Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on ...



Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809. Poe's father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and later to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave the University when Allan refused to pay his gambling debts.

Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan deteriorated. In 1827, he moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems, was published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Neither volume received significant critical or public attention. Following his Army service, Poe was admitted to the United States Military Academy, but he was again forced to leave for lack of financial support. He then moved into the home of his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia, in Baltimore, Maryland.

Poe began to sell short stories to magazines at around this time, and, in 1835, he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. He brought his aunt and twelve-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, with him to Richmond. He married Virginia in 1836. Over the next ten years, Poe would edit a number of literary journals including the Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City. It was during these years that he established himself as a poet, a short-story writer, and an editor. He published some of his best-known stories and poems including "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Raven." After Virginia's death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe's life-long struggle with depression and alcoholism worsened. He returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of "acute congestion of the brain."

Poe's work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit him as the "architect" of the modern short story. He was also one of the first critics to focus primarily on the effect of the style and of the structure in a literary work; as such, he has been seen as a forerunner to the "art for art's sake" movement. French Symbolists such as Mallarmé and Rimbaud claimed him as a literary precursor. Baudelaire spent nearly fourteen years translating Poe into French. Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature.

|Alone |

|by Edgar Allan Poe |

| | |

| |In the first blank, place a letter in the blank to determine the rhyme scheme. |

| | |

|From childhood's hour I have not been |_____ 1) What type of childhood did the speaker of _____ the |

|As others were--I have not seen |poem have? |

|As others saw--I could not bring |_____ |

|My passions from a common spring-- |_____ |

|From the same source I have not taken |_____ 2) What is the mystery the speaker refers to? |

|My sorrow--I could not awaken |_____ |

|My heart to joy at the same tone-- |_____ |

|And all I lov'd--I lov'd alone-- |_____ 3) What images are described in the poem? |

|Then--in my childhood--in the dawn |_____ How do these images create the tone of |

|Of a most stormy life--was drawn |_____ of the poem? |

|From ev'ry depth of good and ill |_____ |

|The mystery which binds me still-- |_____ |

|From the torrent, or the fountain-- |_____ 4) What specific words describing the |

|From the red cliff of the mountain-- |_____ life of the speaker also contribute to the _____ |

|From the sun that 'round me roll'd |poem’s tone? |

|In its autumn tint of gold-- |_____ |

|From the lightning in the sky |_____ |

|As it pass'd me flying by-- |_____ |

|From the thunder, and the storm-- |_____ |

|And the cloud that took the form |_____ 5) After reading the Poe biography, what |

|(When the rest of Heaven was blue) |_____ event is the poet describing in the poem? |

|Of a demon in my view-- |_____ |

| |_____ |

| |6) Label the poem with any additional |

| |literary devices. |

| | |

| |7) Does the poem have rhythm? |

|To My Mother |  |

|by Edgar Allan Poe |

| |In the first blank, place a letter in the blank to determine the rhyme scheme. |

| | |

|Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, |_____ 1) Based on the information in the _____ |

|The angels, whispering to one another, |biographical excerpt, whom is the |

|Can find, among their burning terms of love, |_____ speaker addressing? |

|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, |_____ 2) What might the speaker mean when |

|And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you |_____ he refers to his own mother who died? |

|In setting my Virginia's spirit free. |_____ |

|My mother—my own mother, who died early, |_____ |

|Was but the mother of myself; but you |_____ |

|Are mother to the one I loved so dearly, |_____ 3) What does the final line of the poem |

|And thus are dearer than the mother I knew |_____ mean? How is this a pun? |

|By that infinity with which my wife |_____ |

|Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life. |_____ |

| |4) What is the tone of the poem? |

| | |

| |5) Who is Virginia? |

| | |

| |6) Label the poem with any additional |

| |literary devices. |

Connection Questions:

1) Most students have read at least one short story (“The Tell-Tale Heart” or “The Cask of Amontillado”) or poem (“Annabel Lee” or “The Raven”) by Edgar Allan Poe in the past. Although his short stories are not connected to any specific events of his life, how is his life reflected in the tone and theme of his various works?

2) What topic / theme is apparent in each of these three poems?

|A Dream Within a Dream |  |

|by Edgar Allan Poe |

|Take this kiss upon the brow! | Does the poem contain a rhyme scheme? |

|And, in parting from you now, | |

|Thus much let me avow: | |

|You are not wrong who deem |What action does the speaker take in the first stanza? |

|That my days have been a dream; | |

|Yet if hope has flown away | |

|In a night, or in a day, |What type of figurative language is used in the first stanza? |

|In a vision, or in none, | |

|Is it therefore the less gone? | |

|All that we see or seem |What action does the speaker take in the second stanza? |

|Is but a dream within a dream. | |

| | |

|I stand amid the roar |What do the speaker’s actions symbolize? How do these actions reflect the poem’s theme? |

|Of a surf-tormented shore, | |

|And I hold within my hand | |

|Grains of the golden sand-- |What is the poem’s tone? What words and phrases reflect this tone? |

|How few! yet how they creep | |

|Through my fingers to the deep, |Whom or what is the speaker trying to save from the pitiless wave? |

|While I weep--while I weep! | |

|O God! can I not grasp | |

|Them with a tighter clasp? |Compare the contrast the last two lines of the first stanza with the last two lines of the second |

|O God! can I not save |stanza. What point is the speaker making with these lines? |

|One from the pitiless wave? | |

|Is all that we see or seem | |

|But a dream within a dream? | |

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