Exposé Edgar Alan Poe

Do you know Edgar Allan Poe ? (Lorlito) He was a writer, poet, critic and editor known for his horror short stories and his gothic novels.

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His biography and his main works

He was born on the 19th of january 1809 in boston, Massachusetts.

He was only 1 year old when his father abandoned the family so they moved in the south. Unfortunately, his mother dies of pneumonia. As a result, Edgar becomes a very young orphan. He and his siblings were separated and he was taken in by a rather well-to-do family, working in tobacco, the Allen Family.

He is a violent, almost tyrannical and not much loved child. Despite this, he gets very good results at school however, his life is not very easy, he is a dreamer who loves solitude.

From his early teenage years, he was fascinated by literature and wrote many poems.

At the age of 16, Edgar began to play a lot of gambling and to lose a lot of money as well. As a result, he went into debt, so he didn't stay long at the university of virginia.

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At the age of 18, Edgar tried to become an actor but without success. After this failure, he enlists in the army. At the age of 20, his foster mother died which plunged him into deep sadness.

After that he married Virgina, a 13-year-old girl. He also began to be an alcoholic. He moved with his wife to Manhattan. He then became interested in journalism and later became the editor of "Berton's gentleman's magazine". He was very successful. It was during these years that he established himself as a poet, a short story writer and an editor.

However, in 1842, his wife died of a hemorrhage. He's terribly sad and has trouble moving on. His alcoholism is still very present. At the age of 39, he gets on a boat and heads for Baltimore. And from that day on, we never hear from him again.

However, one day, we find Edgar in an weird state. He's between a conscious and an unconscious state. His words are inconsistent. He died on October 7, 1849, of a stroke at the age of forty. The cause of his death is not yet fully understood. The most likely hypothesis is that he was poisoned by agents, during the electoral elections, indeed, they forced people to drink a serum that would force them to vote.

He's today, buried in a cemetery in Baltimore. After his death, a poet, Charles Baudelaire, who was very fond of his writings, became his translator.

How his early life influence his literary works

The many dramas that occurred in his life influenced his writing. Indeed, his writings are dark, the atmosphere is often heavy. This refers to the traumas that he experienced when he lost several people around him. There is a fascination for evil and macabre in his writings. Moreover, his studies of letters during his youth made him discover the English Gothic novel. But in most of his books, death hovers, omnipresent, with its procession of terrors and anxieties and always this desire to explore the depths of the human soul. Finally, he is a writer from South America, his work is full of themes that are characteristic of the region: a sickly obsession with family crimes, haunted by alcoholism, the divorce between good and evil.

Historical context

There was an imposing mass of African slaves, despite the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. This century will also be affected by the Civil War.

This historical context particularly affects Poe since he lives most of his life in the south of the United States.

His main works

When he was 18 he published his first book, “Tamerlane and others poems” (1827) the name of the author was “a Bostonian” because his foster father didn’t want him to write.

In 1829, he published “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems” but

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