# data[].attributes.body
i agree because i need for revenge is almost everyone gets so i agree because i feel the need for revenge to

# data[].attributes.body
because

# data[].attributes.body
I believe that people still read the cask of amontillado because of the story line, in a sense the story brings and edgy feel to it.  An average person can relate to this by having a feeling of revenge or hatred towards someone else.

# data[].attributes.body
I think people can relate to this because... some people sometimes have anger against someone and they want revenge.

# data[].attributes.body
People still read this because most people like the suspense. Also people relate to the story because people like to think about getting revenge. People get angry and want revenge most of the time but they aren't thinking about how their actions will affect the other person.

# data[].attributes.body
because in this sense people still have the desire to get revenge on a person in a similar or different fashion. Once humiliated it could've become all they wanted to see the person who ruined their reputation our pride suffer even if its only a little bit. Poes stories also aren't poorly written like most and with foreshadowing with theme it doesn't just make a person want to jut get this over with. When the author writes it isn't just I want him to suffer, there are feelings and its not always head on what a character wants to do   -Ross

# data[].attributes.body
I think it attracts people because of Poe's way with words. Anyone can tell a story of a murder in a wine cellar, but when Poe did it, he uses tone and emotion. Something that people can relate to is the betrayal. Most people have dealt with something along the line of betrayal, and people understand the feelings behind it.

# data[].attributes.body
All students add a response to the following:  This story (Cask of Amontillado), even 150 years after it was published, is still very popular.  As a story about murder by unusual means, what elements of the story do you think still attract people today? People usually like stories they can relate to.  What do you think your average person can relate to in this story?  Click below to add your comment.  Be sure to include your name and block so I can give you credit.

Todos los estudiantes agregan una respuesta a lo siguiente: Esta historia (Barril de amontillado), incluso 150 años después de su publicación, sigue siendo muy popular. Como historia sobre asesinatos por medios inusuales, ¿qué elementos de la historia crees que todavía atraen a la gente hoy? A las personas generalmente les gustan las historias con las que pueden identificarse. ¿Con qué crees que puede identificarse una persona promedio en esta historia? Haga clic a continuación para agregar su comentario. Asegúrese de incluir su nombre y bloque para que pueda darle crédito.

# data[].attributes.headline
A recording of the Cask of Amontillado -- Not my recording.  This is the whole story with no explanations.

# data[].attributes.subject
A recording of the Cask of Amontillado -- Not my recording.  This is the whole story with no explanations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A dramatic reading of The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe. For my first time doing this and my longest video to date, I'd say this came out pretty well. I changed some of the words to make it a bit easier to understand. Music by Kevin MacLeod

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A New Approach To Revenge and Internal Peace | Briae Robillard | TEDxKeene

# data[].attributes.body
Video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By Kathleen M. Pike
History also makes it eminently clear that revenge exacts a heavy toll - on us as nations and as individuals. So why do we do it? What is the psychology of revenge? And what are some lessons for today?

1. The psychology of revenge. At its core, revenge is about inflicting hurt or harm on someone to achieve retribution for perceived personal injury or wrong suffered. As much as we hate to admit it, revenge is one of those intense feelings that comes up for every single human being. We have all had the experience of relishing the fantasy of turning the tables on someone who has badly hurt us. Neuroscience research shows that revenge can be mapped in the brain. In studies of revenge, when individuals are wronged and then invited to imagine their revenge, the caudate nucleus, known to process rewards in the brain, is activated. Yes, the human brain can take pleasure in just imagining revenge. But the positive effects are fleeting and bittersweet at best.

2. Evolutionary underpinnings of revenge. University of Miami psychology professor Michael McCullough explains that the impulse for revenge evolved to deter harming someone in the future after that individual has already imposed harm on us in the first place. According to McCullough, the primary goal of revenge is to signal a message that will change people's incentive to harm us. When we exact revenge, our wrongdoer will learn that their strategy is not working and will leave us alone. It is likely that our ancestry as small nomadic groups contributed to this ingroup-outgroup mentality of human social functioning. Identifying with other members of our ingroup makes us naturally suspicious of the stranger. This evolutionary history makes revenge more explicable and even makes reconciliation and compromise appear misguided and dangerous.

3. Honor cultures and revenge. Honor cultures are characterized by exhibiting revenge in response to perceived insults and threats, often through violence, even when it is very dangerous to do so. Gangs are an example of honor cultures. Members seek to restore their honor and continue to fight to defend their pride even as threats escalate. From a psychological perspective, this can be confusing: why would people choose to compromise their safety and possessions for their reputation? Dr. Todd Shackelford found that cultures of honor develop in contexts where material resources are scarce and institutions are weak. This leads people to most value their reputation, as they believe it will promote their position in the group and ensure safety and security long-term.

4. Narcissism and revenge. Although being vengeful is not a disorder itself, people who have a high degree of narcissism are significantly more likely to engage in revenge. Dr. Leonie Grobbink and others found that the degree of narcissism of individuals is correlated with increased propensity to seek revenge. According to psychoanalytic theory, early childhood traumas are central to the development of narcissistic personality features. Cognitive theory focuses on distortions in our thinking that contribute to feeling threatened. When someone with narcissistic personality disorder is injured and engages in faulty patterns of thinking, they are at increased risk for experiencing feelings of revenge and acting on those desires to redress perceived wrongs. In fact, revenge is an intrapersonal phenomenon and the extent to which people need revenge has a certain degree of stability.

5. Revenge can be contagious. University of Maryland psychologist Michele Gelfand has studied the contagion of revenge - across people and time. When individuals identify with one another as being of the same group, an offense against one is an offense against everyone in the group. Conversely, outgroup members can be perceived as one and the same. If one member of the outgroup inflicts harm, all members of that same outgroup can be held accountable. Gelfand calls this identification and interchangeability of people "entitativity." In other words, I could respond to injuries that were inflicted on someone from my ingroup and seek revenge on the perpetrator or someone from their outgroup even though I have not directly been injured. Entitativity helps explain how conflicts can escalate quickly from the individual to the group level, even across generations.

There is no question that we do need to reckon with wrongdoing. But the psychological research on revenge would suggest that rising above the impulse of revenge to find other solutions offers at least the possibility of more lasting peace politically and personally.
Kathleen M. Pike, PhD is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Global Mental Health Program at the Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). For more information, please visit cugmhp.org or call 646.774.5308.
Venganza
Por Kathleen M. Pike
La historia también deja en claro que la venganza tiene un alto costo para nosotros como naciones y como individuos. ¿Entonces por qué lo hacemos? ¿Qué es la psicología de la venganza? y, ¿cuáles son algunas lecciones para hoy?

1. La psicología de la venganza. En esencia, la venganza se trata de infligir daño o lastimar a alguien para lograr una retribución por la lesión personal percibida o el mal sufrido. Por mucho que odiemos admitirlo, la venganza es uno de esos sentimientos intensos que surgen para cada ser humano. Todos hemos tenido la experiencia de disfrutar la fantasía de dar de su propia medicina a alguien que nos ha lastimado gravemente. La investigación en neurociencia muestra que la venganza se puede mapear en el cerebro. En los estudios de venganza, cuando los individuos son perjudicados y luego invitados a imaginar su venganza, se activa el núcleo caudado, que se sabe que procesa recompensas en el cerebro. Sí, el cerebro humano puede disfrutar simplemente imaginando venganza. Pero los efectos positivos son fugaces, y agridulces, en el mejor de los casos.

2. Fundamentos evolutivos de venganza. Michael McCullough, profesor de psicología de la Universidad de Miami, explica que el impulso de venganza evolucionó para disuadir de dañar a alguien en el futuro después de que esa persona ya nos haya impuesto daño en primer lugar. Según McCullough, el objetivo principal de la venganza es señalar un mensaje que cambiará el incentivo de las personas para dañarnos. Cuando exigimos venganza, nuestro malhechor aprenderá que su estrategia no está funcionando y nos dejará en paz. Es probable que nuestra ascendencia como pequeños grupos nómadas haya contribuido a esta mentalidad de grupo social fuera del grupo del funcionamiento social humano. Identificarnos con otros miembros de nuestro grupo interno nos hace sospechar naturalmente del extraño. Esta historia evolutiva hace que la venganza sea más explicable e incluso hace que la reconciliación y el compromiso parezcan equivocados y peligrosos..

3. Culturas del honor y venganza. Las culturas del honor se caracterizan por mostrar venganza en respuesta a los insultos y amenazas percibidos, a menudo a través de la violencia, incluso cuando es muy peligroso hacerlo. Las pandillas son un ejemplo de culturas de honor. Los miembros buscan restaurar su honor y continúan luchando para defender su orgullo, aun cuando las amenazas aumentan. Desde una perspectiva psicológica, esto puede ser confuso: ¿por qué las personas elegirían comprometer su seguridad y sus posesiones por su reputación? El Dr. Todd Shackelford descubrió que las culturas de honor se desarrollan en contextos donde los recursos materiales son escasos y las instituciones son débiles. Esto lleva a las personas a valorar más su reputación, ya que creen que promoverá su posición en el grupo y garantizará la seguridad a largo plazo.

4. Narcisismo y venganza. Aunque ser vengativo no es un trastorno en sí mismo, las personas que tienen un alto grado de narcisismo tienen muchas más probabilidades de vengarse. La Dra. Leonie Grobbink y otros descubrieron que el grado de narcisismo de los individuos se correlaciona con una mayor propensión a vengarse. Según la teoría psicoanalítica, los traumas de la primera infancia son fundamentales para el desarrollo de las características narcisistas de la personalidad. La teoría cognitiva se centra en las distorsiones en nuestro pensamiento que contribuyen a sentirse amenazado. Cuando alguien con trastorno de personalidad narcisista se lesiona y se involucra en patrones de pensamiento defectuosos, tiene un mayor riesgo de experimentar sentimientos de venganza y actuar de acuerdo con esos deseos de reparar los errores percibidos. De hecho, la venganza es un fenómeno intrapersonal y la medida en que las personas necesitan venganza tiene un cierto grado de estabilidad.

5. La venganza puede ser contagiosa. Michele Gelfand, psicóloga de la Universidad de Maryland, ha estudiado el contagio de la venganza, a través de las personas y el tiempo. Cuando los individuos se identifican entre sí como pertenecientes al mismo grupo, un delito contra uno es un delito contra todos en el grupo. Por el contrario, los miembros del grupo externo pueden ser percibidos como lo mismo. Si un miembro del grupo externo inflige daño, todos los miembros de ese mismo grupo externo pueden ser responsables. Gelfand llama a esta identificación e intercambiabilidad de personas "entitativity". En otras palabras, podría responder a las lesiones infligidas a alguien de mi grupo y buscar venganza contra el autor o alguien de su grupo externo a pesar de que no he sido herido directamente. La pasividad ayuda a explicar cómo los conflictos pueden escalar rápidamente desde el nivel individual al grupal, incluso a través de las generaciones.

No hay duda de que debemos tener en cuenta las irregularidades. Pero la investigación psicológica sobre la venganza sugeriría que superar el impulso de la venganza para encontrar otras soluciones ofrece al menos la posibilidad de una paz más duradera política y personalmente.
Kathleen M. Pike, PhD, es profesora de Psicología y directora del Centro Mundial de Salud de la Universidad Columbia (CUMC, por sus siglas en inglés). Para obtener más información, por favor visite cugmhp.org o llame al 646.774.5308.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By Kathleen M. Pike History also makes it eminently clear that revenge exacts a heavy toll - on us as nations and as individuals. So why do we do it? What is the psychology of revenge? And what are some lessons for today? 1. The psychology of revenge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Loom | Free Screen & Video Recording Software

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe | Summary & Analysis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe | Symbols

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe | Characters

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe | Plot Summary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe | Motifs

# data[].attributes.body
Text-level and word-level choices

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

# data[].attributes.body
Length:  15.47

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Cask of Amontillado (Edgar Allan Poe)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As seen on "American Masters" on PBS - March 22, 1995 (Season 9, Episode 4) First published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book, the "Cask of Amontillado" is a powerful tale of revenge. Montresor, the sinister narrator of this tale, pledges revenge upon Fortunato for an insult.

# data[].attributes.body
Length: 12.59

# data[].attributes.body
Length: 14.20 and in Spanish

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Edgar Allan Poe´s THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Adaptation of Poe´s tale about the revenge of Montresors on his friend Fortunato.

# data[].attributes.body
Length: 17.58

# data[].attributes.body
Length: 9 minutes and something

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Edgar A. Poe & Vincent Price: The Cask of Amontillado (I)

# data[].attributes.headline
Second to last part of The Cask of Amontillado (assigned 11/20).

# data[].attributes.subject
Second to last part of The Cask of Amontillado (assigned 11/20).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Loom | Free Screen & Video Recording Software

# data[].attributes.body
Poe and his famous raven.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Loom | Free Screen & Video Recording Software

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Loom | Free Screen & Video Recording Software

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Loom | Free Screen & Video Recording Software

# data[].attributes.headline
Short video:  Why should you read Edgar Allan Poe?

# data[].attributes.subject
Short video:  Why should you read Edgar Allan Poe?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why should you read Edgar Allan Poe? - Scott Peeples

# data[].attributes.body
Assignment options

# data[].attributes.body
Can you pair one of Poe's stories with a song you already know?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This post on songs influenced by Edgar Allan Poe is sponsored by Flatiron Books, publishers of His Hideous Heart, a collection of 13 of Edgar Allan Poe's most unsettling tales reimagined.

13 young adult authors... 13 heart-stopping tales... This collection will "delight longtime Poe fans just as much as readers who haven't read the classics" (Beth Revis).

By signing up you agree to our terms of use

Edgar Allan Poe's influence is so ingrained in our cultural psyche that he kickstarted an entirely new literary genre, became synonymous with goth fiction, and wove himself into the fabric of mainstream culture and pedagogic discourse alike. Y'all, my freshman year English class watched The Simpson's rendition of " The Raven " when we were covering Poe. (And it's so good!)

Poe struck a collective cultural chord. It's a given that he'd be hugely influential on musicians, too. His stories are atmospheric and take on a life beyond the pages they're captured in; his poetry is melodic and haunting. For the last century, musicians and composers have taken those well-known gothic tales and spun them into homages that reinvent Poe's work in a vast variety of musical genres.

If you have a favorite Poe work, plug in those headphones and check out the curated list of music it influenced below.

The Raven

Is there a more perfect gloomy, gothic, and eerie poem to set some weeping violins, dramatic piano, or thrashing guitars to? Quoth the Raven, "No" (or something like that). These The Raven -inspired songs will make you think of massive haunted manors, fog-choked graveyards, loneliness, and loss; the longer you listen, the more liable you'll be to throw a velvet-lined cloak over your shoulders and wander a drafty castle in the middle of the night, holding up a candelabra and looking for where the tap-tap-tapping is coming from.
Queen, "Nevermore" Alan Parsons Project, "The Raven" The Grave Digger, "The Raven" Utada Hikaru, "Kremlin Dusk" Tristiana, "My Lost Lenore" Edward W. Hardy, "Nevermore"
The Tell-Tale Heart

There are so many ways that thematic elements of "The Tell-Tale Heart" can be repurposed and reimagined, but the core of this story-the tattletale of a beating heart, signifying a physical or metaphorical end and the guilt that goes along with it-is ever present. Underneath the floorboards.
Soda Estereo, "Corazón Delator" Escape the Fate, "When I Go Out, I Want to Go Out On a Chariot of Fire"
The Pit and the Pendulum

For such a dramatic and dark tale, an equally dramatic listening experience is a must. Nightwish delivers.
Nightwish, "The Poet and the Pendulum"
The Black Cat

If you had to pick a musical genre to represent the harbinger of dastardly narrator ill deeds that is Pluto the cat, it has to be jazzy big band. Don't question it-just listen.
Buddy Morrow & His Orchestra, "The Black Cat"
Annabel Lee

Tragic love poems = tragic love songs, every time. Poe's last completed poem, and one of his most famous, is ripe for the picking with its rhythmic, woefully melancholy verses, and it translates beautifully to a variety of genres. These songs in particular will renew your appreciation for this sad and lovely Poe work.
Sarah Jarosz, "Annabel Lee" Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, "Annabel Lee" Stevie Nicks, "Annabel Lee"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
13 of the Best Songs Influenced by Edgar Allan Poe | Book Riot

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This post on songs influenced by Edgar Allan Poe is sponsored by Flatiron Books, publishers of His Hideous Heart , a collection of 13 of Edgar Allan Poe's most unsettling tales reimagined. 13 young adult authors... 13 heart-stopping tales... This collection will "delight longtime Poe fans just as much as readers who haven't read the classics" (Beth Revis).

# data[].attributes.body
Watch this video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe | Themes

# data[].attributes.body
Detailed explanations....

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Poe’s Short Stories: Themes | SparkNotes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A summary of Themes in Edgar Allan Poe's Poe’s Short Stories.

# data[].attributes.body
Death. A large portion of Poe's fiction includes musings on the nature of death and on questions about the afterlife. ...

Love. ...

Impermanence and uncertainty. ...

The subconscious self. ...

Nature. ...

The human imagination. ...

Hope and despair.

# data[].attributes.body
Funny! You'll understand after you read the story.

# data[].attributes.body
Full, original story

# data[].attributes.body
Full text with vocab definitions annotations AND simplified version

# data[].attributes.body
Full, original version

# data[].attributes.body
Simplified version

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Edgar Allan Poe's stature as a major figure in world literature is primarily based on his ingenious and profound short stories, poems, and critical theories, which established a highly influential rationale for the short form in both poetry and fiction. Regarded in literary histories and handbooks as the architect of the modern short story, Poe was also the principal forerunner of the "art for art's sake" movement in 19th-century European literature. Whereas earlier critics predominantly concerned themselves with moral or ideological generalities, Poe focused his criticism on the specifics of style and construction that contributed to a work's effectiveness or failure. In his own work, he demonstrated a brilliant command of language and technique as well as an inspired and original imagination. Poe's poetry and short stories greatly influenced the French Symbolists of the late 19th century, who in turn altered the direction of modern literature.

Poe's father and mother were professional actors. At the time of his birth in 1809, they were members of a repertory company in Boston. Before Poe was three years old both of his parents died, and he was raised in the home of John Allan, a prosperous exporter from Richmond, Virginia, who never legally adopted his foster son. As a boy, Poe attended the best schools available, and was admitted to the University of Virginia at Charlottesville in 1825. While there he distinguished himself academically but was forced to leave after less than a year because of bad debts and inadequate financial support from Allan. Poe's relationship with Allan disintegrated upon his return to Richmond in 1827, and soon after Poe left for Boston, where he enlisted in the army and also published his first poetry collection, Tamerlane, and Other Poems. The volume went unnoticed by readers and reviewers, and a second collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, received only slightly more attention when it appeared in 1829. That same year Poe was honorably discharged from the army, having attained the rank of regimental sergeant major, and was then admitted to the United States Military Academy at West Point. However, because Allan would neither provide his foster son with sufficient funds to maintain himself as a cadet nor give the consent necessary to resign from the Academy, Poe gained a dismissal by ignoring his duties and violating regulations. He subsequently went to New York City, where Poems, his third collection of verse, was published in 1831, and then to Baltimore, where he lived at the home of his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm.

Over the next few years Poe's first short stories appeared in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier and his "MS. Found in a Bottle" won a cash prize for best story in the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. Nevertheless, Poe was still not earning enough to live independently, nor did Allan's death in 1834 provide him with an inheritance. The following year, however, his financial problems were temporarily alleviated when he accepted an editorship at The Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, bringing with him his aunt and his 12-year-old cousin Virginia, whom he married in 1836. The Southern Literary Messenger was the first of several journals Poe would direct over the next 10 years and through which he rose to prominence as a leading man of letters in America. Poe made himself known not only as a superlative author of poetry and fiction, but also as a literary critic whose level of imagination and insight had hitherto been unapproached in American literature. While Poe's writings gained attention in the late 1830s and early 1840s, the profits from his work remained meager, and he supported himself by editing Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City. After his wife's death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe became involved in a number of romantic affairs. It was while he prepared for his second marriage that Poe, for reasons unknown, arrived in Baltimore in late September of 1849. On October 3, he was discovered in a state of semi-consciousness; he died four days later without regaining the necessary lucidity to explain what had happened during the last days of his life.

Poe's most conspicuous contribution to world literature derives from the analytical method he practiced both as a creative author and as a critic of the works of his contemporaries. His self-declared intention was to formulate strictly artistic ideals in a milieu that he thought overly concerned with the utilitarian value of literature, a tendency he termed the "heresy of the Didactic." While Poe's position includes the chief requisites of pure aestheticism, his emphasis on literary formalism was directly linked to his philosophical ideals: through the calculated use of language one may express, though always imperfectly, a vision of truth and the essential condition of human existence. Poe's theory of literary creation is noted for two central points: first, a work must create a unity of effect on the reader to be considered successful; second, the production of this single effect should not be left to the hazards of accident or inspiration, but should to the minutest detail of style and subject be the result of rational deliberation on the part of the author. In poetry, this single effect must arouse the reader's sense of beauty, an ideal that Poe closely associated with sadness, strangeness, and loss; in prose, the effect should be one revelatory of some truth, as in "tales of ratiocination" or works evoking "terror, or passion, or horror."

Aside from a common theoretical basis, there is a psychological intensity that is characteristic of Poe's writings, especially the tales of horror that comprise his best and best-known works. These stories-which include "The Black Cat," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Tell-Tale Heart"-are often told by a first-person narrator, and through this voice Poe probes the workings of a character's psyche. This technique foreshadows the psychological explorations of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the school of psychological realism. In his Gothic tales, Poe also employed an essentially symbolic, almost allegorical method which gives such works as "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "Ligeia" an enigmatic quality that accounts for their enduring interest and links them with the symbolical works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. The influence of Poe's tales may be seen in the work of later writers, including Ambrose Bierce and H.P. Lovecraft, who belong to a distinct tradition of horror literature initiated by Poe. In addition to his achievement as creator of the modern horror tale, Poe is also credited with parenting two other popular genres: science fiction and the detective story. In such works as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall" and "Von Kempelen and His Discovery," Poe took advantage of the fascination for science and technology that emerged in the early 19th century to produce speculative and fantastic narratives which anticipate a type of literature that did not become widely practiced until the 20th century. Similarly, Poe's three tales of ratiocination-"The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter," and "The Mystery of Marie Roget"-are recognized as the models which established the major characters and literary conventions of detective fiction, specifically the amateur sleuth who solves a crime that has confounded the authorities and whose feats of deductive reasoning are documented by an admiring associate. Just as Poe influenced many succeeding authors and is regarded as an ancestor of such major literary movements as Symbolism and Surrealism, he was also influenced by earlier literary figures and movements. In his use of the demonic and the grotesque, Poe evidenced the impact of the stories of E.T.A. Hoffman and the Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe, while the despair and melancholy in much of his writing reflects an affinity with the Romantic movement of the early 19th century. It was Poe's particular genius that in his work he gave consummate artistic form both to his personal obsessions and those of previous literary generations, at the same time creating new forms which provided a means of expression for future artists.

While Poe is most often remembered for his short fiction, his first love as a writer was poetry, which he began writing during his adolescence. His early verse reflects the influence of such English romantics as Lord Byron, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, yet foreshadows his later poetry which demonstrates a subjective outlook and surreal, mystic vision. "Tamerlane" and "Al Aaraaf" exemplify Poe's evolution from the portrayal of Byronic heroes to the depiction of journeys within his own imagination and subconscious. The former piece, reminiscent of Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," recounts the life and adventures of a 14th-century Mongol conqueror; the latter poem portrays a dreamworld where neither good nor evil permanently reside and where absolute beauty can be directly discerned. In other poems-" To Helen," "Lenore," and " The Raven" in particular-Poe investigates the loss of ideal beauty and the difficulty in regaining it. These pieces are usually narrated by a young man who laments the untimely death of his beloved. "To Helen" is a three stanza lyric that has been called one of the most beautiful love poems in the English language. The subject of the work is a woman who becomes, in the eyes of the narrator, a personification of the classical beauty of ancient Greece and Rome. "Lenore" presents ways in which the dead are best remembered, either by mourning or celebrating life beyond earthly boundaries. In "The Raven," Poe successfully unites his philosophical and aesthetic ideals. In this psychological piece, a young scholar is emotionally tormented by a raven's ominous repetition of "Nevermore" in answer to his question about the probability of an afterlife with his deceased lover. Charles Baudelaire noted in his introduction to the French edition of "The Raven": "It is indeed the poem of the sleeplessness of despair; it lacks nothing: neither the fever of ideas, nor the violence of colors, nor sickly reasoning, nor drivelling terror, nor even the bizarre gaiety of suffering which makes it more terrible." Poe also wrote poems that were intended to be read aloud. Experimenting with combinations of sound and rhythm, he employed such technical devices as repetition, parallelism, internal rhyme, alliteration, and assonance to produce works that are unique in American poetry for their haunting, musical quality. In "The Bells," for example, the repetition of the word "bells" in various structures accentuates the unique tonality of the different types of bells described in the poem.

While his works were not conspicuously acclaimed during his lifetime, Poe did earn due respect as a gifted fiction writer, poet, and man of letters, and occasionally he achieved a measure of popular success, especially following the appearance of " The Raven." After his death, however, the history of his critical reception becomes one of dramatically uneven judgments and interpretations. This state of affairs was initiated by Poe's one-time friend and literary executor R.W. Griswold, who, in a libelous obituary notice in the New York Tribune bearing the byline "Ludwig," attributed the depravity and psychological aberrations of many of the characters in Poe's fiction to Poe himself. In retrospect, Griswold's vilifications seem ultimately to have elicited as much sympathy as censure with respect to Poe and his work, leading subsequent biographers of the late 19th century to defend, sometimes too devotedly, Poe's name. It was not until the 1941 biography by A.H. Quinn that a balanced view was provided of Poe, his work, and the relationship between the author's life and his imagination. Nevertheless, the identification of Poe with the murderers and madmen of his works survived and flourished in the 20th century, most prominently in the form of psychoanalytical studies such as those of Marie Bonaparte and Joseph Wood Krutch. Added to the controversy over the sanity, or at best the maturity of Poe (Paul Elmer More called him "the poet of unripe boys and unsound men"), was the question of the value of Poe's works as serious literature. At the forefront of Poe's detractors were such eminent figures as Henry James, Aldous Huxley, and T.S. Eliot, who dismissed Poe's works as juvenile, vulgar, and artistically debased; in contrast, these same works have been judged to be of the highest literary merit by such writers as Bernard Shaw and William Carlos Williams. Complementing Poe's erratic reputation among English and American critics is the more stable, and generally more elevated opinion of critics elsewhere in the world, particularly in France. Following the extensive translations and commentaries of Charles Baudelaire in the 1850s, Poe's works were received with a peculiar esteem by French writers, most profoundly those associated with the late 19th-century movement of Symbolism, who admired Poe's transcendent aspirations as a poet; the 20th-century movement of Surrealism, which valued Poe's bizarre and apparently unruled imagination; and such figures as Paul Valéry, who found in Poe's theories and thought an ideal of supreme rationalism. In other countries, Poe's works have enjoyed a similar regard, and numerous studies have been written tracing the influence of the American author on the international literary scene, especially in Russia, Japan, Scandinavia, and Latin America.

Today, Poe is recognized as one of the foremost progenitors of modern literature, both in its popular forms, such as horror and detective fiction, and in its more complex and self-conscious forms, which represent the essential artistic manner of the 20th century. In contrast to earlier critics who viewed the man and his works as one, criticism of the past 25 years has developed a view of Poe as a detached artist who was more concerned with displaying his virtuosity than with expressing his soul, and who maintained an ironic rather than an autobiographical relationship to his writings. While at one time critics such as Yvor Winters wished to remove Poe from literary history, his works remain integral to any conception of modernism in world literature. Herbert Marshall McLuhan wrote in an essay entitled "Edgar Poe's Tradition": "While the New England dons primly turned the pages of Plato and Buddha beside a tea-cozy, and while Browning and Tennyson were creating a parochial fog for the English mind to relax in, Poe never lost contact with the terrible pathos of his time. Coevally with Baudelaire, and long before Conrad and Eliot, he explored the heart of darkness."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Edgar Allan Poe's stature as a major figure in world literature is primarily based on his ingenious and profound short stories, poems, and critical theories, which established a highly influential rationale for the short form in both poetry and fiction. Regarded in literary histories and handbooks...