Edgar Allan Poe

In the poem “The Raven,” Poe uses imagery through the image of the black bird, the raven. The bird’s presence and one word, which Poe references throughout the poem, symbolize death not only...

Edgar Allan Poe is famous for his Gothic works containing tales of horror, the macabre, and death. One of his most famous poems is "The Raven" which was published in 1845. "The Masque of the Red...

Poe had a very strong influence on Charles Baudelaire, who translated much of Poe's work into English. Baudelaire, whose best-known work is the collection of poems titled Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers...

Edgar Allan Poe never married a woman named Lenore. His only marriage was a secret one, in 1834, to his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm (they later married publicly).Poe seems to have liked the...

Poe wrote to earn a living, although it might have been a meager living at times, and because he had a passion for writing. As a young child, he lost his mother and his father abandoned the family....

"Silence - A Fable" is one of Edgar Allan Poe's most brief, and yet most confusing, short stories. The story is told by a Demon, who sits and observes the actions of a solitary man in a desolate,...

The key part of stanza 11 is the following: what it utters is its only stock and store,Caught from some unhappy master In other words, the speaker, troubled by the appearance of the raven and its...

Edgar Allan Poe has been hugely influential in the literary world since he began publishing in the mid-1800s. His texts have served as exemplars of how to use sensory detail and how to establish...

In his essay "The Importance of a Single Effect in a Prose Tale," Poe writes that he unifies a piece of writing around mood. He writes not primarily to develop a plot or a character but to convey a...

The short story by Poe is about a king and his 7 advisers who enjoy practical jokes. They have enslaved two dwarfs. One is a male whom they call Hop-Frog and the other is a female who they have...

At the beginning of this poem, the narrator is sort of dozing, or "nearly napping," he says, in his room—perhaps a library or study of some kind (as it contains books and a bust of Athena)—and...

The setting of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" is revealed primarily by the first two stanzas of the poem. Within the first two lines of the poem, Poe gives the reader a great deal of information....

Poe is heavy on the symbolism, and he often repeats symbol use from one story to the next. For example, in "The Masque of the Red Death," when an ebony clock housed in a black and blood-red room...

There are several similarities between “The Black Cat” and “The Tell Tale Heart” by Poe. A couple of the main similarities are: Both stories are narrated by an insane character. There is...

Although Poe may have been influenced by earlier works, he is credited by many with the development of the style and format of detective stories that we know of today. The influence of Poe's...

Edgar Allan Poe suffered from financial problems for most of his life. He left the University of Virginia for lack of money (he had a $2000 gambling debt), and He was the first well-known American...

Stylistically, Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems are characterized by elements we might now associate with the horror and gothic genres. There is usually suspense, created in part by an...

There mere repetition of the word "Nevermore" by the raven can be considered ironic in literary terms, which allows for more expansive use of the phrase than the regular definition of "irony" might...

It is a rather natural assumption after reading his stories and poems that Edgar Allan Poe must have been an atheist. This idea is not necessarily true. Poe's adopted father, John Allan, had young...

If you read his rather autobiographical poem "Alone," you'll read that he always saw things differently than others did. He was not moved by the same passions as others, nor did he react as others...

The mood in a story is the atmosphere that pervades the work with the intention of evoking a certain emotion or feeling from the reader. Edgar Allan Poe evokes specific moods in his short stories...

This poem contains one main simile and one main metaphor. Firstly, the third stanza compares the "holy dream" that Poe experiences to something that cheers him up as if it were "a lonely spirit...

Having written and produced a play (Death by the Visitation of God) about Poe's life, and having researched extensively his life through his own words as well as through the letters and journals of...

Sensory language is a strategy that writers utilize in order to immerse the reader in a story by engaging one or more of their senses. Imagery is created through the use of sensory language. Edgar...

Edgar Allan Poe primarily wrote narrative poems, poems which tell stories in metered verse. While Poe's work wasn't explicitly meant to be recited or sung, he referred to many of his narrative...

Both poems use end rhymes to develop a sense of rhythm or cadence. In "A Dream Within A Dream," Poe uses such rhyming words at the end of lines as "brow" and "now," "deem" and "dream." In "A...

Both "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Masque of the Red Death" employ timepieces (watches or clocks) as symbols. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator believes that he hears an old man's heart...

Diction refers to word choice and is related to the tone and mood of a literary work. Syntax is the arrangement of words within a sentence. Connotation relates to the implied and contextual...

There are a number of reasons Poe's works remain popular today: First, Poe came up with compelling plots. He knew how to tell a frightening story and how to build suspense. In "A Cask of...

Edgar Allen Poe was one of the most influential and prolific writers of the Romantic Period. The Romantics were reacting against the Enlightenment, which was a literary (among other things)...

Some major similarities between Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne are the time period in which they lived and wrote. Both men were prominent writers of the mid-1800s. Both were born at the...

Both thinkers can be seen as Romantic for a couple of reasons. Both writers feature a very non- conformist view of the social setting. In fact, both writers spend much of their thematic...

The foreshadowing in the first two paragraphs helps to create suspense. Montresor says that he "vowed revenge" on Fortunato, and he explains his criteria for how this must be achieved. He says, "I...

Poe uses a number of literary devices in "The Lake" (also called "The Lake-To--" in other texts). Poe uses metaphor in the very first line ("In the spring of my youth it was my lot"). Here, the...

Poe specified that a short story should achieve a single effect. This could be created by the overall tone and mood or by a surprise ending. He did not, of course, say anything about motion...

Poe was a master at creating spooky and suspenseful moods in stories. In "The Pit and The Pendulum," his narrator is subjected to gruesome torture during the Spanish Inquisition. Poe toys with the...

The poem "Eldorado" by Edgar Allan Poe was published in 1849. This poem was one of his last publications. This short poem is just four stanzas long, each stanza just six lines. It is about a...

Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "To Helen," was inspired by the mother of one of his classmates. When Poe was fourteen, he visited his friend at home and met the mother. Mrs. Stanard urged Poe to write...

In Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," the first, most obvious symbol seems to be the clock made of ebony, which is a black wood. Ebony is described as... a hard, heavy, durable wood, most highly...

The narrator of "The Cask of Amontillado" is Montresor, who claims to have suffered many times, greatly but quietly, at the hands of Fortunato. Finally, he resolves to seek revenge on Fortunato...

For Montresor to be arrested and brought to trial for murdering Fortunato, there would have to be some evidence to link him to the crime. His confession would, therefore, have had to come to light,...

Symbols are objects that have a deeper meaning than their literal meaning. In Fortunato's case, a cough is more than a cough. It symbolizes two aspects of his situation beyond merely his being a...

"Alone" was written when Poe wasn't yet the renowned author he came to be. He wrote this poem when he was only twenty, after a particularly tough year. He had faced quite a bit of literary...

The setting of the gloomy catacombs works effectively to create atmosphere in "The Cask of Amontillado," especially in contrast to the high spirits of carnival time. Poe develops...

The setting for this short story is an abandoned chateau in a mountain range called the Appennines that runs the length of the center of Italy. Because the chateau is in a mountain setting, it is...

Poe uses both simile and personification to create the strange atmosphere of this poem. The "wanton airs" are personified as "laughingly" dropping through the lattice. He metaphorically describes...

The first person POV has always been an interesting device in literature. For one, you'd think it's extremely similar to an all-knowing third person narrator. They can just as easily say what the...

Determining what makes a work of literature "good" is tricky because it's very subjective. However, some of the reasons Poe's story "The Fall of the House of Usher" is considered an effective short...

No. Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" is full of figurative language, but it has no similes. Similes are figurative comparisons using the word "like" or "as." If Poe had written, for example,...

It may seem strange to think of the narrator of "The Tell Tale Heart" -- a murderer -- in a sympathetic light, but to an extent Poe is able to make him so through strong characterization and point...