https://livingpraying.com/nz4yqv8ku Edgar Allan Poe published mainly in the periodicals of his day, and never was able to publish a complete collection of his short stories during his lifetime. Collections of his stories have been edited and published many times since his death, and my recommendation here is that you find one and read his tales in their entirety. We’ve all been treated to a good number of his short stories in the course of our schooling, so most of us are familiar with “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and the more difficult “Fall of the House of Usher.” For Poe is the quintessential master of the horror story, the heir of the Gothic tradition that preceded him and the single most important model for all those who came after him. No less a practitioner than H.P Lovecraft called Poe his “God of Fiction.”
https://everitte.org/8jw5dzqfollow But more than simply a master of Gothic horror, Poe was a significant early figure in the development of science fiction as well as the detective story. He was influential not only on H.P. Lovecraft and his ilk, but on Dostoyevsky, Jules Verne, Jorge Luis Borges, and especially Charles Baudelaire, and it was Baudelaire’s translations and promotion of Poe that made the American author more admired in Europe than in his home country in the decades after Poe’s untimely and mysterious death. For these reasons it is important that of all the editions of Poe available, you really ought to read one that includes his complete stories, rather than one that says it’s the “essential Poe, or “great works of Poe.” This is the only way to get a taste of the wide variety of stories among his work.
gohttps://semnul.com/creative-mathematics/?p=p7j9lv9 A complete Poe may include his poems as well, which for our purposes here we can put aside, and may include some of his nonfiction, most of which (save for one essay I’ll mention further on) we can dispense with for our purposes, and his one complete novel, 1838’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which is interesting for its early use of science fiction, and was actually included in the Guardian’s list of the 100 greatest novels in English, but may also be left out of our discussion here. Though interesting in itself, The Narrative does not pack the same punch as Poe’s short stories. Not unlike Flannery O’Connor, Poe’s light shines brightest in his short fiction.
source link On the “Greatest Books of All Time” web site, in which the editors rate books based on more than 300 separate “Greatest Books” lists, The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe appears as number 73 among works of fiction in the English language. The “Complete Tales” does appear on the 2002 list from the Norwegian Book Clubs, in conjunction with the Norwegian Nobel Institute, of the greatest works of fiction in world literature, and may have appeared on other lists had they not been overscrupulous about considering only novels.
follow link A key to Poe’s preeminence in short fiction can be found in one aspect of Poe’s genius that is often overlooked: He was America’s first serious literary theorist, and in his famous review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales not only helped enhance Hawthorne’s literary reputation but also established a theory of the short story as a genre that has served as a starting point for every other consideration of the genre since.
https://trevabrandonscharf.com/qei85nm Poe’s own starting point is the assertion that in every piece of writing, the “point of greatest importance” is the text’s “unity of effect or impression.” Since as he asserts “All high excitements are necessarily transient,” for the text to have its strongest effect, the reader should be able to peruse it at a single sitting, not exceeding one or two hours. Thus a novel will of necessity have a weaker effect than a short story. Only thus can the reader receive “the immense force derivable from totality.”
https://boxfanexpo.com/7dhbbuc Since it is this unity of effect—and Poe lists “terror, or passion, or horror, or a multitude of such other points” as possible effects—that gives the story its force, Poe insists that the author should focus solely on this effect: “he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect.” The ideal short story should include nothing extraneous to the achieving of that effect: “In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.”
Buy Shalina Diazepam Modern readers looking for significant themes in Poe’s stories have thus got the wrong end of the stick. Poe detested the idea that literature should teach some moral lesson, or try to teach the reader anything at all. He famously criticized Longfellow for what he called the “heresy of the didactic.” Originality, not morality, was the goal of art—and Poe’s opinion of Longfellow has proven to be the prevailing one as the years have gone by. In contrast to authors of a more neoclassical view, who might with Pope extol “what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed” (a phrase that might describe Longfellow), Poe was more in line with the Romantic writers of the early nineteenth century, who focused on what Coleridge called “The shaping spirit of the imagination,” and on the emotional effect of art on its audience. Thus he was in line with the French symbolist writers of the late nineteenth century (like Baudelaire) in eschewing the realist or naturalist tendencies of that time and focusing more on subjective and emotional sources.
see url As with other story collections, let me proceed with a discussion of Poe’s by focusing on four very different stories in his corpus. First, an example of the Gothic with which we most often associate Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado” seems of all his tales the one that best illustrates his theory of what a short story should be: it is short enough to be read in half an hour; it has nothing extraneous to the desired effect—unlike the more famous “Fall of the House of Usher,” it does not spend significant time setting up events with a complicated backstory. We focus on the perspective of the narrator and murderer, Montresor, from whom we learn that Fortunato has visited a “thousand injuries” upon him, and now has, unforgivably, “ventured upon insult.” And that is all we are given as backstory. We don’t know which Italian city the story takes place in, though the fact that it occurs during Carnival implies we are in Venice, and Fortunato, having been celebrating for a while, is somewhat drunk as the story opens and so easier to manipulate. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Montresor is luring the unsuspecting Fortunato into his wine cellar (where the vaults of his ancestors also lay) by flattering his enemy with the story that he has purchased a cask of the dark Spanish wine called amontillado and wants Fortunato’s opinion of the vintage, as the most respected wine connoisseur in the city. As they go deeper into the vaults, Fortunato betrays a persistent cough, and Montresor expresses an insincere concern that the dampness of the cellar may be bad for Fortunato’s health, but the clueless victim shrugs it off and goes on. Along the way, they see the Montresor coat of arms: a golden foot crushing a snake, with the motto Nemo me impune lacessit, that is, “No one harrassess me with impunity” (which also happens to be the national motto of Scotland).
https://traffordhistory.org/lookingback/e4teffll0 When they arrive at a niche in the cellar wall, Montresor says this is where the Amontillado is stored, But when Fortunato steps in, Montresor, catching him off guard, shackles him to the wall. Slowly and deliberately, Montresor begins to build a wall across the niche with the stones and mortar he has placed here ahead of time. As the now quite sober Fortunato cries for help and begs to be released (“For the love of God Montresor!”), his captor simply mocks his cries and continues building the wall until, the niche completely sealed, the cries are largely muffled. In the end, the narrator tells us that fifty years have passed since these events, and no one has disturbed the body. In pace requiescat! (May he rest in peace!”)
enter Is Montresor mad? Perhaps, but his scheme is well-thought out and executed perfectly. Can we ever know his motive? Some have suggested that, since the story makes it clear at one point that Fortunato is a Freemason and Montresor is not, perhaps has been denied membership in that brotherhood, and he may blame Fortunato for this. It would also foreshadow the irony of Montresor acting the part of a mason in building the wall. But more important than either of these things, in Poe’s estimation, is the tale’s spare prose and the author’s elimination of anything that does not contribute to the overall effect of terror that he aims at in the story.
https://ragadamed.com.br/2024/09/18/ykh0dpagv7m Also contributing to this overall effect is the idea of being buried alive—a fate that was of broad interest in the nineteenth century and which seems to have horrified Poe himself, for he wrote several stories in which the horror is suggested by a living entombment, including of course “The Premature Burial,” as well as “The Black Cat,” “Berenice,” and of course “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Many of Poe’s stories deal with subjects of popular interest in his time. Another of these was the “science” of cryptography—the practice of secret writing or the use of codes. This forms the subject matter for one of Poe’s less well known but quite significant stories, “The Gold-Bug,” which was the most popular of all Poe’s fiction during his lifetime.
Buy Valium Au In 1840, Poe had taken up the strong public interest in cryptography, and had issued a challenge to readers of Alexander’s Weekly Messenger in Philadelphia to submit their own cryptograms to the magazine and he would solve them. Which he proceeded to do. But seeing the interest in the subject, he wrote “The Gold-Bug.” The story features an amateur naturalist named William Legrand, who has lost his family fortune and relocated from New Orleans to Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina along with his manservant Jupiter. Legrand’s friend and physician, the unnamed narrator, is called to his friend’s house to look at a strange scarab-like bug he’s found, gold-colored and shaped like a skull. A month later, the narrator is summoned to Legrand’s home by Jupiter, who says Legrand has been bitten by the bug and has gone insane.
https://luisfernandocastro.com/mhizwgg2d8 What the narrator finds is an excited Legrand who believes the bug will be a key to restoring his family’s fortunes. He leads Jupiter and the narrator to the mainland, to a specific tree that he has Jupiter climb until he finds a skull nailed to a branch. He has Jupiter drop the bug through one of the eyeholes of the skull, and from that spot walks a certain number of paces to a place where they begin digging, until they unearth two skeletons and a chest filled with gold coins and jewelry. The buried treasure is the horde of Captain Kidd, known to have sailed this coast, and its value amounts to $1.5 million in 1843 dollars—close to 50 million in 2024. Legrand reveals that he had found a piece of parchment with the original bug which, when put near a flame, revealed hidden writing that was encrypted. Legrand had bent all his wits to solve the cryptogram, consisting of seven lines of numbers and symbols, the first line of which reads 53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.)4‡);80. Poe has Legrand tell in detail his method of deciphering the code, a method that involves substituting the most common letters in English for the most common figures in the cipher, and guessing other symbols if they seemed part of common English words. In any case, the interest of the story depends on the cleverness of the cryptography.
Buy Valium Roche Uk It must be noted that this story is sometimes left out of collected stories because of Poe’s infamous characterization of Jupiter, the African American manservant, which modern readers find stereotypical or even racist, since Jupiter comes across as a sort of comic, minstrel-show caricature. For a story set in the South, written 18 years before the Civil War by a writer raised in Richmond, Virginia, such a caricature is not surprising. It would have been surprising if Poe hadn’t made Jupiter a stereotype. The fact that he is one of the few Black characters in literature of this period who actually has a speaking role, that Poe is careful to indicate that he is no slave but a freed Black man living in South Carolina at this time—and that he at one point actually threatens to beat his “master”—are hints that Poe may have been less racist than most of his contemporaries. Still, expect to be offended. But the story has had an important influence: Robert Louis Stevenson credited Poe’s story of buried pirate treasure with inspiring him to write Treasure Island. And the famous American cryptologist William Friedman became interested in the subject after reading “The Gold Bug” as a child—an interest that ultimately led him to crack Japan’s PURPLE code in the Second World War.
https://trevabrandonscharf.com/8r5o3up Poe would have considered “The Gold Bug” one of his tales of “Ratiocination”—that is, the process of methodical, logical reasoning. In “The Gold Bug” that process is explained in detail by Legrand after the fact. In Poe’s detective stories featuring the amateur Parisian sleuth C. Auguste Dupin. Poe’s 1841 tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is often called the first modern detective story. The tale’s unnamed narrator, like Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, shares rooms with Dupin and tells his stories. Again Poe is interested in a hot current topic: the issue of crime in large cities. London had just instituted it first professional police force, and in American cities police were beginning to use scientific methods to solve crimes. In this first story, as in those of Holmes or Hercule Poirot, the revelation of the answer to the puzzle is revealed before the revelation of the logical reasoning that led to the answer. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Dupin reads newspaper accounts of a double murder of a mother found dead behind her house on the fictional “Rue Morgue,” and her body of her daughter strangled and stuffed up the chimney of the house. The murders occurred in a room on the fourth floor of the house—a room that was locked from the inside. Several witnesses say they heard two voices coming from the room at the time of the murders—one speaking French, the other variously described as Italian, Spanish, Russian, English—whatever language the witness was unfamiliar with. When an innocent man is arrested for the crime, Dupin steps in to solve the mystery. I won’t go into the reasoning that allows Dupin to finds the answer—that would be a spoiler!
https://marcosgerente.com.br/ttaeldo0m One last story I’d like to mention just because it represents a side of Poe not often considered: his sense of humor. Obviously if all one thinks of are the Gothic tales the mention of Poe’s comic side seems absurd. But consider: Poe loved puzzles and games, as I alluded to previously with his cryptography challenge. There was certainly a sense of fun in Poe, and this sense comes out in several of the lesser-known stories in his published works. One such tale is entitled “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” which Poe subtitled “A Moral Tale.” Consistent with his aesthetic principle of “the heresy of the didactic” and of methodical, logical reasoning, the story is a rather light-hearted spoof of the idea that a story ought to have a moral, as well as a comic send-up of transcendentalists, whose writings Poe disliked for their unwavering optimism, their undisciplined reasoning, and what he saw as their derivative work (he thought Emerson simply an echo of Thomas Carlyle).
Buy Valium India Online In this tale, the narrator (framed as the author himself), upset about the critics who say he never wrote a moral tale, proceeds to write one concerning his friend, Toby Dammit, who among other faults has caught the “disease” of transcendentalism. Toby’s greatest fault is in making boldly rhetorical bets, during which he will often state “I’ll bet the devil my head.” One day, the narrator and Toby are walking when they come to a covered bridge which they proceed to cross. At the end of the bridge is turnstile, and when they get to it Toby says he’ll bet the devil his head that he can leap over it. There is a little old man standing by who says he’d like to see Dammit try. Toby gets a running start, leaps over the turnstile, but suddenly is stopped in mid-air and falls to the ground. The old man picks up something and leaves, and when he narrator examines his friend, he notes that the head is gone: “what might be termed,” he adds, “a serious injury.” Looking up, he notices there was a sharp iron bar above the turnstile that must have severed Dammit’s neck. The narrator calls in the homeopathists (the first homeopathic institute appeared in America in 1835, and Poe apparently scoffs here at the unscientific basis of this new craze), but they are unsuccessful and the patient dies. The narrator tries to get the transcendentalists to pay for Toby’s funeral, but they refuse, presumably because they do not recognize the existence of evil. So the narrator has Toby’s body dug up and sold for dog meat. The moral, Poe says, is summed up in the story’s title.
go site Some might rue the fact that Poe wrote too few comic tales, or too few detective stories. But most would agree that his tales of the macabre remain stories that grab us simply because of their effect, and are just fine with Poe’s lack of didacticism. After all, how many entertaining stories did Emerson write?