Education and Inspiration through the ancient art of storytelling!
Father of the macabre and creator of the modern short story, Edgar Poe not only broke the mold as one of the first truly American Voices, he threw off the fashions of the European traditions becoming a critic of American writers who did not follow suit. Almost every modern writer since has paid homage to Poe.
Poe invented the murder mystery. From his idea for ‘ratiocination,’ the process of using logic and evidence to solve crimes, and his cerebral, unorthodox detective, Dupin, Poe’s gave rise to the most popular form of fiction. His “Murders of the Rue Morgue” have created the mold for countless fictional detectives from Sherlock Holmes to TV’s Monk. Sir Author Conan Doyle wrote, “If every man who receives a cheque for a story which owes its springs to Poe were to pay a tithe to a monument for the master, he would have a pyramid as big as that of Cheops.”
Poe is also the father of modern science fiction. His stories, “Hans Pfaal” and “The Balloon Hoax” were two of the first short stories to use scientific inquiry blended with imagination to explore what lies beyond. His prose poem “Eureka,” anticipates ideas later found in the Big Bang Theory. Some say it was Jules Verne who created science fiction, but many of Verne’s early stories were derived directly from Poe: “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” inspired Verne to write a sequal, “An Antarctic Mystery.” You also read echoes of Poe in “Around the World in 80 Days” and “20,000 Leagues under the Sea.” Verne acknowledges his debt to Poe in a literary tribute, “Poe and his Works.”
Poe considered himself first and foremost a poet. Though some of his poetry is dated, “The Raven” is still one of the most popular and parodied poems ever written. It was even recited by Homer on a Halloween edition of “The Simpsons.” Poe’s essays on “The Philosophy of Composition” and “The Rational of Verse” should be required reading for every student of poetry and have impacted directly and indirectly every poet to follow.
The most startling fact is this: Edgar Allan Poe was the first American writer to make his living solely from his work as a writer and critic. Most writers then (and now), have had a day job as an educator, or any of a myriad of professions. Poe edited several literary journals, published stories and poems in other journals, and was one of the first American literary critics (who chastised his peers if he thought they were overly influenced by European Romantics). Poe’s critical essays of his contemporaries are an insightful study of the creation of an American Voice in world literature.
But Poe is most famous for the macabre. From “The Fall of the House of Usher” to “The Tell Tale Heart” everyone agrees that he is the unparalleled master of the genre, the grandfather of America’s modern fascination with horror and fantasy. From Harry Potter to The Twilight Series it is hard to imagine the modern literary landscape without the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe.
(c)2010 Brian “Fox” Ellis
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