain influence over time. In 1840 he published in Tales of the grotesque and Arabesque asPhiladelphia; He then obtained an extraordinary success with the gold bug (1843), short story about a fabulous treasure buried, so emblematic of his writing as the poetry book the Raven and other poems (1845), which led to the Summit his literary reputation.
The long illness of his wife her marriage became a bitter experience; When she died, in 1847, his tendency to alcoholism and drug use, was aggravated as testimony of his contemporaries. Both addictions were, in all likelihood, the cause of his death in 1849: was found unconscious on a Baltimore Street and taken to a hospital, where he died a few days later, apparently of a stroke.
The work of Edgar Allan Poe
The quality of the literary production of Poe has partly obscured his role as theorist of literature; in works such as Foundation of the verse (1843), the philosophy of composition (1846) and the poetic principle (1850), he exhibited unique and innovative ideas on the literary genres and the creation process. In this latter field he turned to full of the romantic concept of inspiration to advocate for a writing reflective, thoughtful, and perfectly aware of expressive techniques, which had to be channelled towards the desired effect. Such ideas would have great prestige among the antirromantica criticism.
Edgar Allan PoeRegarding genres, Poe said that the greatest literary expression is poetry, and her devoted its efforts. His poems were not well received among American critics, who judged them overly contrived, but, based on the studies of Mallarmé, Europeans saw in Poe a model precursor of the symbolism. The appreciation is fair if not forget romantic motives that, in spite of his Poetics, weighed yet his verses.
Byroniana fashion left its mark in a new book published only eighteen years old, Tamerlane and other poems (1827). In his second work, to the Aaraaf (1829), the poet celebrated an ethereal form of beauty, prelude to the pure "idealism" that will suck in some later poems. In his third book, poems (1831), met with some revisions and additions to the poems of the first two volumes, and added six new compositions. In them he came to maturity and found an authentic voice, although it can discern in it the echo of Coleridge; his evocation of a visionary ideal world was enhanced by the hypnotic rhythm of the verses and the disturbing power of images.
His latest book, the Raven and other poems (1845), is the expression of his pessimism and their longing for an alien to this world beauty. Some of the compositions of Poe, ragged of the poems that are part, reached a notable popularity. It is justly celebrated his long poem the Raven (The Raven, 1845), where his mastery of rhythm and the sound of verse reached the maximum level. They express identical virtuosity campaigns (The Bells, 1849), which resonate, which accompanies the various stages of human life from childhood until death, is evoked with rhymed repetition and alliteration; Ulalume (1847), a journey of sorrow to the illusion that falls back into despair; and Annabel Lee (1849), exaltation of an innocent child love or death truncate.
Poe tales
But the brilliance and originality of Edgar Allan Poe find their best expression in fairy tales, which, according to his own critical opinions, are the second literary form, because they allow a reading without interruption, and therefore the effect that it is impossible in the novel unit. Considered one of the most remarkable storytellers of all time, Poe began the revitalization that would undergo gender in modern times.
Published under the title Tales of the grotesque and the Arabesque (Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840), although there were new collections of his stories in 1843 and 1845, the majority develops in a Gothic and sinister, teeming with atmosphere of supernatural interventions, and in many cases are masterpieces of literature of terror. Poe based his style both in the oppressive atmosphere created during the initiation and development of the story and the surprising effects of the end.
Frame of the fall of the House of Usher (1960), film based on the story by PoeThis happens in the anthology the fall of the House of Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher), Symbolist or supernatural story in which the Narrator attends the last days of an old friend of his, hypersensitive and tormented Aristocrat Rodrigo Usher. During your stay dies the sister of Usher, who was seriously ill, and it is buried in an underground crypt. A week later, in a shocking final scene, sister reappears to fall on the already delirious Usher, both perishing and, after the flight of the Narrator, the same House, which collapses over the pond.
When Baudelaire poured French cited collection and one rear (such, 1845), titled them Histoires extraordinaires, name that went to Spanish translations as extraordinary narrations. There is no shortage in these collections the macabre stories, such as the barrel of amontillado (The Cask of Amontillado), or short stories dedicated to women tormented and inscrutable in a context of sickly, and Berenice , Ligeiaatmosphere; they are less numerous instead those that describe the resolution of an enigma, as the gold bug (The Gold Bug).
In the latter group, it is necessary to emphasize three tales starring Augusto Dupin, who laid the foundations of a genre destined to collect an immense popularity: Detective literature. The first of such tales, the Morgue street crimes (The Murders in the Rue Morgue), has been considered, rightly, as the founder of the thriller and detective. Dupin is also the protagonist of the mystery of Marie Roget (The Mystery of Marie Roget) and the purloined letter (The purloined Letter), classic pieces of the genre by the balance of logic, suspense and narrative details.
Master of horror and founder of the police genre, is also recognized to Poe his role as forerunner in the literature of science fiction by some of the stories contained in the extraordinary stories. Marine theme is the only novel that became complete, the adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1838), history of a fantastic trip to the South Pole that reappear many elements (many of them terrifying or symbolic) of his stories.
The whole of the work of Poe greatly influenced the French symbolists, especially in Charles Baudelaire, who unveiled it in Europe. Moreover, the followers of the new paths that opened its narrative (as Arthur Conan Doyle in the detective novel, Julio Verne in science fiction or H.P. Lovecraft in the horror literature) noted its debt with American, and, in general, his teaching has been recognized by all the growers of the modern story, from Guy de Maupassant to Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar who made a superb translation of his stories.
Biography
Edgar Allan Poe lost his parents, itinerant actors of theater, when he was just two years old. The small Edgar was educated by John Allan, a wealthy man of business in Richmond. Poe's relationship with his adoptive father was traumatic; also the early death of his mother would become one of his recurrent obsessions. From 1815 to 1820 he lived with John Allan and his wife in the United Kingdom, where he began his education.
Edgar Allan Poe
He enlisted in the army, where he remained two years. In 1829 appeared his second book of poems, to the Aaraaf, and obtained by influence of his adoptive father, a manager at the Military Academy of West Point, from which a few months he was expelled by negligence in the line of duty.
In 1832, and after the publication of his third book, poems (Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, 1831), moved to Baltimore, where married his young cousin Virginia Clemm, who was then fourteen years old. Around this time he joined as editor in the newspaper Southern Baltimore Messenger, in which different narrations and his poems appeared, and that under his leadership would become the most important newspaper in the South of the country. Later he collaborated in several magazines in Philadelphia and New York City that had been installed with his wife in 1837.
His work as a literary critic, incisive and often scandalous earned him some notoriety, and their original insights about the story and the nature of poetry would gain influence over time. In 1840 he published in Tales of the grotesque and Arabesque asPhiladelphia; He then obtained an extraordinary success with the gold bug (1843), short story about a fabulous treasure buried, so emblematic of his writing as the poetry book the Raven and other poems (1845), which led to the Summit his literary reputation.
The long illness of his wife her marriage became a bitter experience; When she died, in 1847, his tendency to alcoholism and drug use, was aggravated as testimony of his contemporaries. Both addictions were, in all likelihood, the cause of his death in 1849: was found unconscious on a Baltimore Street and taken to a hospital, where he died a few days later, apparently of a stroke.
The work of Edgar Allan Poe
The quality of the literary production of Poe has partly obscured his role as theorist of literature; in works such as Foundation of the verse (1843), the philosophy of composition (1846) and the poetic principle (1850), he exhibited unique and innovative ideas on the literary genres and the creation process. In this latter field he turned to full of the romantic concept of inspiration to advocate for a writing reflective, thoughtful, and perfectly aware of expressive techniques, which had to be channelled towards the desired effect. Such ideas would have great prestige among the antirromantica criticism.
Edgar Allan Poe
Byroniana fashion left its mark in a new book published only eighteen years old, Tamerlane and other poems (1827). In his second work, to the Aaraaf (1829), the poet celebrated an ethereal form of beauty, prelude to the pure "idealism" that will suck in some later poems. In his third book, poems (1831), met with some revisions and additions to the poems of the first two volumes, and added six new compositions. In them he came to maturity and found an authentic voice, although it can discern in it the echo of Coleridge; his evocation of a visionary ideal world was enhanced by the hypnotic rhythm of the verses and the disturbing power of images.
His latest book, the Raven and other poems (1845), is the expression of his pessimism and their longing for an alien to this world beauty. Some of the compositions of Poe, ragged of the poems that are part, reached a notable popularity. It is justly celebrated his long poem the Raven (The Raven, 1845), where his mastery of rhythm and the sound of verse reached the maximum level. They express identical virtuosity campaigns (The Bells, 1849), which resonate, which accompanies the various stages of human life from childhood until death, is evoked with rhymed repetition and alliteration; Ulalume (1847), a journey of sorrow to the illusion that falls back into despair; and Annabel Lee (1849), exaltation of an innocent child love or death truncate.
Poe tales
But the brilliance and originality of Edgar Allan Poe find their best expression in fairy tales, which, according to his own critical opinions, are the second literary form, because they allow a reading without interruption, and therefore the effect that it is impossible in the novel unit. Considered one of the most remarkable storytellers of all time, Poe began the revitalization that would undergo gender in modern times.
Published under the title Tales of the grotesque and the Arabesque (Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840), although there were new collections of his stories in 1843 and 1845, the majority develops in a Gothic and sinister, teeming with atmosphere of supernatural interventions, and in many cases are masterpieces of literature of terror. Poe based his style both in the oppressive atmosphere created during the initiation and development of the story and the surprising effects of the end.
Frame of the fall of the House of Usher (1960), film based on the story by Poe
When Baudelaire poured French cited collection and one rear (such, 1845), titled them Histoires extraordinaires, name that went to Spanish translations as extraordinary narrations. There is no shortage in these collections the macabre stories, such as the barrel of amontillado (The Cask of Amontillado), or short stories dedicated to women tormented and inscrutable in a context of sickly, and Berenice , Ligeiaatmosphere; they are less numerous instead those that describe the resolution of an enigma, as the gold bug (The Gold Bug).
In the latter group, it is necessary to emphasize three tales starring Augusto Dupin, who laid the foundations of a genre destined to collect an immense popularity: Detective literature. The first of such tales, the Morgue street crimes (The Murders in the Rue Morgue), has been considered, rightly, as the founder of the thriller and detective. Dupin is also the protagonist of the mystery of Marie Roget (The Mystery of Marie Roget) and the purloined letter (The purloined Letter), classic pieces of the genre by the balance of logic, suspense and narrative details.
Master of horror and founder of the police genre, is also recognized to Poe his role as forerunner in the literature of science fiction by some of the stories contained in the extraordinary stories. Marine theme is the only novel that became complete, the adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1838), history of a fantastic trip to the South Pole that reappear many elements (many of them terrifying or symbolic) of his stories.
The whole of the work of Poe greatly influenced the French symbolists, especially in Charles Baudelaire, who unveiled it in Europe. Moreover, the followers of the new paths that opened its narrative (as Arthur Conan Doyle in the detective novel, Julio Verne in science fiction or H.P. Lovecraft in the horror literature) noted its debt with American, and, in general, his teaching has been recognized by all the growers of the modern story, from Guy de Maupassant to Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar who made a superb translation of his stories.
Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas