Edgar Allan Poe and His Works George Bernard Shaw once claimed: "America produced two great writers—Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain." up.Most of his life was spent in the adversity of wrestling with fate.In early October 1849, Poe was in a state of delirium for several days, and when he was dying, he cried out "God bless me!"This cry condensed his grief and indignation for the rough half of his life. Poe lived in poverty all his life, not only prepared for hard work and suffering, but also suffered from the eyes of the world, and was constantly slandered by open guns and dark arrows.Regardless of whether he was alive or after his death, he has not received due attention in China, and his evaluation from the outside world is also mixed.In the minds of those who knew him, he was an outstanding poet and a genius short story writer; but in the eyes of those who had prejudices against his works, personality and private life, he was a rebellious and lunatic, even a drunkard and junkie.In fact, according to a large amount of data, he is always kind and sincere to those he loves; only to those he hates, he is arrogant and does not give an inch.In any case, his important position in the history of American literature is indisputable, and his contribution to American literature and even world literature cannot be denied.

To study American literature, it is necessary to understand the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and to understand his works, one should first understand his life. Edgar Allan Poe was born on the 19th day of 1809 in a family of traveling artists in Boston.Her mother was originally from England, and her name was Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins. She was talented, good at singing and dancing, and had acted in many Shakespearean heroines, such as Ophelia and Juliet.His father was originally from Ireland, and his name was David Poe. He was the son of a small businessman in Baltimore. He originally studied law. After falling in love with Elizabeth, he switched to acting.They had three children, Edgar being the second son, and the youngest a girl.In order to earn money to support her family, Elizabeth performed on stage less than half a month after giving birth to Edgar.David is mediocre and incompetent, and his acting is not popular. The family of five has lived a life of ups and downs for a long time, mentally depressed, so he drank alcohol, and one day he got drunk and quarreled with his wife. He left his wife and children and ran away in anger. one said he died in New York when Poe was one year old.Elizabeth alone dragged three young children to wander around with the troupe.In 1811, she fell ill from overwork and fell ill, and died a sad and long life.Fortunately, the three orphans were adopted by kind people.When Edgar was only three years old, he was adopted by his godfather, John Allen, a wealthy tobacco exporter in Richmond, and changed his surname to Ai Po.But he didn't like the surname very much, and he often signed it as Edgar E. Poe when he was an adult.

As a child, he lived in Richmond with his adoptive father.At the age of six, the family moved to England.Spends first few months in Scotland, then has been living in London, learning the classics at a boarding school run by Mrs Dubeau and then at a private school run by Father Bransby in Stoke Newington deep foundation.Five years later, the Ellens returned to Richmond, and Poe returned to the local school.Fortunately, he is intelligent by nature, has a strong memory for his extensive knowledge, has excellent academic performance, and is also good at sports, such as fencing, horse riding, and swimming.He is very interested in Latin and French, and likes to dabble in history, physics, biology and astronomy. He is proficient in mathematics, chemistry and medicine. He loves the works of Byron, Shelley, Keats, Moore, Coleridge and other great poets. He even learned to write poetry in Latin.It can be said to be a wizard.

At home, only his adoptive mother still loves and cares for him to some extent, while his adoptive father is a practical businessman, dignified, unsmiling, and knows nothing about music and poetry. Of course, he cannot understand the psychology of a young man who is good at fantasy and needs warmth. The relationship between father and son has always been at odds.He also hopes to get the sympathy and love of others.When she was in middle school, she fell in love with the mother of a playmate, Jane Steen Stanard, and she died of illness not long after.When he was sad, he wrote a mourning poem: "To Helen", which has been handed down to this day.

At the age of seventeen, Poe entered the University of Virginia, thus ending his ignorant youth.The adoptive father was very harsh to him, and only gave him a little living expenses.The education he received since he was a child made him think of himself as a southern aristocrat, and the group he made friends with in college were all rich kids.He has been involved in bad habits, not only owed a whole body of gambling debts, but also addicted to alcoholism.His adoptive father blamed him for being careless in making friends and misconduct, and insisted that he drop out of school.Returning to Richmond before completing a year of college, he was further agitated when he discovered that his boyhood sweetheart, Sarah Amira Roeste, was planning to marry someone else.It turned out that the two had been in love for a long time and had secretly committed themselves to life. After Po went to university, the two kept exchanging love letters, but they were both detained by their adoptive father. A misunderstanding occurred between the two sides, which led to tragedy.At this time, the adoptive father had several mistresses and children outside. He couldn't stay at home any longer, so he resolutely left and went to Boston to make a living.

In Boston, with the help of the printer Calvin Thomas, he published his first thin collection of poems, entitled The Poems of Tamerlan, signed by Bostonian.These poems are all imitations of Byron and Moore. The format is very small, and the price is 12.5 cents. Unfortunately, no one cares about them. The young poet was penniless and had no relatives, so he had to enlist in the army under the pseudonym Edgar Panlay.Apparently he felt ashamed of this ordinary military experience, so he always pretended that he was going abroad to participate in the Greek War of Independence during this period, and even went to Russia.He was actually stationed domestically in South Carolina and Virginia.A year and a half later he was promoted to sergeant major.In 1829, his adoptive mother died, and he asked for leave to go home for the funeral, and then he was discharged from the army.Arrived in Baltimore, managed to publish his second collection of poems, The Star, Little Poems of Tamerlan.He lived for a while at the house of his aunt, Mrs. Maria Cream, with her aunt's seven-year-old girl Virginia and Edgar's elder brother William, who later died of tuberculosis.The little sister, Roseanne, was adopted by a family in Richmond when she was a baby. She looks thin and pathetic, with inferior intelligence.What happened to the family was tragic.

At the age of 21, his adoptive father put forward a condition for him to continue to support his life: he should go to West Point Military Academy for five years.He agreed.Because he is also willing to study military science, his grades are outstanding after enrollment.It's just that he couldn't bear the strict training life in the military academy, and he often missed classes and absenteeism. He was dealt with by the military law and was expelled from school for dereliction of duty.It was the early spring of 1831.He went to New York again, found a local bookstore and published his third collection of poems: "The Poems of Edgar Poe".In 1833, he returned to Baltimore and won the first prize of $100 for the short story of Baltimore's "Saturday Traveler" with "Manuscript in a Bottle".The prize saved his life and put him on the official path to literature.

In March 1834, his adoptive father died, and the huge family property was divided up among several legitimate children.He came to Richmond alone without a penny, and became an assistant editor of the Southern Literary Courier.His life was lonely and desolate, and his mood was depressed. He had no choice but to use alcohol to relieve his boredom. At one point, he even wanted to commit suicide.Fortunately, Mrs. Cream and her daughter came to live with him later.On September 22, 1835, he married his cousin Virginia, who had just turned thirteen. The combination of Poe and her caused a lot of discussion in the outside world.There was no doubt that he truly loved her, as was evident from their correspondence.But he always called her "little sister". Maybe he married her just because he wanted to be taken care of by Mrs. Kerim, because he saw in his mother-in-law the maternal love he had been looking for all his life. A caring person who hurts the heat.It is said that Poe's marriage was not happy due to the large age difference between the two parties after marriage, but this is just a guesswork.

He worked in the Southern Literary Courier for nearly a year and a half, and published some novels, poems, and new book reviews written by himself, but all of them were works for the sake of earning a living.In January 1837, he was dissatisfied with his boss and had to resign due to excessive drinking, which damaged his health and affected the editorial work.In February, the family moved to New York, and finally found a publisher for his only novella, "A Tale of Arthur Gordon Peem."It was a thrilling story about a shipwreck at sea, and the book didn't sell when it was published.

In 1838, he moved his family to Philadelphia and found a subsistence job as an article gunner, converting an out-of-print conchology treatise into a textbook for a local publisher.Poe made a copy of the text, copying large sections of some chapters.This was not the only time in Poe's literary career that some of his poetic theories were copied from Coleridge's, even without changing the words.However, Poe hated other people's plagiarism. Once he even criticized Longfellow for being a plagiarist. It can be seen that Poe's gentle and sweeping behavior is also against his original intention.

Soon, Poe became the assistant editor of "Gentlemen's Magazine". "The Collapse of Usher House" and "William Wilson" were published successively in this journal.Less than a year later, he resigned due to disagreements with editor-in-chief Bourton.Found a publisher in Philadelphia to publish a two-volume collection of his short stories, titled: "Strange Stories", and paid only a few gifts for friends. In 1841, he became the editor of "Graeme's Magazine" and published his mystery novel "The Murder in Rue Mauger".The publication of this article marked the birth of detective novels. Then, he published "The Last Life at the Bottom of the Great Vortex", "The Mask of the Red Death" and some important literary theories. Perhaps this period was the most proud of his life. Sales of Graham's Magazine jumped from 8,000 to 40,000 per issue, while the editor's salary remained at $800 a year. In January 1842, when Virginia sang, a blood vessel ruptured, and Poe was in great pain, but he was still able to cooperate vigorously.Masterpieces such as "The Mystery of Marie Roget", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Tell-Tale Heart", and "The Gold Bug" are all works of this period.Later, he persuaded a Philadelphia publishing house to publish a volume of his short legends, which was priced cheaply, printed in very small runs, and as a rule had no sales. At that time, his biggest ambition was to start a publication by himself. He drafted a plan and distributed it widely, but he suffered from no one's support.In April 1844, he went to New York again to lobby and gave the "Sun" a fantasy novel about crossing the Atlantic in a balloon. Soon, Poe rented a log cabin on Bloomingdale Road, now known as Broadway, and settled down.He wrote his famous poem "The Raven" in the wooden house, and published it in the "Evening Mirror" in 1845, which attracted the attention of all circles, and he participated in the work of the newspaper.Soon after, he transferred to the "Broadway Daily". This newly founded newspaper suffered a great loss due to poor sales, and Poe took the opportunity to take over, and the result was a complete failure.Nevertheless, his achievements this year were considerable, publishing a collection of short stories and a volume of poetry anthology entitled "The Raven Collection".It's a pity that he is still destitute. His wife is in urgent need of medical treatment and has no money to extend it. In 1846, his family moved to Fordham Village, a suburb of New York.Both the couple fell ill, and in winter they had no money to buy coal.Virginia slept on a straw bed with no bedding but a white sheet.It was freezing cold, she wrapped her husband's old overcoat, and held a big tortoiseshell cat on her chest to get some warmth.There were newspaper solicitations for Poe when Virginia died silently on January 30, 1847, dying of illness.His heart was broken, his mind became more disturbed, and he continued to hallucinate.Since then, Poe has had little energy to create. He only wrote a prose poem "I Discovered" expounding his cosmology, and two famous poems, one "Uralum" and the other "The Bell". In September 1848, Poe went to Providence to propose to a widow five years his senior, Sarah Helen Whiteman, who was also interested in literature. , from time to time exchange poetry.But the woman's family strongly opposed it, and Poe's pursuit failed. In November, he bought opium and went to Boston to try to commit suicide. Instead of dying, he fell seriously ill.After his recovery he continued his courtship, and Mrs. Whiteman promised to marry him as soon as he quit drinking.Unexpectedly, as the wedding day approached, he listened to the instigation of several young people and got drunk again. Mrs. Whiteman was under pressure from many sides and had to call off the engagement.In anger, Poe vowed that he would never associate with any literary woman in the future.Once upon a time, another married woman, Mrs. Nancy Richmond (Anne), and a New York poetess, Sarah Anna Lewis, were expressed unsuccessfully.Soon, he was giving lectures in Richmond and Norfolk, and unexpectedly met his boyhood sweetheart, Sarah Amira Roest, who had become a wealthy widow.After he lost his spouse, he was very depressed and urgently needed the comfort of the opposite sex, so he proposed to her, and she readily agreed.On September 27, he returned to New York to prepare for his marriage and resolved to quit drinking. Unexpectedly, on October 3rd, he got drunk again and fell down on the streets of Baltimore. He was taken to Washington University Hospital. He was unconscious all the time. Today, at 5 o'clock in the morning on October 7th, this rough life ended.He was later buried in Westminster Abbey Cemetery in Baltimore, accompanied by his beloved wife Virginia, mother-in-law Mrs. Cream and grandfather David Poe. Although Poe died, he did not really rest in peace.Just two days after his death, before his bones were cold, a eulogy signed by Ludwig appeared in the New York Tribune.There was nothing wrong with attacking him viciously, accusing him of being a hopeless drinker, an amoral villain, haughty, narrow-minded, jealous, and irritable.Strange to say, the person who shot the poisonous arrow at Poe was Rufus Griswold, the manuscript custodian appointed by Poe before his death. In the name of smearing the reality, he also edited Poe's letters when he was commissioned to edit the four volumes of Edgar Allan Poe's anthology, and some works were even forged by him.Poe took his works very seriously and revised them repeatedly, but Griswold published Poe's unrevised and erroneous works, and even wrote a biography of Edgar Allan Poe that did not conform to the facts in an authoritative capacity, making Poe All kinds of despicable methods are used to damage Poe's reputation, which will cause irreparable consequences, especially in Britain. For many years, readers have always regarded Griswold as the authoritative author of Poe's works, and they naturally believe in him.Griswold was not alone in besieging Poe.The Richmond reporter John Daniel, who often met with Poe in the summer of 1849, also accused Poe of being eccentric, selfish and immoral. Briggs, who had been with Poe for several months in 1845, said that Poe talked He has no character, he is a despicable villain. Fortunately, there were also some outspoken people who came out to defend Poe's reputation.For example, N. P. Willis said that during the one or two years of his friendship with Poe after 1844, he had always been stable, hardworking, and full of gentlemanly demeanor, and he never saw him domineering and depraved. .Poe's old boss, George Graham, said that Poe was a man with a heart of a child, gentle and gentle, and there was no one more approachable than him.When he sees others being hurt, he always has the courage to stand up for others. He is indeed a gentleman.Even Mrs. Whiteman, who broke up her engagement with Poe, wrote a defense titled "Is Poe a Moral Man?" ", condemning Griswold's first-class shameless slander and fabrication, to set the record straight. Regardless of whether he is called a devil or an angel, when making a judgment on his character and life style, he must not ignore his congenital inheritance and acquired circumstances, especially the damage he suffered physically and mentally in his later years. Take his alcohol addiction as an example. He also knows that drinking too much is harmful to his health, and has vowed several times to give up drinking, but he can't get rid of this temptation. Poe lost his parents when he was young, and was sensitive by nature. He could not get warmth and sense of security since he was a child. In other words, for him, the real world is unbearable, and he can only gallop freely in the land of fantasy with the help of writing and alcohol.On one occasion he complained that his enemies attributed his insanity to his drinking, and not his drinking to his insanity, and shortly before his death he said, "I have often wallowed in I drink, but drinking does not give me the slightest pleasure. I drink, risking life and reputation, and reason, not for pleasure, but to escape painful memories, unbearable solitude, and the imminent Limit." That being said, he is by no means a dreamer, nor is he a true escapist.From his unremitting writing attitude, it shows that he is realistic.From his literary review articles, this is even more proved, because only by keeping a clear mind can he write so many well-organized and thoroughly analyzed works. Among the many works written in his short life, literary criticism is a very important part.In the literary world at that time, except for James Russell Lowell, almost no one could compete with him.Lowell never praised others easily, but praised Poe as "the most knowledgeable, philosophical and fearless critic".The contemporary literary critic Edmund Wilson also said that "Poe's literary criticism is indeed an unprecedented masterpiece in the American literary world".However, it cannot be ignored that when Poe was an editor of newspapers and magazines in his early years, he also wrote a lot of dross in exchange for manuscript fees, so only a small part of the essence has survived. He has always advocated "art for art's sake".His artistic assertion runs through almost all his works, including poems, short stories and essays.In these works, he declared that "the purpose of all art is entertainment, not truth." He believed that "in poetry, only the creation of beauty--beauty beyond the earth is the only legitimate way to cause pleasure. Music is an indispensable ingredient of poetry. It is especially important for poets to strive to express otherworldly beauty. In story writing, the artist may as well strive to produce the effect of thrill, horror and strong emotion. And every work should receive an effect. ". His original essays such as "Philosophy of Writing" (1846), "Principles of Poetry" (1850), reviews of Hawthorne's "Old Tales", reviews of Longfellow, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Tennyson The poems of others, as well as the works commenting on Dickens' "The Old Curio Shop" all show his incisive insights, and are still regarded as a model of literary criticism. He wrote sixty or seventy short stories in his life. Although he only wrote four or five mystery novels, he is universally recognized as the originator of mystery novels.The masterpieces "The Murder in the Rue Mauger", "The Mystery of Marie Roget", "The Stealing Letter" and "The Gold Bug" are all regarded as the pioneers of this kind of novels, which have had a great influence on later generations.The image of the amateur detective Dupin he created in the first three novels can be said to be the predecessor of Sherlock Holmes described by Conan Doyle.According to Howard Haycraft, an expert on detective novels, "This Dupin is also Poe's self-ideal incarnation, because he was very clever since he was a child, and he wanted to show his superiority everywhere, so he wrote Dupin as a man with superhuman intelligence. An ideal person who is observant and predicts things like a god. In order to set off his greatness, he also uses a friend who has infinite admiration for him but is dwarfed by comparison to narrate his deeds. The wrong police detective is used as a comparison. The crime location is generally arranged in a tightly locked dark room; ); and then methodically forcing the criminal to bring him to justice; finally, the hero complacently and eloquently explains the whole process. This has become Poe's mode of writing detective novels." Detective novelists from all over the world are competing to learn from him, and many of these works follow in his footsteps and cannot escape this pattern.Even Detective Cliff in the masterpiece "The Moon Stone" (1868) by the British writer Wilkie Collins, known as the father of detective fiction, was produced under the influence of Poe.