Reviews for Readings on "Edgar Allan Poe"

The average rating for Readings on "Edgar Allan Poe" based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-01-28 00:00:00 Craig Wallace An excellent collection of various articles and essays on Poe. Chapter 1: Edgar Allan Poe: An Evaluation 1. An American Genius, Charles Baudelaire - 3 Stars. The title of the essay says it all. 2. Poe Is a Terrible Poet, Aldous Huxley - 2 Stars. Huxley was the author of Brave New World He dismissed Poe as being 'vulgar.' Huxley wrote that Poe's writing "falls into vulgarity" by being "too poetical"�the equivalent of wearing a diamond ring on every finger. (57) Well as the saying goes "to each his own," but I personally like diamonds. You might remember what Marilyn Monroe sang about diamonds in that song Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend 3. Poe Invented the Modern Detective Story, Celestin Pierre Cambiaire - 4.5 Stars. An excerpt from his dissertation that justifies Poe as progenitor of the detective genre. 4. Poe Heavily Influenced Other Writers, Jeffrey Meyers - 4 Stars. Shows how Poe influenced Melville, Fitzgerald, Nabokov and Tom Wolfe. I really liked Meyer's summation which mirrors my own feelings. "Poe has overcome his notorious reputation (which today makes him interesting rather than repulsive), survived the vicissitudes of art over the past hundred and fifty years and remained contemporary because he has always appealed to basic human feelings and expressed universal themes common to all men in all languages, dreams, love, loss; grief, mourning, alienation; terror, revenge, murder; insanity, disease and death." (56) 5. Poe's Theatricality Is Essential to His Work, W. H. Auden -4 Stars. Tells us that Poe's characters are written in operatic dimensions and not of the real world in which case they would seem ludicrous. 6. Poe's Genius Was in Creating a Self and a Style, N. Bryllion Fagin - 3 Stars. Fagin puts forth the idea that Poe created melodrama in portraying his life to the public as a sad romantic and gloomy figure. In essence Poe was a brilliant actor as well as a writer. The self he showed society was a part he set up on the world stage for him to play. Interesting concept but I do feel there is enough evidence to suggest that Poe did suffer bipolar disorder and that his melancholy was undoubtedly real. Although in his more sober and level moments it wouldn't suprise me at all if he overplayed his gloomy side to sell the gothic romance angle of his writings. 7. Poe as Literary Critic, Edd Winfield Parks - 3.5 Stars. Parks's essay points out Poe could be a scathing critic with the critiques of his colleagues. He became known as the "Tomahawk critic " He devised theories for the form and matter of the poem and short story and judged others on this criteria. Parks sums up his essay by stating " . . . he [Poe] set the highest value on literary types more suitable for magazines than for books. More than any other critic, Poe developed a tenable aesthetic for a magazine age." (80) Chapter 2: Poe's Themes 1. Symbolism in Poe's Tales, Georges Zayed - 4.5 Stars. This is an essay that is an excerpt from Zayed's book The Genius of Edgar Allan Poe. In the use of symbolism Poe was a master craftsman in all his stories. Zayed points out the use of symbolism " . . . demonstrated positively that Poe's stories, as a whole, are not mere tales designed to entertain the reader; they are narratives rich in learning which oblige us to reflect upon them in order to extract the 'substantive marrow.' As he [Poe] put it himself, the meaning lies not on the surface of the tale-or of the poem-but below it, as a dark undercurrent. This symbolism permitted him to confer a human significance upon his themes and to make them representative of our aspirations and anguishes." (90-91) 2.Death in Poe's Writings, J. Gerald Kennedy - 4.5 Stars Kennedy sums his thoughts up quite well when he states: "Here we find whose [Poe's] entire oeuvre is marked by a compulsive interest in the dimensionality of death; its physical signs its phenomenology of dying, the death bed scene, the appearance of the corpse, the effects of decomposition, the details of burial, the danger of premature interment, the reanimation of the dead, the lure of tombs and cemeteries, the nature of morning and loss, the experience of dread, the compulsion to inflict upon another, and the perverse desire to seek one's own death." (92) 3. Fear as a Theme in Poe's Work, Michael L. Burduck - 4 Stars. In the beginning paragraph of this essay Burduck tells us that "Fear plays a key role in Poe's tales. Most of the people in the Gothic pieces find themselves slaves of this emotion. Skilled craftsman and artist as he is, Poe realizes that he must also lure his readers into a web of fear. His use of fear, then, must be directed at both artistically created figures and the readers who will either leave the book or remain spellbound by the story and follow it eagerly toward its conclusion. Poe relies on what Stephen King in Danse Macabre (1981) calls 'phobic pressure points.' common to all members of a particular society, such points make them react to the horrors presented in a tale or novel. The good horror writer will exploit these inner fears as he strives to terrorize his readers. Attempting to reach as large an audience as possible, Poe decided to use the fears present in the nineteenth-century mind as the means of luring his readers into his fictive world." (101) There is little doubt in most readers minds that Edgar Allan Poe set the bar for generating fear for future writers to emulate in their own stories. 4. Poe's Use of Allegory, Richard Wilbur - 4.5 Stars. Wilbur postulates ". . . that the scenes and situations of Poe's tales are always concrete representations of states of mind. If we bear in mind Poe's fundamental plot-the effort of the poetical soul to escape all consciousness of the world in dream-we soon recognize the significance of certain scenic or situational motifs which turn up in story after story. The most important of these recurrent motifs is enclosure or circumscription; perhaps the latter term is preferable, because it is Poe's own word, and because Poe's enclosures are so often more or less circular in form." (111) Poe's use of allegory is masterful in his use of double entendre to deliver a subtle undercurrent of meaning in his tales and prose poems. This is really a no brainer to understand that Poe used allegory as a major ingredient in his writing and the examples Wilbur uses from different tales backs his theory up remarkably well. 5. Humor in Poe's Tales, James H. Justus - 5 Stars "Poe is viewed as morbid and excessively ornate in his writing, many readers fail to understand that Poe is being humorous." (120) Mr. Justus shows through some of Poe's tales what an ingenious satiric sense of humor he had. "For a writer who described himself as 'not of the merry mood', Poe produced a remarkable amount of 'unserious' fiction. . . . G. R. Thompson has argued persuasively that even the Gothic fiction that we normally read as straight contains more than trace elements of the comic. In the last decade scholars have unearthed a writer of monumental duplicity that the dominant image of Poe the exploiter of terror and sensation may eventually be replaced by that of the witty self-parodist and burlesque comedian." (128) 6. Poe's Use of Horror, Edward H. Davidson - 4 Stars This selection was excerpted from Davidson's book Poe: A Critical Study. "Davidson believes that by using horror, Poe was able to inquire into 'special states of mind. [Horror] was a means to externalize, in vivid physical objects, inner states of being, and a method of portraying the mind's awareness of itself.' " (128) Chapter 3: A Critical Selection 1. Poe Explains The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe- 5 Stars A copy of Poe's essay on The Philosophy of Composition. "In the essay The Philosophy of Composition, Poe proports to demonstrate how he wrote The Raven and how it should be read, as well. He claimed that many people would stop him and ask, 'Why, Mr. Poe, how did you write the The Raven?' This [essay] was his answer. Whatever the reason for its creation, the work is a vital text in understanding Poe criticism. It contains a through analysis of his creative process, which has led to significant debate regarding the accuracy of Poe's description of his compositional process. . . . He identifies issues that determine the success or failure of a poem, with emphasis upon length, the effect to be conveyed, and the province, beauty in this case, Poe asserts, 'there is a distinct limit of one sitting.' Although he allows that a novel may require more time, the limit should never be exceeded in a poem. The choice of effect is a second consideration, and Poe argues that the poet should determine in advance the effect he wishes to create. For Poe the province of the poem should be 'Beauty,' 'because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring from direct causes.' He then applies his observation to the The Raven to provide examples of his theory. It is this very detailed and carefully delineated discussion that created debate as to how honest Poe was in assessing his writing of The Raven. Critics who doubted the premise expressed doubt that the creative process could be so straight-forward and logical." Sova, Dawn B. (2001). Edgar Allan Poe, A to Z : the essential reference to his life and work. New York: Checkmark Books. (185-186) 2. "The Pit and the Pendulum": A Freudian Interpretation, Marie Bonaparte - 3.5 Stars This is an abbreviated and much chopped up version of Bonaparte's chapter The Pit and the Pendulum from her book The life and works of Edgar Allan Poe : a psycho-analytic interpretation which the unabridged version is definitely worth 5 Stars. Even though I do not buy her theories hook, line and sinker she presents them with very plausible interpretations. ". . . In light of Freud's theories, Bonaparte argues that the plot of this story is an allegory of a son's fear of being annihilated by his father. Bonaparte concludes the Poe was unconsciously motivated to write many of his stories." (148) 3. "Ligeia": Analyzing Poe's Love Stories, D. H. Lawrence - 3 Stars "Reviewing Poe's story Ligeia Lawrence concludes that Poe was obsessed with becoming 'one' with his female characters, Poe's unconscious motivations, Lawrence contemplates, may have marred his tales." (152) Let me give a quote from Lawrence's essay in which he states that Poe basically killed his wife with love. "It is love that causes the neuroticism of the day. It is love that causes the prime cause of tuberculosis." (153) What the heck was this guy on? Yeah, Yeah I know he was a famous writer and poet Lady Chatterley's Lover but boy was he way off about Poe's being responsible about Virginia Poe's cause of catching TB. "Tuberculosis is caused by a bacterium known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. (The related bacteria Mycobacterium bovis and Mycobacterium africanum can also cause tuberculosis.) The body's response to active TB infection produces inflammation that can damage the lungs. Areas affected by active TB gradually fill with scar tissue. Tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious or infectious disease. It is spread from person-to-person. A person is often infected by inhaling the germs. These germs have been sprayed into the air by someone with the active disease who coughs. [spread by air droplets]." Lawrence felt that Poe's writing style was "mechanical" which I as a reader and admirer of Poe wholeheartedly disagree. 4. The Psychology of The Tell-Tale Heart, E. Arthur Robinson - 4 Stars E. Arthur Robinson, an English professor at the University of Rhode Island, describes the story this way: �Poe�s The Tell-Tale Heart consists of a monologue in which an accused murderer protests his sanity rather than his innocence . . . the tone is ironic in that his protestation of sanity produces an opposite effect upon the reader� (160) 5. The Fall of the House of Usher": An Allegory of the Artist, Daniel Hoffman - 5 Stars This article is excerpted from Daniel Hoffman's book Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. "Hoffman defines what he believes are Poe's themes in The Fall of the House of Usher, including incest, murder, and madness. He concludes that the tale is an allegory about the artist and his creation." (169)

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-29 00:00:00 Me Lonley I read this book mostly while enjoying some food at a local sports bar, and the book managed to spark a conversation with an entrepreneur who was impressed to see someone who was reading a more serious work (although this is fairly light reading for me) while in public, which sparked a larger and more interesting and not particularly relevant conversation to this book.� At any rate, the fact that someone could view the reading of a fairly introductory series of essays on literary criticism of Jane Austen as a serious book perhaps is a sign of the cultural cachet that literary criticism has in our contemporary world, as well as the general respect given to Jane Austen as a serious writer [1].� There is some irony in this, of course, and the book explores the general lack of seriousness that Austen's work received in the nineteenth century, although the more recent rise of textual criticism and her critical reappraisal as a great writer within the Western literary canon has followed the tenor of those early appreciative essays, something that this book demonstrates with a thoughtful selection of critical essays that demonstrate Austen's skill and her deliberate choice of limitations to write about what she knew best. This book of essays, which covers about 200 pages of material, seeks to cover Austen's career in full and give an appreciation of all of her major writings and also refer to a few of her more minor ones as well.� The book begins with an introduction to the series that is repeated from previous volumes and a short biography of Austen that is repeated from the previous book I read about readings on Pride & Prejudice.� After this the book contains six chapters with multiple essays apiece.� The first chapter contains three essays that look at the relationship of Jane Austen with her times and her critics as well as Austen's women and how they deal with a conservative society (1).� After this there are three essays that look at some of the themes in Austen's novels, like sex and social life, humor, and her detached approach of social criticism (2).� Then there are two essays that look at the stylistic devices of her novels that create irony and show her appreciation of games (3).� Three essays pay attention to Jane Austen's early novels by showing satire and realism in Northanger Abbey as well as the lack of irony and the importance of minor characters and theme in Sense & Sensibility (4).� Four essays look at the best qualities, clashes and compromises, sigificance of pictures, and the relationship between manners and morals in Pride & Prejudice (5).� The last chapter contains five essays that look at Emma's portraits of people and a heroine with faults, the portrayal of a quiet, complex love in Mansfield Park, and Austen's new kind of novel with the Cinderella theme in Persuasion, all dealing with Austen's late novels. What can someone expect to get out of a work like this?� This work is aimed at teens and young adults who are becoming familiar with textual criticism and who like the works of Jane Austen.� As this happens to be a fairly large group of people, this book has many potential readers, at least.� The organization of the book into a variety of short and interesting and thought-provoking essays does make this book one that is likely to fulfill its purposes of encouraging serious thought on the writings of Jane Austen and providing some idea of what kind of insights one can gain from novels through taking the style and approach of an author seriously.� There are many writers, of course, where this sort of literary criticism can be useful, and Jane Austen's works as a whole reward deep reading because the narrowness of the world she portrays almost forces a reader to seek additional depth as a way of understanding how it was that Austen could return to the same issues and situations over and over again.� Likewise, this book demonstrates that it is easy to return to Austen again and again and again as well. [1] See, for example: