Edgar Allan Poe’s
“The Poetic Principle”
• Published as an essay in 1850, the year after Poe’s death
• Based on lectures he had given throughout his life
• Is a discussion of Poe’s aesthetic and literary theories.
Edgar Allan Poe’s
“The Poetic Principle”
• The purpose of a poem is to elevate the soul.
• Beauty, which humans naturally desire and strive for,
should be the aim of a poem.
• A poem should be short enough to draw the soul to the
beautiful and yet long enough to be profound.
• There is no such thing, really, as a long poem. A long poem
is just a collection of short poems.
• A poem should have unity
Edgar Allan Poe’s
“The Poetic Principle”
• Imagination should be controlled by thought. Thought is
the activity in which people are most like God.
• The purpose of a poem is not to pursue truth; the demands
of truth are too severe for poetry.
• A poem which is just a poem, and not trying to teach
anything, is the most dignified kind.
• The most intense sense of pleasure comes from
contemplation of beauty.
Edgar Allan Poe’s
“The Philosophy of Composition”
• This first appeared in the April 1846 issue of Graham’s
Magazine, not long after “The Raven” was published in
1845.
• It explains Poe’s aesthetic theories and, trading on the
success of “The Raven,” describes the way he composed
it.
Edgar Allan Poe’s
“The Philosophy of Composition”
• Americans are too busy to read long novels.
• It should be possible to read any literary text (except a
novel) in one sitting.
• Everything in a literary composition should be
contemplated step-by-step with the precision of a
mathematics problem.
• This is the antithesis to the idea that poets write purely
out of intuition or inspiration which was a common
Romantic conceit)
Edgar Allan Poe’s
“The Philosophy of Composition”
• A writer should predetermine the final outcome of the
composition and ensure that everything in the
composition moves toward that ending.
• There should be no word in a composition that is not
meaningful to its purpose.
• The brevity of a work should have a direct relationship to
the intensity of the intended effect, although a certain
amount of length is necessary.
Edgar Allan Poe’s
“The Philosophy of Composition”
• The tone of the highest manifestation of beauty is
sadness. Melancholy is the most legitimate of poetic
tones.
• The most melancholy topic is death. Because death
becomes poetical when it is aligned with beauty, the most
poetic topic is the death of a beautiful woman.