Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald, course: North American Short Stories, language: English, abstract: Edgar Allan Poe's name is related to the American short story like none other in the history of American Literature. While Washington Irving is commonly seen as the creator of the short story, Edgar Allan Poe is regarded as the first to have realised its potential and the first to have created an aesthetical theory of the short story. This theory though, especially Poe's depiction of the skilful artist and his/her perfect way of creating art, gave rise to many heated discussions, which strongly shaped the image of Poe. Thus he is likely to be seen as the cold-blooded, emotionally unaffected author who creates art on demand, contriving compositions with an unparalleled precision and brilliancy. Many critics therefore rather based their criticism on the life and the person of Edgar Allan Poe, instead of his contributions to the development of literature. This work strictly wants to avoid to draw any populist parallels between the author Poe and the person Poe. The first part of this term paper therefore deals with Poe's literary theory as such. I will focus mainly on Poe's major concerns of effect and the genres of poetry and prose. Furthermore I will pose the question, what is the actual matter of Poe's theory, is it a profound concept or just a vague and hasty response to Emerson's "The Poet", with the mere purpose of provoking his contemporaries and thus to get attention? Since the formulation of a theory always raises the question of its applicability, especially on the part of its originator, the second part will scrutinise to what extent Edgar Allan Poe stuck to his own principles. Is there a discrepancy between theory and practice in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and if so how can this be explained? His short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" will provide th

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald, course: North American Short Stories, language: English, abstract: Edgar Allan Poe’s name is related to the American short story like none other in the history of American Literature. While Washington Irving is commonly seen as the creator of the short story, Edgar Allan Poe is regarded as the first to have realised its potential and the first to have created an aesthetical theory of the short story. This theory though, especially Poe’s depiction of the skilful artist and his/her perfect way of creating art, gave rise to many heated discussions, which strongly shaped the image of Poe. Thus he is likely to be seen as the cold-blooded, emotionally unaffected author who creates art on demand, contriving compositions with an unparalleled precision and brilliancy. Many critics therefore rather based their criticism on the life and the person of Edgar Allan Poe, instead of his contributions to the development of literature. This work strictly wants to avoid to draw any populist parallels between the author Poe and the person Poe. The first part of this term paper therefore deals with Poe’s literary theory as such. I will focus mainly on Poe’s major concerns of effect and the genres of poetry and prose. Furthermore I will pose the question, what is the actual matter of Poe’s theory, is it a profound concept or just a vague and hasty response to Emerson’s “The Poet”, with the mere purpose of provoking his contemporaries and thus to get attention? Since the formulation of a theory always raises the question of its applicability, especially on the part of its originator, the second part will scrutinise to what extent Edgar Allan Poe stuck to his own principles. Is there a discrepancy between theory and practice in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and if so how can this be explained? His short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” will provide the paradigm, as it is in general, and even by Poe himself, considered one of his masterpieces. It is not the intention of said scrutiny to develop an overall-interpretation of the story, furthermore, the presented conclusions, drawn from the story’s symbolism, do not claim exclusiveness, they rather present possible ways of reading next to which other perspectives can coexist with just the same plausibility.

Essential anthology of Poe's critical works reviews works by Dickens, Hawthorne, many others. Includes Theory of Poetry ("The Philosophy of Composition," "The Rationale of Verse," "The Poetic Principle"). Introduction.

Essential anthology of Poe's critical works reviews works by Dickens, Hawthorne, many others. Includes Theory of Poetry ("The Philosophy of Composition," "The Rationale of Verse," "The Poetic Principle"). Introduction.

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 89.3, D'Youville College, language: English, abstract: A short analysis of the literary elements contained in Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher.

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2011 im Fachbereich Anglistik - Literatur, Note: 1,6, Universität Konstanz, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous American authors; however, he is “the most controversial” . Not only his works fueled the debate on him, but also his almost scandalous biography, which includes alcohol, drugs, financial problems, a marriage with his only 13-year-old cousin and a strange personality, that gave him a reputation of a grumpy, even violent person. Nevertheless he had a great influence on American literature and the modern short story. The attention of this essay will be focused on Poe's means and methods of manipulating the reader with the effect of horror and fear. This shall be demonstrated on the example of “The Fall of the House of Usher”. The story was written in spring or summer of 1839 in Philadelphia. It was published in September of that year in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, of which Poe was assistant editor. A collection of 25 stories named “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque”, including Usher, came out in December. Thomas Woodson describes Usher as “Succession of futile efforts to establish himself, to define a solid identity for posterity, for his contemporaries, and for himself. It is of course typical for him that he should try to construct his own literary personality by dramatizing the fall of a house and of a family.”

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Kassel, course: Hauptseminar "Antebellum in American Short Fiction", 13 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: "A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale, ... there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design..." Edgar Allan Poe, who was praised as given the title of "one of the greatest journalistic critic of his time" by literary critics, stressed unity, totality, and prescribed design. And "The Fall of the House of Usher", is proved to be a very successful story to demonstrate Poe's adherence of his own principle of constructiveness and his structural art. The intention of this research paper is, therefore, to examine how Poe emphasized unity of effect in theory and how it is fulfilled in practice especially in one of his best-known stories. In a close reading of "Usher", the author is above all impressed by the melancholic tone that Poe obviously intends to raise at the very beginning of this story. For this reason, how Poe implements his technique by making tone obedient to the unity of effect will be first of all examined in this paper. Obviously, tone should be identified with atmosphere. According to Poe, unity of setting is another important requirement for achieving the unity of effect in prose writing, which will be studied in the second section. If, as critics maintain, characters are skilfully adapted to the circumstances which surround them are a general device in Poe's tales, it is in "Usher" in particular. The third section intends to show how characters are made to fit into the desolate house and dreary environment to achieve the desired effect in this tale. Finally, with the ideal arrangement of effective tone, setting, characters, Poe gains his battlefield to carry out unity of effect in plot in "Usher". In order to attain the unity of plot in lit