Introducing
Edgar Allan Poe
(1809 - 1849)
IES Pedro Floriani, Redondela. 1st Bacharelato 2014-15
Department of English – Department of Philosophy
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849) was an American writer. In his gothic poems
and short stories he wrote about emotions and ideas that became central in European philosophy in the late 1800s and early 1900s: existentialists like Sartre
and psychoanalysts like Freud and Lacan built their theories on concepts like
fear, guilt or angst and found that people cannot find love without hate or death.
This year we are going to read and work on some of Poe’s masterpieces:
POEMS
Annabel Lee
Text with audio
Ulalume
Text with audio
The raven
Text with audio
Find complete analysis of these poems in
Annabel Lee
Ulalume
The Raven
SHORT STORIES
The pit and the pendulum
The facts in the case of M. Valdemar
The black cat
The oval portrait
The tell-tale heart
Borrow this book
from the school library
The Masque of the Read Death
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
The Fall of the House of Usher
For the short stories we suggest that you seek information in
Text with audio
Video iNet Edmodo
Short film
Full text
MAIN THEMES
When you’re analyzing a Poe’s text look out for these themes:
Short stories
Madness. Angst, guilt, projection
Animals
Death. The power of the dead over the living
Love and hate. Love and death
Self vs. alter ego
Eyes
Poems
The speaker
An anonymous man troubled by the thought of her dead beloved.
The dead beloved
A beautiful woman prematurely dead with a lulling L sound in her name.
Man and the Natural World
The sky, the sea, the forests... show the speaker’s feelings.
The Supernatural
Look for Ancient Goddesses, Angels and Seraphs, Demons and Ghouls.
What do they look like?
Are they threatening the speaker or trying to help him?
Memory and the Past
The speaker tries to forget... or die to stop remembering
Madness
Is the speaker mad?
What do you think?
What does he think?
POE: PSYCHANALYSIS BEFORE PSYCHOANALYSIS
Poe used some concepts in his works long before they were described by
psychoanalysis. Try to find them when you are commenting on a poem or a
short story:
Angst
Angst is like fear but hasn’t got an object. When you have fear there is something that you are afraid of, like a dangerous animal, a threatening person or a
high cliff. But when you are afraid and there is nothing to fear then psychoanalysis calls that fear angst. Some philosophers use that word too: when life
doesn’t make sense, when absurd things happen, we feel angst. Sometimes
angst is pictured as a black hole, and in Poe’s stories it can be represented by
an animal that behaves oddly.
Guilt
Our mind is the enemy inside ourselves: it knows all our thoughts and wishes. When immoral ideas (like aggressive reactions or lusty images) cross it we
feel guilty, no matter whether we actually do what we thought or only think it
and never really do it. When we feel guilty then we seek punishment as a way
to be forgiven and relieved. Thus we may feel guilty of crimes that we have
never committed, confess to crimes that would never be discovered or make
mistakes that lead the police to find out what we did.
Projection and introjection
Sometimes we don’t see the world as it is: we see the world as we are. We
see things differently according to our feelings: when we are sad all the songs
seem sad, when we feel angst the trees and the clouds look gray end threatening. This is called projection: we project our emotions on the objects that are
around us. Even more, we deny our impulses when they make us feel guilty and
attribute them to others.
On the other hand, we also copy inside of us other people’s beliefs, fears and
opinions. This is called introjection. This is how we may even feel guilty for
something that other person did.
Delirium
We see now that our mind may play tricks on us and show us a world that
doesn’t exist. But we feel the need to be coherent with what we think, so we
make up a story that fits with what our mind shows us… while anybody else
could tell that it’s a false story and that we are wrong. That story is called a delirium. As a matter of fact, if we let ourselves get carried away by that story, we
are crossing the line between sanity and madness.
GETTING INFORMATION
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/poestories%3E/themes.html
http://www.poedecoder.com
http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/raven/
http://www.enotes.com/topics/raven
http://www.gradesaver.com/poes-poetry/study-guide/summary-annabel-lee
http://www.gradesaver.com/poes-poetry/study-guide/summary-the-raven
AUDIO TEXTS AND VIDEOS
SIX CREEPY STORIES BY POE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Rbp_s1h5o&spfreload=10
THE OVAL PORTRAIT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jl7xt7b1Bo
THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M VALDEMAR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtarMAs0QkU
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRNoFteP3HU
THE TELL- TALE-HEART
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUFqBKUwRe8
THE BLACK CAT
http://poestories.com/read/blackcat
AUDIO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeHSRNgc6QI
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
AUDIO: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+fall+of+the+house+of+usher
THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VybzBqPREaY
MUSIC AND POE
ALAN PARSONS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4K6j0m2mxE
NOX ARCANA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-r6p7xcQdA
IGGY POP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bansJgYiOXY
LOU REED AND LAURIE ANDERSON
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gcvedKRXL0
JOAN BAEZ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIGj3CZ3uPQ&index=4&list=PLUJWUtTvXlPHOpbycnneeV-vCO3PRq4UL
Spanish rock inspired by POE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGoR4ePgvWc
THE TELL-TALE HEART: SHORT FILMS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5wAqADsMMU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpEIMERxgi4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6F4fT0UOM4 (explanation of the story)
The whole tale played by Vincent Price
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LNjgv5p3Ek (part 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM-tAb-bM-s (part 2)
THE RAVEN
Text with audio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BefliMlEzZ8
Tim Burton’s version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0zkFo3IkcY
MUSIC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJXFqji99N4&list=PLUJWUtTvXlPHOpbycnneeV-vCO3PRq4UL&index=19
RAP “MR. RAVEN” BY MAC LARS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3z4mY5Xvr8&list=PLUJWUtTvXlPHOpbycnneeV-vCO3PRq4UL&index=3
ANNABEL LEE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_627120&feature=iv&src_vid=QmTv7O40SR8&v=rf7
aBCrfOQE
RADIO FUTURA VERSION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJSOutXc0MM
ANOTHER SONGS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtAXmO0FNj0
PUNK VERSION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3J1XR-z9Lk&list=PLUJWUtTvXlPHOpbycnneeV-vCO3PRq4UL&index=2
ULALUME
JEFF BUCKLEY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgeaqpmqUT8
Audiobook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHjlBgzxzsQ