Raúl Cana Pinel 3º ESO A

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19th 1809and he died on October 7th1849. He was anAmerican author, poet, editor, and literarycritic, considered part of the American RomanticMovement. Poe was one of the earliest Americanpractitioners of the short story and he isgenerally considered the inventor of thedetective fiction genre. He had an incredibleand interesting life and career.

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the secondchild of the English actress Elizabeth ArnoldHopkins Poe and actor David Poe, Jr. He had anelder brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, and ayounger sister, Rosalie Poe. Theirgrandfather, David Poe, had emigrated fromCavan, Ireland, to America around the year 1750.Edgar may have been named after a character inWilliam Shakespeare's King Lear, a play the couplewas performing in 1809. Poe was then taken intothe home of John Allan, a successful Scottishmerchant in Richmond, Virginia. The Allans servedas a foster family and gave him the name "EdgarAllan Poe", though they never formally adopted him.

Poe's best known fiction works are Gothic, a genrehe followed to appease the public taste. His mostrecurring themes deal with questions ofdeath, including its physical signs, the effects ofdecomposition, concerns of premature burial, thereanimation of the dead, and mourning. Many of hisworks are generally considered part of the darkRomanticism genre. Poe once wrote in a letter toThomas Holley Chivers that he did not dislikeTranscendentalists.

Poe also wrote satires and humor tales. For comiceffect, he used irony and ludicrous extravagance .Poe also reinvented science fiction.

-THEORY He disliked didacticism and allegory, though hebelieved that meaning in literature should be an undercurrentjust beneath the surface. In the end, he believed that the writershould carefully calculate every sentiment and idea."The Raven“ has been questioned, however, whether he reallyfollowed this system.

-INFLUENCE Poe was mostly recognized as a literary critic.He was the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearlesscritic upon imaginative works which had been written inAmerica.Poe was also known as a writer of fiction and became one ofthe first American authors of the 19th century to become morepopular in Europe than in the United States. Poe is particularlyrespected in France, in part due to early translations byCharles Baudelaire. Baudelaire's translations became definitiverenditions of Poe's work throughout Europe.

The literary period which he worked was theRomanticism. It was an artistic, literary, andintellectual movement that was originated inEurope from1800 to 1850. Partly a reaction tothe Industrial Revolution, it was also a revoltagainst aristocratic social and its effect onpolitics was considerable; while for much of thepeak Romantic period it was associated withliberalism and radicalism, in the long term itseffect on the growth of nationalism wasprobably more significant.

Romanticism happened about the XIX century. The 19thcentury (January 1, 1801 – December 31, 1900) was a periodin history marked by the collapse of the Spanish, First andSecond French, Holy Roman and Mughal empires. This pavedthe way for the growing influence of the British Empire,Russian Empire, German Empire, the United States and theEmpire of Japan, spurring military conflicts but also advancesin science and exploration.After the defeat of the French Empire and its allies in theNapoleonic Wars. Numerous cities worldwide surpassedpopulations of a million or more during this century. Londonwas transformed into the world's largest city and capital of theBritish Empire. Its population expanded from 1 million in 1800to 6.7 million a century later. The last remaining undiscoveredlandmasses of Earth included vast expanses of interior Africaand Asia.

-THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM.

- WILLIAM WILSON.

- THE BLACK CAT.

- THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO.

- HOP-FROG.

The Pit and the Pendulum is a short storypublished in 1842 in the literary annual TheGift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for1843. The story is about the torments enduredby a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, thoughPoe skews historical facts. The narrator of thestory describes his experience of beingtortured. The traditional elements established inpopular horror tales at the time arefollowed, but critical reception has been mixed.The tale has been adapted to film several times.

William Wilson is a short story by Edgar AllanPoe, published in 1839, with a setting inspiredby Poe's formative years outside London. Thetale follows the theme of the doppelgänger andis written in a style based on rationality. It alsoappeared in the 1840 collection Tales of theGrotesque and Arabesque, and has beenadapted several times.

The Black Cat is a short story which was firstpublished in the August 19, 1843, edition ofThe Saturday Evening Post. It is a study of thepsychology of guilt, often paired in analysis withPoe's "The Tell-Tale Heart". In both, a murderercarefully conceals his crime and believes himselfunassailable, but eventually breaks down andreveals himself, impelled by a nagging reminderof his guilt.