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Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809–October 7, 1849) was an American author, editor, poet, and literary critic, regarded as a part of the American Romantic Movement. Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and was generally considered as the inventor of the detective fiction, best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre. Poe is the originator of the detective story, science fiction, horror fiction, and the master of Gothic short fiction, as well as the pioneer of symbolism and aestheticism. He was called “the father of western detective fiction” and “the father of psychoanalytic criticism”. His writings have influenced such writers as H. G. Wells, T. S. Eliot and William Friedman. His aesthetic thought has influenced such French symbolists and advocates for “art for art’s sake” as Baudelaire. He was the first well-known American writer who try to earn a living through writing alone, thus resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
Poe’s writing style is traditional. It is much too rational and ordinary to reflect the peculiarity of his theme. He is good at generalizing. His works are not easy to read. He lays stress on brevity and imagination. Poe’s theories in creating short stories are so brief as to be possible to finish reading them at one sitting. The first sentence ought to help bring out the “single effect” of the story. No word should be used which does not contribute to the exposure of the theme of the work. A tale should reveal some logical truth, and end with the last sentence, leaving a sense of finality with readers.
Poe created diligently many characters of anti-hero to show alienation, loneliness, anxiety, fear and some advanced modern consciousness that was linked to Poe’s life experience. First of all, it is related with the lack of family warmth and security. His birth father disappeared shortly after he was born, and his birth mother passed away when he was 2 years old. He became an orphan when he was a baby. After being adopted Poe could not get along with his adoptive father all the time, and his beloved adoptive mother and wife who could only make him feel love in this world all died young. He spent almost all his short life in a kind of solitude and desolate way without warmth of family. Secondly, that time’s background of literary marginalization and alienation is another significant reason. In the early 19th century American literary was based on the proposition of “writing carry doctrine” which was called transcendentalism. So there is no doubt that Poe’s literary idea of “pure art” was marginalized. Being excluded from the mainstream literary, he was frustrated, lived roughly and became impoverished. He found that he did not belong to any land or any country just like a rootless duckweed and could never find his destination. He was a lonely wanderer forever. Therefore, the omnipresent loneliness, alienation, depression and sadness were reflected in his works naturally. Finally, it is Poe’s choice of escaping from social reality and his then decadence. Poe grew up under the influence of the aristocratic culture and education, but had to witness the decline of the strength of the southern aristocracy and the rapid rise of industrial capital. He even hated democracy, the development of commodity economy and industrial production. The more he struggled the less he got. It could not save himself as well as the society. When American hailed the progress of industrial civilization, Poe acutely sensed the strong undercurrent lurking under the calm surface of the river in his sensitive mind. Era of sickness and spiritual crisis cried loudly.