Archive for 'Edgar Allen Poe'
The Tell-Tale Heart by
Edgar Allen Poe is simultaneously a horror story and psychological thriller told from a first-person perspective. It is admired as an excellent example of how a short story can produce an effect on the reader. Poe believed that all good literature must create a unity of effect on the reader and this effect must reveal truth or evoke emotions.
The Tell-Tale Heart exemplifies Poe’s ability to expose the dark side of humankind and is a harbinger of novels and films dealing with psychological realism. Poe’s work has influenced genres as diverse as French symbolist poetry and Hollywood horror films, and writers as diverse as
Ambrose Bierce and
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
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Watch the animated film of The Tell-Tale Heart on YouTube. It was narrated by James Mason and nominated for an Academy Award in 1954.
Technorati Tags classic, Edgar Allen Poe, great books online, horror story, poetry, psychological realism
Posted on 16 August '07 by wgb, under Edgar Allen Poe. 1 Comment.
Edgar Allan Poe's short story
The Masque of the Red Death is a prime example of his Gothic horror fiction. Poe evokes a dark and eerie mood in a story that focuses on images of blood and death, while the personification of the Red Death lends an element of the supernatural.
The Masque of the Red Death embodies Poe's mastery of the short story; in addition, it illustrates his literary philosophy. According to Poe, a short story should be tightly focused so that every word, from beginning to end, contributes to the overall effect. In this story, powerful imagery and an illusive narrative voice are tightly woven into a macabre tale of horror with insight into the human condition.
Play The Masque of the Red Death
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"The Masque of the Red Death: Introduction." Short Stories for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 8. Detroit: Gale, 1998. eNotes.com. January 2006. 15 August 2007.
Technorati Tags classic, Edgar Allen Poe, gothic horror fiction, great books online, horror story, poetry, psychological realism
Posted on 15 August '07 by wgb, under Edgar Allen Poe. No Comments.
When it appeared in 1845, the dark poem of lost love,
The Raven, brought
Edgar Allen Poe national fame. "With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not - they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind."
(from The Raven and Other Poems, preface, 1845) In a lecture in Boston the author said that the two most effective letters in the English language were o and r - this inspired the expression "nevermore" in
The Raven, and because a parrot is unworthy of the dignity of poetry, a raven could well repeat the word at the end of each stanza.
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NEXT DURING POE WEEK: The Masque of the Red Death
Technorati Tags American writer, classic, Edgar Allen Poe, famous author, great books online, horror story, poetry, psychological realism, raven
Posted on 13 August '07 by wgb, under Edgar Allen Poe. No Comments.
