Poe's works

Fiction. Poe's most popular tales arc filled with the strange, the bizarre, and the terrible. He insisted that these talcs of terror were expressions of psychological and moral realities, rather than sensation for its own sake. Many of Poe's stories subtly present the theme of moral responsibility.

For example, «The Fall of the House of Usher», perhaps Poe's best story, concerns the twins Roderick and Madeline Usher. When Madeline falls into a trance, Roderick buries her in a deep vault,
thinking she is dead. He represents the overrefined intellect and his twin sister the suppressed vital self. In this story and others, such as «Morella» and «Ligeia», Рое means that people cannot separate vital self from intellect without being destroyed. In «William Wil­son», the hero, by killing his double, his conscience, destroys him­self.

In «The Tell-Tale Heart», «The Black Cat», and «The Imp of the Perverse», the narrator has a compulsion to kill and later to confess his murder. «The Cask of Amontillado» and «Hop-Frog» deal with murder as revenge. Рое wrote of the inhumanity of peo­ple in «The Pit and the Pendulum», the dark and silent indifference of the universe in «Shadow» and «Silence», and the triumph of time and death over human folly and pride in «The Masque of the Red Death».

Poe's character C. Auguste Dupin, a private detective, became the model for many later fictional detectives. Dupin appeared in three stories. «The Purloined Letter» is a suspenseful story noted for its characterizations and its economy of plot and style. In «The Murders in the Rue Morgue» and «The Mystery of Marie Roget», Dupin's imagination as well as his powers of careful observation enable him to solve the crimes.

Poe's longest work of fiction is the novelette «The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Рут» (1838). The work represents an experiment in fiction about the sea. Its earliest chapters recount a series of sea adventures in the factual style of the English author Daniel Defoe. However, the novelette soon develops into a symbolic voyage of the self in a fantastic world of terror and wonder.

Poetry. Despite its theatrical effects and stylistic flaws, «The Raven» is Poe's best-known poem and one of the most famous works in American literature. The theme of «The Raven» — the narrator's grief over the loss of an ideal love-recurs in other of Poe's works. This poem has a dramatic intensity that makes the hypnotic monotony of rhythm and tone a realistic reflection of the speaker's slate of mind.

«To Helen», «Ulalume», and «For Annie» also dramatize deep-felt loyalty to a woman who symbolizes an ideal, spiritual value. These poems are noted for their subtle use of rhyme, rhythm, symbols, and psychology. They show Poe's ability to use rhythmic and tonal qualities that reinforce ideas and sub­conscious feelings.

In «The Valley of Unrest» and «Sonnet — To Scicnce», Рое described people's loss of innocence and sense of wonder and beau­ty. In «Lenore», «Annabel Lee», and «Eldorado», Рое implies that only love, beauty, or aspiration can save people from despair.

Essays and criticism. Poe's critical thought was influenced by his career as a magazine journalist. He felt the magazine article to be the literary form most responsive to the need for «the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused». From 1844 to 1849, Рое published a number of jottings and short essays in various jour­nals. These «Marginalia», as well as scattered reviews and letters, contain some of Poe's basic ideas on the nature of people, society, democracy, reform, and literature. His long essay «Eureka» (1848) tries to explain the riddle of the universe — its origin, expansion, and uhimate destiny. This work is a primary source tor understand­ing his poetic view of matter, spirit, space, and the interrelationship of God and people.

«The Poetic Principle», first a lecture and then an essay pub­lished in 1850, best slates Poe's ideas of poctiy. His reviews of Hawthorne's «Twice-Told Tales» express Poe's finest insights into the nature of originality, allegory, and the short story.

Рос believed that the ideal critic should be objective, analytical, and, if necessary, unhesitatingly negative. He insisted that criticism should deal with qualities of beauty, not with history, biography, or philosophy. By the «Didactic Heresy», Рое meant that beauty was incompatible with any deliberate moralizing or instruction. He be­lieved that truth and fact should have only a hidden or submerged place in a poem, indirectly suggested rather than explicitly stated. In «The Philosophy of Composition», in order to offset the notion that all poetry is composed by pure inspiration, a «species of fine frenzy», Рое exaggerated the role of the poets conscious control of the creative process.