Edgar Allan Poe

A Short Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Annabel Lee’

by

After ‘The Raven’, which is undoubtedly Poe’s most popular poem, ‘Annabel Lee’ is perhaps his next best-known and admired. ‘Annabel Lee’ has been called ‘the simplest and sweetest of [Edgar Allan Poe’s] ballads’ (by Poe’s biographer, George Edward Woodberry), but how ‘simple’ the poem is remains to be seen.

Is it a ballad, or narrative poem, or is it a lyric? Before we grapple with some of these questions and offer some words of analysis, here’s a reminder of the text of the poem ‘Annabel Lee’.

Read more

A Short Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Eldorado’

by

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Eldorado’, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), was published in the Flag of Our Union in Boston in April 1849, just six months before Poe’s death. In ‘Eldorado’, a knight goes in search of Eldorado, that golden paradise. But the knight grows old without ever finding that fabled city. And then he meets a shade which tells him where he can find Eldorado. Before we offer some words of analysis, here’s the text of the poem.

Read more

A Short Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death’

by

On Tuesday, we put together a brief plot summary of ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, Edgar Allan Poe’s short but terrifying story about a prince who retreats to his castellated abbey with a thousand of his courtiers, to avoid the horrific and fast-acting plague known as the ‘Red Death’. You can read Poe’s story here. Now, it’s time for some words of analysis concerning this intriguing story which, like many of Poe’s best stories, seems to work on several levels.

First, there is the literary precedent for the basis of Poe’s story: the Italian writer Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century work The Decameron is about a group of noblemen and noblewomen who retreat to an abbey to flee the plague, or Black Death. All that’s changed in Poe’s basic setup is the colour of the plague, to the fictional ‘Red Death’. Interestingly,

Read more

‘The Masque of the Red Death’: A Summary of Poe’s Short Story

by

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Among Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous tales, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ is one of the shortest. In just a few pages, Poe paints a powerful picture of a luxurious masked ball, which is then interrupted and ultimately destroyed by the presence of a mysterious figure. You can read ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ here before proceeding to our summary of the story below.

Read more