Edgar Allan Poe Resources

[soulmurk]

I have to present Edgar Allan Poe to my American Lit class in a few weeks and I’d like to do as good a job as I can.

Rather than stand in front of the class and merely read and discuss the writing(s) (The Fall of the House of Usher, The Raven, and Anabel Lee), I’d like also to present a good biography of the man himself.

I’ve done some preliminary research and there seems to be a lot of dissension about his life after adolescence. Are there any good resources (preferably websites, but anything) that anyone might be able to recommend me that are trustworthy and reliable?

I chose Poe of all American writers for two reasons, one is that interpreting poetry is a definite weakness of mine and that’s something I’d like to work on, and his style and dark sarcasm suits my personality perhaps best of all writers I know.

It’s been a while since I’ve read either the House of Usher or The Raven, and I’ve never read Anabel Lee, so perhaps as my presentation gets closer I’ll start a new thread about the differing interpretations of those writings, but for now I’m not familiar enough any of them.

Didn’t the Simpsons do a Raven-esque episode at one point? Was it any good, and if it was, does anyone know where I might find it?

[CalMeacham]

An adap[taion of “The Raven” showed up as a segment of one of the Simpson’s “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween episodes. Fun, but don’t look to the Simpsons for info on EAP.
Get thee a copy of The Annotated Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe, for starters.

[soulmurk]

I have an Anthology as required by the course with all of the stories I need cover for my presentation, as well as several others that I have the option of delving into.

I wasn’t looking to the Simpsons for educational purposes, but rather the possible related humor value to break up the monotony of a class discussion about dark poetry.

I’m struggling to come up with a way to engage my classmates, but that’s a whole other issue. First I’d like to find the information I want to cover, and then I’ll figure out how I’m going to present it.

[Anamorphic]

A good place to look on the web for Poe info is The Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore.

The Simpsons retelling of The Raven is actually very well done, and would certainly make an amusing addition to a presentation. It’s from the first seasons Halloween episode (“Treehouse of Horror”), and the entire first season is available on DVD (maybe on VHS as well; I’m not sure).

[Johnny_L.A]

I took a whole semester of Poe in high school. One of the best classes I ever had! (Of course, I’d been a Poe fan since I was eight; so it’s no wonder I enjoyed the class!)

One of the great things about Poe is how carefully he words things. Take The Raven. “Once upon a midnight dreary?” Why midnight? Aside from that it flows well, midnight is the time when supernatural things, by custom, happen. And remember that the narrator was reading books on witchcraft at the time, in an effor to bring back the dead Lenore. The story happens in December. Why? Middle of Winter. Winter is considered a “dead” season.

“Dying ember wroght its ghost upon the floor” Again, images of death.

“Whom the angels name lenore” The angels name her that because she’s with them. What an elegant way to put it!

The stanza with the introduction of the Raven calls it “stately” and styles it a “lord”. Ravens are black ,and black is the traditional colour of the underworld. So the implication is that the Raven is a lord in Hades.

And he perches on a bust of Pallas Athena, goddess of knowledge. The image indicates (at least to the narrator) that this Lord of the Underworld holds some Secret Knowledge.

And so on, and so forth. Sure, you can see “meanings” in virtually any text. But it’s fun to read Poe and find these meanings.

[Tuckerfan]

Lou Reed has just released an album based on the works of Poe Also, The Alan Parsons Project put out a kick ass album based on Poe’s work called Tales of Mystery and Imagination: Edgar Allan Poe. Tell 'em that EAP, was goth before there was goth!

[Johnny_L.A]

I’m still looking for a little bust of Poe.

[soulmurk]

Thanks for the link Anamorphic, that’s a great site! It’s so hard to sort through all the google hits to find the few good sites anymore.

The section on drugs and alcohol seems to be a little biased, but overall it appears to be a great resource and I’m sure I’ll put that bookmark to good use when formulating my presentation.

Between the biography and Johnny L.A.'s enthusiasm in interpretation of The Raven, I’m actually looking forward to this assignment! I hope that if I do start a Poe appreciation/interpretation thread, you’ll all stop back in.

[Johnny_L.A]

I thought of another example of Poe’s use of language. In The Black Cat a murdered woman is sealed behind a wall. After a fire the wall “fell bodily”. In English, this means that the wall fell as a single unit. But there was a body behind it. Brilliant!

I kept the notes from that class for a number of years, and they contained a fairly detailed analysis of the use of language in The Raven and The Black Cat. I wish I still had them!

Poe was a brilliant writer who contributed much to literature, and to American literature in particular. He had a lot of bad breaks in his life. Everyone he loved ended up dying on him. Many of his works reflect his losses. Are they unhealthy brooding? Or are they a way of coming to terms with them? Just as things start to look up, he disappears and dies shortly after he is found. What a tragic character.

[Mephisto]

*Originally posted by soulmurk *
**I hope that if I do start a Poe appreciation/interpretation thread, you’ll all stop back in. **

Well, I’m pretty sure that I would.

In the meantime, in addition to a number of biographies you can probably find at the bookstore or library, you can check out Biography’s “The mystery of Edgar Allan Poe,” a not-half-bad production by Greystone Communications, Inc. for A&E. It’s not quite an hour long, but it’s sure packed with a lot of information. Naturally, the show goes into all his trouble with alcohol, poverty, depression, and assorted other problems, but it also offers some neat info about stuff a lot of people don’t know about, such as his military service and the time he met the president (and tried to sell him magazines :rolleyes: ).

Now, you wouldn’t want to stick this tape into the VCR and force a class to watch it, but it might have a few specific scenes in there that might be interesting to mix in with your Simpsons presentation. And if not, this video is a quick and easy way to pick up a pretty good chunk of knowledge about EAP, though it’s hardly anything very in-depth.

Anyway, if your library has a video section, you’ll find it under the Library of Congress call number PS2631 .M9 1994. If your library doesn’t have the video–or even a video section–they should be able to order it for you without any problem.

Good luck with your project! Have fun . . . I hope you get an A.

[rowrrbazzle]

For comic relief you could play Lord Buckley’s hip version of “The Raven”, which he called “The Bugbird”. Some excerpts from it -

that sweet, square, but swinging maiden whom the fly-chicks tag Lenore

But the solid truth is this cat was napping,
And so cool did you come tapping,
and so like hip you came rapping
rhythm at my pad’s door
that I was scarce sure I dug you.
Here I opened wide the slam, and Jack - I dug the breeze - and nothing more.

Swing hip me to what thy tag is on the night’s Plutonian shore!
Flipped the bug-bird, ‘nevermore’.

[Johnny_L.A]

“Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night’s Plutonian Shore”! Pluto is the god of the underworld. As I mentioned before, he jests that the Raven is a Lord in the Underworld.

Here’s something that drives me nuts: When people recite The Raven they pause at the end of every line as if each line is a complete sentence.

“Once upon a midnight dreary.”
“While I pondered week and weary.”
“Over many a quaint an curious volume of forgotten lore.”

For Poe’s sake, please don’t recite it like that! The Raven isn’t just a poem; it’s a story. A narrative. The lines should flow as if this wretched individual is sitting across from you and telling you his tale of woe.

Another thing that bothers me is that people keep the same tone throughout the reading. In my interpretation, this is wrong. The narrator starts out rather calmly, explaining his feelings in a logical manner. But as the narrative progresses he becomes more agitated. (He does the same thing in The Bells, BTW.) He doesn’t say, “And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting…” There is bitterness and anger in his voice: “And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting! The nerve of that evil demon! I’ve lost the one thing that I love above all, and he sits there and gloats!” And at the end you hear his utter hopelessness. He is bereft, and the Raven is his own personal Tormentor.

The reader should convey a normal conversational tone in the first paragraph and then progress to sadness and loss, to skeptical hope, to amusement as the narrator’s flight of fancy, to surprise and amusement, to speculation, to reverie, to impossible hope, to shock, to anger, and finally to resentment and profound hopelessness. The Raven is a work rich in emotion, and the reader who does not impart emotion into the recitation (while avoiding becoming melodramatic) does it a disservice. I have a record of Vincent Price reciting The Raven. As much as I admired the man, I don’t think he quite “got it” when he did this reading.

One of these days I’d like to film The Raven. Not a story based on it, but the poem itself. I can visualize the costume and the set. I can see how I would direct the actor. I think it would be great.

[soulmurk]

Hey Johnny L.A., you wanna do my presentation for me?

This is all great stuff, I’m taking notes and will look into everyone’s suggestions.

Everyone’s enthusiasm is really getting me pumped about this

[Zoe]

The best source for understanding Poe’s writings is Poe himself. Although his The Philosophy of Composition is lacking in biographical information, it tells much about the thinking behind his work. I highly recommend this essay!

http://www.poedecoder.com/Qrisse/works/philosophy.html

Also, a couple of bits of trivia that you might want to look into:

I believe that he attended West Point and was expelled for a prank that he played.

He was, I believe, the first to write detective stories.

[The_Peyote_Coyote]

Zoe: You’re correct. Poe invented the “Golden Age” form of the detective story,and “The Purloined Letter” remains one of the classics of the genre.

soulmurk: You might tell your class that Poe was one of the first science fiction writers. Check out “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfall” and some of his lesser-known works. They were early sci fi. I would also submit that one of his well-known pieces, “A Descent Into the Maelstrom,” is also science fiction.

Poe was an awesome talent. Not only did he write horror stories so good they’re still being read about 160 years after his death, he was a first-rate poet, invented the modern detective story, wrote science fiction and humor, and earned his daily bread as an editor and a journalist. He was the father of American letters, IMO.

[Tuckerfan]

Oh yeah, you might want to mention that Poe died of rabies! (Kids love cool diseases!) Another nifty CD which has Christopher Walken reading The Raven(!) is Closed on Account of Rabies: Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

[Johnny_L.A]

I believe that he attended West Point and was expelled for a prank that he played.

From here:

At West Point he took high rank in his classes; but in October, 1830, John Allan had married a second time, and Poe, concluding that there was no longer any prospect of succeeding to a fortune, determined with the beginning of the new year to bring about his dismissal from the Academy. He adopted the very effective means of absenting himself from roll calls and from classes, was court-martialled in consequence, and 6 March, 1831, was formally expelled.

From here:

One of West Point’s famous non-graduates was a cadet during Thayer’s tenure. Edgar Allan Poe entered West Point in 1831 after serving for two years as an enlisted soldier at Fort Monroe, Va., reaching the rank of sergeant major. He was dismissed after just a few months for failure to report to classes and formations for several days, despondent over his stepfather’s disinheriting him.

Oh yeah, you might want to mention that Poe died of rabies!

This site supports Tuckerfan’s statement, but it concludes with:

Dr. Mackowiak agrees with Dr. Benitez that rabies was the most likely cause of Poe’s death, based on the available evidence. He adds, though, that after Poe’s death, his doctor went on the lecture circuit and gave varying accounts of the writer’s final days. “The account on which Dr. Benitez based his findings was more consistent with rabies than with anything else, but the definitive cause of Poe’s death will likely remain a mystery,” says Dr. Mackowiak.

So he may or may not have died from rabies. I’ve heard that head injuries can produce at least some of the symptoms that Poe displayed. IIRC there was an election going on, and it was fairly common for people to be “shanghaied” (plied with alcohol or with force) to the polls. IANAdoctor, but it seems possible that Poe had been bludgeoned and suffered a brain injury. Swelling of the brain can cause some nasty symptoms.

The site from which I took the last quote says:

Alcohol withdrawal is also a potential cause of tremors and delirium, and Poe was known to have abused alcohol and opiate drugs. However, the medical records indicate that Poe had abstained from alcohol for six months before his death, and there was no evidence of alcohol use when he was admitted.

But just because there is no evidence of his cessation of abstinance doesn’t rule it out. Plenty of people have used drugs, gone clean, and then overdosed later.

Did Poe die from rabies? From an overdose? From violent withdrawal? From physical violence? I think it remains a mystery.

[The_Peyote_Coyote]

What else, Johnny, would be appropriate for the Master of Horror and the Father of Mystery?

[Mephisto]

Actually, most of this post was about Zoe’s comment about West Point, but I see other Dopers were much quicker on the draw. So much for my long, carefully worded post, with cites and everything. Drat.

Aw well. I still have the very end to offer, for whatever it may be worth:

Another bit of trivia for the OP–Stephen King once complimented EAP by refering to him as the Great American Hack in one of my favorite horror novels, The Shining. I know, it doesn’t sound like such a great thing to be called, but coming from Stephen King and in the context it did, it was, I believe, a compliment.

Regarding Poe’s death: I thought that was still considered a mystery. Personally, I’m rooting for brain congestion.

Actually, the whole website of the page to which I linked looks like it would be useful in doing Poe research.

[soulmurk]

His biographies differ in so many places, it’s really difficult to determine what was real and what was not.

It seems that his relationship with Rufus Wilmot Griswold combined with Poe’s knack for fooling everyone with his own duplicity, and the length of time between his death and anyone interested enough (other than Griswold) to bother with a biography, that a great deal of information has been lost or altered or drawn from faint memories and is now of questionable origin.

The E.A. Poe Society of Baltimore site would suggest that he very rarely and perhaps never abused opium, and was likely not an alcoholic at all. That goes against everything I learned about him previously, but which is correct?

The more I read about him the more I feel I have to read about him. Fascinating stuff, and I haven’t even gotten to his writings yet!