Edgar Allan Poe – Page 4 – Interesting Literature

‘A Dream within a Dream’: A Poem by Edgar Allan Poe

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

How can we separate reality from illusion? What if, to quote from Edgar Allan Poe, ‘All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream’? ‘A Dream within a Dream’ muses on the fragility and fleetingness of everything, and asks whether anything we do has any lasting or real effect. ‘A Dream within a Dream’ by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) is one of Poe’s best-known poems.

‘A Dream within a Dream’ by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;

The Pit and the Pendulum: Edgar Allan Poe and the Short Story

Bound in glorious purple, this new edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales from Oxford World’s Classics reprints some neglected Poe tales among the usual classics

Edgar Allan Poe has a claim to being the originator of the modern short story. Not only has the earliest use of that very term, ‘short story’, been attributed to him, but he stands at the beginning of a long tradition of short fiction which would only take off in British publishing in the closing decades of the nineteenth century and which was only just beginning in America in the 1840s, when Poe put his mark on it. Among the other pioneers of the short story at this time, only Nathaniel Hawthorne comes close to Poe’s achievement.

And what an achievement. With only a modicum of distress I could resign myself to a world without Poe’s poetry, even the much-quoted ‘The Raven’, and he famously never left behind a novel. But his short stories were where he not merely excelled but showed the form itself how it could excel.

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

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) wrote ‘Alone’ when he was still very young – only 21 years of age. The poem remained unpublished until 1875, over a quarter of a century after Poe’s death. The sentiment is, indeed, something that many of us can relate to from our teenage years and youth: feeling all alone and that we are a misfit in the world around us, not just physically but emotionally alone. Here is Poe’s poem, followed by some words of analysis.

A Short Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘To My Mother’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Edgar Allan Poe’s mother died in 1811, when Poe was only two years old. His father had walked out the year before, so Poe became an orphan with his mother’s death. He was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia, and would live with them until he had reached adulthood, although the Allans never formally adopted him. His middle name (really a second surname) was derived from his ‘adopted’ parents. He was probably named Edgar, by the way, after Edgar in King Lear: his (biological) parents were both actors, who were starring in a production of Shakespeare’s play when their son was born. Poe wrote ‘To My Mother’ in 18

To My Mother

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of ‘Mother,’
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you –
You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
In setting my Virginia’s spirit free.

A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Hop-Frog’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Hop-Frog’, like many of Edgar Allan Poe’s best stories, carries the force of parable. It is a curious mixture of revenge, horror, and spectacle, about a dwarf who exacts spectacular brutal vengeance on a cruel monarch. The story was first published in March 1849; by the end of the year, Poe would be dead.