edgar allan poe biography essay

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer and critic famous for his dark, mysterious poems and stories, including “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

Who Was Edgar Allan Poe?

Quick facts, army and west point, writing career as a critic and poet, poems: “the raven” and “annabel lee”, short stories, legacy and museum.

FULL NAME: Edgar Allan Poe BORN: January 19, 1809 DIED: October 7, 1849 BIRTHPLACE: Boston, Massachusetts SPOUSE: Virginia Clemm Poe (1836-1847) ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn

Edgar Allan Poe was born Edgar Poe on January 19, 1809, in Boston. Edgar never really knew his biological parents: Elizabeth Arnold Poe, a British actor, and David Poe Jr., an actor who was born in Baltimore. His father left the family early in Edgar’s life, and his mother died from tuberculosis when he was only 2.

Separated from his brother, William, and sister, Rosalie, Poe went to live with his foster parents, John and Frances Allan, in Richmond, Virginia. John was a successful tobacco merchant there. Edgar and Frances seemed to form a bond, but he had a more difficult relationship with John.

By age 13, Poe was a prolific poet, but his literary talents were discouraged by his headmaster and by John, who preferred that young Edgar follow him in the family business. Preferring poetry over profits, Poe reportedly wrote poems on the back of some of Allan’s business papers.

Money was also an issue between Poe and John. Poe went to the University of Virginia in 1826, where he excelled in his classes. However, he didn’t receive enough money from John to cover all of his costs. Poe turned to gambling to cover the difference but ended up in debt.

He returned home only to face another personal setback—his neighbor and fiancée Sarah Elmira Royster had become engaged to someone else. Heartbroken and frustrated, Poe moved to Boston.

In 1827, around the time he published his first book, Poe joined the U.S. Army. Two years later, he learned that his mother, Frances, was dying of tuberculosis, but by the time he returned to Richmond, she had already died.

While in Virginia, Poe and his father briefly made peace with each other, and John helped Poe get an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Poe excelled at his studies at West Point, but he was kicked out after a year for his poor handling of his duties.

During his time at West Point, Poe had fought with John, who had remarried without telling him. Some have speculated that Poe intentionally sought to be expelled to spite his father, who eventually cut ties with Poe.

After leaving West Point, Poe published his third book and focused on writing full-time. He traveled around in search of opportunity, living in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Richmond. In 1834, John Allan died, leaving Poe out of his will, but providing for an illegitimate child Allan had never met.

Poe, who continued to struggle living in poverty, got a break when one of his short stories won a contest in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter . He began to publish more short stories and, in 1835, landed an editorial position with the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. Poe developed a reputation as a cut-throat critic, writing vicious reviews of his contemporaries. His scathing critiques earned him the nickname the “Tomahawk Man.”

His tenure at the magazine proved short, however. Poe’s aggressive reviewing style and sometimes combative personality strained his relationship with the publication, and he left the magazine in 1837. His problems with alcohol also played a role in his departure, according to some reports.

Poe went on to brief stints at Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine , Graham’s Magazine , as well as The Broadway Journal , and he also sold his work to Alexander’s Weekly Messenger , among other journals.

In 1844, Poe moved to New York City. There, he published a news story in The New York Sun about a balloon trip across the Atlantic Ocean that he later revealed to be a hoax. His stunt grabbed attention, but it was his publication of “The Raven,” in 1845, that made Poe a literary sensation.

That same year, Poe found himself under attack for his stinging criticisms of fellow poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . Poe claimed that Longfellow, a widely popular literary figure, was a plagiarist, which resulted in a backlash against Poe.

Despite his success and popularity as a writer, Poe continued to struggle financially, and he advocated for higher wages for writers and an international copyright law.

Poe self-published his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems , in 1827. His second poetry collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems , was published in 1829.

As a critic at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond from 1835 to 1837, Poe published some of his own works in the magazine, including two parts of his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym . Later on came poems such as “Ulalume” and “The Bells.”

“The Raven”

Poe’s poem “The Raven,” published in 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror , is considered among the best-known poems in American literature and one of the best of Poe’s career. An unknown narrator laments the demise of his great love Lenore and is visited by a raven, who insistently repeats one word: “Nevermore.” In the work, which consists of 18 six-line stanzas, Poe explored some of his common themes: death and loss.

“Annabel Lee”

This lyric poem again explores Poe’s themes of death and loss and might have been written in memory of his beloved wife, Virginia, who died two years prior its publication. The poem was published on October 9, 1849, two days after Poe’s death, in the New York Tribune .

In late 1830s, Poe published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque , a collection of short stories. It contained several of his most spine-tingling tales, including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “Ligeia,” and “William Wilson.”

In 1841, Poe launched the new genre of detective fiction with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” His literary innovations earned him the nickname “Father of the Detective Story.” A writer on the rise, he won a literary prize in 1843 for “The Gold Bug,” a suspenseful tale of secret codes and hunting treasure.

“The Black Cat”

Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” was published in 1843 in The Saturday Evening Post . In it, the narrator, a one-time animal lover, becomes an alcoholic who begins abusing his wife and black cat. By the macabre story’s end, the narrator observes his own descent into madness as he kills his wife, a crime his black cat reports to the police. The story was later included in the 1845 short story collection, Tales by Edgar Allan Poe .

Later in his career, Poe continued to work in different forms, examining his own methodology and writing in general in several essays, including “The Philosophy of Composition,” “The Poetic Principle,” and “The Rationale of Verse.” He also produced the thrilling tale, “The Cask of Amontillado.”

From 1831 to 1835, Poe lived in Baltimore, where his father was born, with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia. He began to devote his attention to Virginia; his cousin became his literary inspiration as well as his love interest. The couple married in 1836 when she was only 13 years old and he was 27.

In 1847, at the age of 24—the same age when Poe’s mother and brother also died—Virginia passed away from tuberculosis. Poe was overcome by grief following her death, and although he continued to work, he suffered from poor health and struggled financially until his death in 1849.

Poe died on October 7, 1849, in Baltimore at age 40.

His final days remain somewhat of a mystery. Poe left Richmond on ten days earlier, on September 27, and was supposedly on his way to Philadelphia. On October 3, he was found in Baltimore in great distress. Poe was taken to Washington College Hospital, where he died four days later. His last words were “Lord, help my poor soul.”

At the time, it was said that Poe died of “congestion of the brain.” But his actual cause of death has been the subject of endless speculation. Some experts believe that alcoholism led to his demise while others offer up alternative theories. Rabies, epilepsy, and carbon monoxide poisoning are just some of the conditions thought to have led to the great writer’s death.

Shortly after his passing, Poe’s reputation was badly damaged by his literary adversary Rufus Griswold. Griswold, who had been sharply criticized by Poe, took his revenge in his obituary of Poe, portraying the gifted yet troubled writer as a mentally deranged drunkard and womanizer. He also penned the first biography of Poe, which helped cement some of these misconceptions in the public’s minds.

Although Poe never had financial success in his lifetime, he has become one of America’s most enduring writers. His works are as compelling today as they were more than a century ago. An innovative and imaginative thinker, Poe crafted stories and poems that still shock, surprise, and move modern readers. His dark work influenced writers including Charles Baudelaire , Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Stephane Mallarme.

The Baltimore home where Poe stayed from 1831 to 1835 with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter, Poe’s cousin and future wife Virginia, is now a museum. The Edgar Allan Poe House offers a self-guided tour featuring exhibits on Poe’s foster parents, his life and death in Baltimore, and the poems and short stories he wrote while living there, as well as memorabilia including his chair and desk.

• The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.
• Lord, help my poor soul.
• Sound loves to revel near a summer night.
• But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
• They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
• The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
• With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence; they must not—they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.
• And now—have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart.
• All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
• I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active—not more happy—nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
• [I]f you wish to forget anything upon the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
• Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

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Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston. Poe’s father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and, later, to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave the university when Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts.

Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan deteriorated. In 1827, Poe moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems  (George Redway), was published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems  (Hatch & Dunning). Neither volume received significant critical or public attention. Following his Army service, Poe was admitted to the United States Military Academy, but he was again forced to leave for lack of financial support. He then moved into the home of his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter, Virginia, in Baltimore.

Poe began to sell short stories to magazines at around this time, and, in 1835, he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, where he moved with his aunt and cousin Virginia. In 1836, he married Virginia, who was thirteen years old at the time. Over the next ten years, Poe would edit a number of literary journals including the Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City. It was during these years that he established himself as a poet, a short story writer, and an editor. He published some of his best-known stories and poems, including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Raven.” After Virginia’s death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe’s lifelong struggle with depression and alcoholism worsened. He returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of “acute congestion of the brain.” Evidence by medical practitioners who reopened the case has shown that Poe may have been suffering from rabies.

Poe’s work as an editor, poet, and critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit him as the “architect” of the modern short story. He was also one of the first critics to focus primarily on the effect of style and structure in a literary work; as such, he has been seen as a forerunner to the “art for art’s sake” movement. French Symbolists such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud claimed him as a literary precursor. Charles  Baudelaire spent nearly fourteen years translating Poe into French. Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature.

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Edgar Allan Poe by Richard Kopley LAST REVIEWED: 05 January 2022 LAST MODIFIED: 27 October 2016 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0050

Born to a gifted actress and a less talented actor, Edgar Allan Poe (b. 1809–d. 1849) was orphaned in 1811 and taken in by the Allans of Richmond. Over time, tensions with John Allan grew, culminating with young Poe’s withdrawal from the University of Virginia in 1826 for incurring gambling debts and leading to his 1827 voyage to Boston. Poe published Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), then joined the army, eventually serving as a cadet at West Point, and, after deliberately causing his own court-martial, lived in Baltimore with his aunt Maria Clemm, his cousin Virginia, and his brother, Henry (who died in 1831). Having published Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829) and Poems (1831), Poe shifted to fiction, and in 1835 he became an editor of Richmond’s Southern Literary Messenger . He published short stories, poems, and criticism, and he began to write his novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym . Owing to his drinking, however, he lost his job in 1837 and ventured, with his new wife, Virginia, and his aunt (now his mother-in-law), to New York City—where he published Pym (1838)—and then to Philadelphia. In 1842 Virginia developed tuberculosis, his drinking intensified, and his poverty continued—indeed, he declared bankruptcy late that year. Yet, also during the Philadelphia period, he served as a magazine editor and wrote some of his greatest stories. His collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in 1840, and he soon thereafter created the modern detective story. In 1844 Poe and his family moved to New York City, where he achieved his greatest fame with “The Raven” in 1845. Also, he published The Raven and Other Poems (1845) and Tales (1845). But his drinking interfered with his editing the Broadway Journal , and he became involved in literary and legal conflicts. He and his family moved to Fordham, and Virginia died there in January 1847. In 1848 he published his cosmological prose-poem, Eureka , and in 1849 he returned to Richmond and became engaged to a wealthy widow, Elmira Royster Shelton, whom he had known in his youth. But he clearly was unhappy with the arrangement. Exactly what happened in Baltimore is not known, but on 3 October 1849 he was found inebriated and “rather the worse for wear”; he died in the Washington College Hospital four days later. Rufus Griswold, his literary executor, wrote an infamously hostile obituary, from which Poe’s reputation has never fully recovered. Certainly, Poe had his share of mortal frailties, but he also created immortal works of literature.

A wide variety of full-length studies of Poe are available; a selection is offered here. The introductory works are Fisher 2008 , Hammond 1983 , Hayes 2009 , and Symons 1978 . All are written with ease, brevity, and clarity. The most rewarding for the new student of Poe is surely Fisher 2008 . The ambitious full-length studies are Allen 1934 , Hoffman 1972 , Quinn 1998 , and Silverman 1991 . For the authority of its research, Silverman 1991 is clearly the book to read. But Hoffman 1972 , with its lively, idiosyncratic interpretation of Poe’s writings, is a delight. And Allen 1934 and Quinn 1998 furnish important and interesting foundational work, which helped shape decades of Poe studies.

Allen, Hervey. Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe . New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1934.

If its prose is sometimes a bit overheated and the detail occasionally imagined, this volume, which updates and corrects the two-volume 1926 version, is still a worthwhile, spirited, and engaging presentation of Poe’s life.

Fisher, Benjamin F. The Cambridge Introduction to Edgar Allan Poe . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511816888

Slender, clear, even-handed, accessible introduction to Poe. This is a very good place to start for its brief and cogent considerations of his life, his context, his work, and its reception.

Hammond, J. R. The Edgar Allan Poe Companion . London: Macmillan, 1983.

A convenient introduction, featuring a brief biography, an analysis of his works in various genres, and handy orienting tools—a Poe dictionary and a listing of people and places in Poe’s works.

Hayes, Kevin J. Edgar Allan Poe . London: Reaktion, 2009.

This brief, recent account of Poe’s life opens with his influence and his participation in literary contests and then takes a more traditional chronological trajectory. The attitude conveyed is a mixture of pity and admiration.

Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe . 1st ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972.

Lively, personal, compelling study of Poe and his works, written con brio . The author offers a series of jaunty and provocative close readings with attention to a range of matters, from the hoaxical to the heroic.

Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography . Foreword by Shawn Rosenheim. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

The classic biography of Poe, written with ample research and evident affection. It includes a generous sampling of the letters and a deft blending of the life and the work. Sympathetic and appreciative, this volume continues to be a substantial contribution. Originally published in 1941.

Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar Allan Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance . New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Thoroughly researched standard biography of Poe, readable and reliable. It ably relates the life to the work but sometimes offers restrained admiration. The approach is psychoanalytic, with a thoughtful emphasis on Poe’s lifelong mourning.

Symons, Julian. The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe . New York: Harper & Row, 1978.

This work offers two separate overviews—one of Poe’s life and one of Poe’s works. The writing is straightforward, the interpretation tilted toward the psychoanalytic and without great regard for the academic.

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Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography (1941), title page and table of contents

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Title page:

Edgar Allan Poe

A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY

By ARTHUR HOBSON QUINN

D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY INCORPORATED

New York 1941 London

Table of Contents

Table of illustrations.

Illustrations

Arthur Hobson Quinn (1875-1960) was a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. His particular interest was early American drama. He was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the university, 1912-1922. (Quinn became a professor emeritus in 1945, although he continued to lecture and serve on various committees until his official retirement in 1954. He married Helen McKee in 1904. She died in 1962.)

The text for this electronic version of this book was initially prepared as HTML by Chris Aruffo . It has subsequently been revised for XHTML/CSS and to follow our own formatting preferences. Pagination has been added, and additional proofreading and correction has also been applied. As appropriate, clarifcations or updates to Quinn's text have been provided as notes at the bottom of each page by Jeffrey A. Savoye. One curious issue that has apparently escaped general notice is that the edition of 1941 contains a number of small but certain errors, which were corrected when the biography was reprinted in 1942. (The 1998 reprint by Johns Hopkins Press uses this corrected edition, although whether this was intentional or merely fortituous is not known as no comment to this effect is made on the copyright page or in the Foreword.) As an example, on pages 194 and 197, Quinn refers to the “ Messenger contest” when he means the “ Visiter contest.” All of the corrections from the later edition are present in the text provided here, with comments as appropriate at the end of each section. A sixth edition was reprinted by Appleton-Century-Croft in 1963.

In the original table of contents, the titles of the poems “To Helen” and “For Annie” are not given in quotation marks, an inconsistency that has been editorially adjusted in this presentation. Technically, the titles of books and magazines should be italicized rather than given in quotation marks, but that feature of this table of contents has been allowed to stand. (Indeed, in the individual chapters, the titles are given as italicized, and without quotation marks.)

In the original list of illustrations, a hyphen appears in “Marriage-Bond” for the illustration on page 23. As this word has been hyphenated no where else in the book, including the caption as it appears under the illustration itself, the hyphen is presumed to be a typographical error and has been removed here.

[S:1 - EAP:ACB, 1941)] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Papers - Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography - Title page and contents

113 Edgar Allan Poe Essay Topics & Examples

In case you’re searching for Edgar Allan Poe research paper topics to write about his life, death, and legacy, check the list. Our team has gathered ideas on the author and gothic literature below.

🏆 Best Edgar Allan Poe Essay Topics & Examples

👍 interesting edgar allan poe research paper topics, 💡 most interesting edgar allan poe topics to write about, ❓ research questions about edgar allan poe.

• The Tell-Tale Heart Psychological Analysis & Critique The outstanding character in the tale, who is also the narrator, attracts a lot of attention from the readers. The narrator forms the basis of the tale.
• Literary Devices in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe As such, Montresor finds his companion’s “transgression” worthy of the cruelest death, and believes that his cause is so right that he deserves to get away with it. Hyperbole There is a sense of this […]
• Edgar Allan Poe: The Style of Fictional Works Minister D walked in and saw the contents of the letter, produced another copy that almost looked like the stolen one, and placed it next to the important letter.
• “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe He entombs the corpse in the basement of his house, and when the police unexpectedly show up at his house, he inadvertently leads them to the corpse.
• “Annabel Lee” and “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe Although the plot is different in each of these poems, both Annabel Lee and The Raven share the themes of death and lost love, as well as the symbolic language.
• The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: The Role of the Narrator The role of the narrator of the story The Fall of the House of Usher is great indeed; his rationality and his ability to represent the events from the side of an immediate participant of […]
• Edgar Allan Poe – American Literature The main themes that are evident in his work are the themes of death and love. He speaks of a chilling wind from the sky that emerged resulting in the death of her wife.
• The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Poe This metaphor is necessary to show that the feeling of guilt distorts his perception of reality. This is one of the details that can be distinguished.
• Edgar Allan Poe’s Story “The Black Cat” For instance, when the main character looked at the image of the cat on the wall, he saw it as “gigantic”; however, whether the size of the animal was an expression of paranormal or the […]
• Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Literary Career Edgar died in Baltimore and the cause of his death was not clear. Edgar, in his element, overcame challenges and established a literary legacy that has stood the test of time.
• “The Fall of the House of Usher” & “The Cask of Amontillado”: Summaries, Settings, and Main Themes As the narration progresses, fear arises in the reader or viewer, and finally, something horrific happens.”The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Cask of the Amontillado” share all of the features above, as […]
• The Single Effect in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado The very first words uttered by the author at the start of the story carried the hook necessary to reel the reader into the story with the desired effect.
• Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe Literature Analysis He tries to justify his actions, and show that he is not a bad person. Most importantly, he tries to show that he is not a mad man.
• Literature Symbols in “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe In spite of the fact that there are many symbols of different types in Poe’s “The Raven”, such symbols of darkness and depression as December, the raven, the Night’s Plutonian shore, and the repetition of […]
• “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe Analysis A poem that deals with family relationships and explain the poem’s meaning The poem is heavily based on the relationship between the narrator and Lenore with their affection being the subject of the whole poem.
• The “Eldorado” Poem Analysis by Edgar Allan Poe The structure of the poem is AABCCB. Edgar Allan Poe vastly uses metaphors and sight sensory in the poem.
• Edgar Allan Poe: ”The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” In this discourse two of his famous short stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are studied in an attempt to better understand the use of symbolism, the literary tool of irony, and […]
• The Poem “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe The beginning of the poem reveals the narrator’s feelings toward Annabel Lee, determining the theme and the mood of the verse: “a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee; […]
• “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry Analysis It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with […]
• Inside the Narrator’s Mind: “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe It is significantly the working of the inner self or the perpetual threat of the unconscious to the conscious that leads the protagonist to the ultimate confession of the crime even when he is not […]
• Edgar Allan Poe: Interpretation of “The Raven” One of the suggestions that dominate Poe’s talent in writing “The Raven” was the succession of terrible events the author encountered in his life.
• Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Man in the Crowd” Story The structure of the tale, its manner of narration, and the minimal number of main characters are only some of the features that make “The Man in the Crowd” one of the most memorable short […]
• Imagery Use in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe The story utilizes graphical language and imagery in the development of a sense of deceptive and persuasive nature and circumstances in the expansion of the symbolic approach of sustaining a condition of suspense. The imagery […]
• The Investigation of Ethical Issues in The Tell-Tale Heart and The Pond The secondary problem is related to an ethical dilemma with regards to the responsibility of the husband to provide and care for the family.
• Revenge Theme in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe He, therefore, decides to seek revenge, but he wants to be careful in order not to risk his life. Fortunato seems to be fond of wine against Montresor, and he decides to use this as […]
• “The Black Cat” Short Story by Edgar Allan Poe The purpose of the short story has long been a subject of debate.”The Black Cat,” while having some characteristics of the horror genre, presents a psychoanalytical approach to the mind of a psychopath, a scrutiny […]
• Edgar Allan Poe’s Views on Madness in “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” The lesson that can be learned through the interface of this Poe’s short story is that no one can be trusted due to the lack of background information and deceptive practices.
• Analysis of “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe After having lost his cat when a fire broke in his house, he felt a great need for another pet, same as that of Pluto, his pet cat.”This, then, was the very creature of which […]
• “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe: Poem Analysis Expecting the sound to be caused by the wind, the speaker opens the window, through which a raven flies into the room.
• Edgar Allan Poe’s Life, Poems, Short Stories The recognition of his works is based mainly on the uniqueness of the themes and characters the author created, as well as his excellent command of the language and exceptional imagery and style.
• “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe Literature Analysis Although “The Fall of the House of Usher” is traditionally believed to be a timeless horror story and a representation of the deepest human fears, it can also be viewed both as a product of […]
• Montressor in The Cask of Amontillado In addition, Montressor said that he was a friend of Fortunato but he seemed to have acted out of character when he assumed the habits and characteristics of a cold blooded killer.
• Edgar Allan Poe: Literary Devices and Their Meaning The purpose of his style, ornate and yet concise, of the grotesque characters, the growing tension in the narrative is “the greatest possible effect on his readers”.
• “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe The neighbors who heard the scuffle that ensued and went to the ladies house gave evidence to the police, and in as much as most of them agree on a great extent to the events […]
• “Annabel Lee” the Work by Edgar Allen Poe The narrative description of the elegy expresses the narrator’s undying love for ‘Annabel Lee’ detailing a love which had originated many a year ago in the unidentified ‘kingdom by the sea’.
• Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe portrays the Usher family as struggling to survive albeit in a gloomy manner that involves degradation, disease, and death.”The Fall of the House of Usher” is […]
• Gothic Romanticism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Nathaniel Hawthorn’s “The Birthmark” In the film “The Black Swan” directed by Darren Aronofsky, Nina struggles to fit into the ultimate role of the play “The Swan Lake”, as the Black Swan, even though she is comfortable playing the […]
• The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) This section tackles the main characters of the story and as aforementioned, the narrator and the old man are the only central characters in the story.
• Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado Although the revelation of the character of Montressor was done indirectly, the fact that he was also the narrator of the story enabled readers to have access to his thoughts and feelings.
• Edgar Allen Poe’s Influence on Hitchcock From the above discussion, it can be said that Hitchcock’s work was greatly influenced by the work of Poe particularly in building the audience’s suspense and manipulating their attention.
• Irony in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe As the atmosphere of gaiety during the carnival changes to the horror from the catacombs beneath Montresor’s palazzo the reader ascertains that the carnival was a prelude created by the author to admit the drastic […]
• “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Allan Edgar Poe This provides us with the clue, as to the discursive significance of the old man’s eye, as one of the story’s foremost motifs.
• “Annabel Lee” Multi Rhythmic Poem by Edgar A. Poe Therefore, the author’s works created a powerful impact on the establishment of a connection between content and literary form. Thus, Poe’s writings possess the power to show the links between a concept and a form […]
• Literary Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” The poem is imbued with a melancholy mood, which is stated in the first lines of the work. This is the main point of the poem.
• Literary Approaches in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia” In this story, the protagonist, whose wife was Ligeia, tells of the happiness he found in his marriage to her before her untimely death.
• “The Raven” Poem by Edgar Allen Poe The raven’s “Nevermore” throughout the poem is a repetition that enhances the poem’s lyrical mood and emphasizes the main character’s hopelessness.
• Edgar Allan Poe: Brief Biography Sublime’s exploration of the darkest sides of the human soul and psyche has contributed greatly to the development of the horror genre.
• The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe Ideally, using the subjective understanding of Poe’s work, it is possible to evaluate some of the qualities of the story. At the same time, the setting of the story creates a lot of suspense for […]
• Edgar Allan Poe’s Life From Primary Sources I had indeed, nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure when I found one in the death of my wife [in 1847]. In the death of what was my life, then, I receive a […]
• Conciseness in “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe The main arguments towards the development of the contemporary short story will be discussed in this essay, and the similarities between these visions and the statements in “The Tell-Tale Heart” will be described.
• Epilogue to “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe It is that the murder is a reason for the fifty-two years-old disappearance of the respected Fortunato, and the Montresor’s guild is undeniable”.
• “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe The plot is told from the first person as the pronoun “I” is used and the story is told in the past tense.
• The Rejection in the Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe The main character depicts his nervousness and the feeling of fear and anger caused by the old man’s vulture eye. He thinks that the police are simply making a mockery of his horror and points […]
• The Gothic-Romantic Story, “Ligeia” by Edgar Allan Poe It is also known that vampires typically rest during the day only to rise in the light of the moon. Thus, to my mind, the image of Poe’s Ligeia is strongly associated with a vampire […]
• Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” Review The tension intensifies with every stanza till the third one from the end after which the narrator understands the senselessness of the situation in searching for the answers for his questions in the raven’s “nevermore”.
• Edgar Poe and “The Cask of Amontillado” On the day of the carnival Montresor goes looking for Fortunato and finds him a bit tipsy and it is then that he tells him of how he had acquired a rare kind of amontillado […]
• Alfred Hitchcock and Edgar Allan Poe: Synthesized Approach There are certain commonalities between the artistic and symbolic representations of both writers/directors, especially in their representation of the madness and paranoia that exists in the world when people are placed in isolation and the […]
• Narration and Symbolism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” The narrator of the story performs the role of the main rhetorical device that ensures the disclosure of the main theme of the story.
• Gothic Romanticism of Edgar Allen Poe When the thought of today, the nineteenth-century writer Edgar Allan Poe is remembered as the master of the short story and the psychological thriller.
• Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher In particular, we may analyze such novellas as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
• Jury Defense and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe As a member of the jury sitting in on the trial of Montressor, I feel it is necessary for me to explain the reasons why the jury came to the conclusion it did.
• Edgar Allen Poe’s Madeline’s and Ligeia’s Animas Examining works such as the short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Ligeia” reveals much of Poe’s character through the form of his anima.
• Edgar Allan Poe’s Fear of Premature Burial For instance, in The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat the police arrive and stimulate a desire on the part of the narrator to confess his crime and undergo punishment from the state.
• Military Career of Edgar Allan Poe Often overlooked, however, is the story of Poe’s life: the heartbreak, financial struggles, success, mysterious death, and of course his military career. The success of the ominous poem gave Poe a steady income and cemented […]
• “The Tell-Tale Heart” Short Story by Edgar A. Poe He begins by complaining about the old man’s eye, but it is the imaginary beating of his heart that breaks down his resolve and makes him confess.
• Edgar Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Ligeia” His method of murder signifies what he knows of stone masonry, of which he is a member, instead of the Masons, which is a secret organization that Fortunato is a member of.
• Edgar Allan Poe, an American Romanticism Writer Poe’s three works “The fall of the house of Usher”, “the Raven” and “The Masque of the Red Death” describe his dedication to literature and his negative attitudes towards aristocracy.
• “Ligeia” a Book by Edgar Allan Poe Since the fact that the narrator is not in full control of the mind, this is made very apparent by the author, it could mean that Ligeia and Rowena are really the same people and […]
• Edgar Poe’s Annabel Lee: Narrative Text Analysis As death and mortality along with love make the key themes of the poem, it will be reasonable to suggest that the mood of the latter is quite dark, despite the lyrical tone and the […]
• “Black Cat” a Story by Edgar Allan Poe In turn, the use of various stylistic devices helps the writer create a sense of suspense and show the immense moral tension that the main character struggles with.
• Edgar Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature Analysis The main character in “The Cask of Amontillado” is Montresor with Fortunato being a minor character in the short story. Also, Montresor is the story’s narrator, and a lot of details about his character are […]
• Edgar Allan Poe’s and Herman Melville Comparison To this end, the current paper is a comparative review of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” and Melville’s “Billy Budd”.
• Comparison of Works by Stephen Crane and Allan Poe Although Crane’s stories are imaginary, the reader can picture houses and the community in ‘The Monster’ or the town of Yellow Sky in ‘The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.’ He vividly describes the living conditions […]
• Narrative Perspectives in Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” One of the reasons why the story The Cask of Amontillado and the poem My Last Duchess are being commonly referred to, as such that represent a particularly high value, is that the narrative perspective […]
• Mini Anthology: Poe Edgar Allan and Dickson Emily’ Works The other story that Poe Allen has written is “The fall of the House of Usher” whereby the main theme is about the haunted house, which is crumbling and this aspects brings out a Gothic […]
• Evans, Walter. “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Poe’s Theory of the Tale. In this article, Walter Evans discusses the narrative style of Edgar Allan Poe and speaks about the peculiarities of such a short story as The Fall of the House of Usher.
• Edgar Allan Poe: Analyzing Literature Works Paying attention to such pieces of writing The Cask of Amontillado, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, Annabel Lee, and The Raven it is possible to say that the main idea of these […]
• Edgar Allan Poe’s Writing Themes Coincidentally, he dedicated his first wave of writing to themes of innocence and beauty coupled with “Love and Joy as dynamic life values in the poet’s feeling for the potentiality of the harmony of mind […]
• The Style and Themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s Literature In the first stanza, the departure of the lover marks the end of their love, while the second stanza uses the dropping of sand as symbolic to the passing of time in an hour glass.
• The Tell-Tale Heart Essay However, when the police came to the Old Man’s house he gives himself away to the police because he hears the heart of the old man beating behind the floorboard and this incident may suggest […]
• Dark Humor in The Cask of Amontillado Essay The use of horror and humor in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe is one of the literary features that the author uses to constructs the story.
• The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allan Poe Poetry The head is alluded to the palace, while all the evil spirits mentioned represent the thoughts of a human beings mind.
• A Perfect Place for a Perfect Crime: Creating the Impeccable Setting It must be admitted that with his unusual gift of depicting the most petrifying environment so that it immediately rises in front of the reader’s eyes, Poe creates the perfect setting in The Cask of […]
• Poe’s Favorite Subject Matter Is Death This is not an exaggerated statement judging from terms and imagery used in at least four of his popular works such as The Cask of Amontillado; The Black Cat; The Tell-Tale Heart; and The Masque […]
• Poe’s life and how it influenced his work He feels privileged to have such a creature in his room and the fact that the raven answers his question of what its name is with the word “Nevermore”, adds to his excitement.
• How Did Edgar Allan Poe Influence Literature?
• How Does Edgar Allan Poe Keep the Reader in Suspense?
• How Does Edgar Allan Poe Misguide the Reader in His Story “The Black Cat”?
• How Does Edgar Allan Poe Use Dreams to Portray Terror and Mirror the Narrator’s Sense of Reality?
• How Does Edgar Allan Poe Create Horror in “The Pit and the Pendulum”?
• How Edgar Allan Poe Defines American Literature?
• How Edgar Allan Poe Explores Similarities Between Love and Hate in His Work?
• How Did Edgar Allan Poe & Jack London Deal With Death in Selected Short Stories?
• How Edgar Allan Poe’s Work Is Affected by His Predecessors?
• How Edgar Allan Poe’s Writings Illuminate His Upbringing?
• Was Edgar Allan Poe a Jingleman?
• What Influenced Edgar Allan Poe’s Writing Style?
• What Makes Edgar Allan Poe So Great?
• Who Was Edgar Allan Poe?
• Who Was William Wilson in the Work of Edgar Allan Poe?
• Why Does Edgar Allan Poe Favors Death and Terror Over Other Literary Genres?
• Edgar Allan Poe: Crazy Drunk or Brilliant Literalist?
• Edgar Allan Poe: Strange Dreamer or True Genius?
• What Were Edgar Allan Poe’s Last Five Words?
• What Is Edgar Allan Poe Most Famous For?
• What Does Edgar Allan Poe Suffer From?
• Why Did Edgar Allan Poe Write about Death?
• What Are Five Interesting Facts about Edgar Allan Poe?
• Why Did Edgar Allan Poe Marry His 13-Year-Old Cousin?
• Did Edgar Allan Poe Write With a Cat on His Shoulder?
• What Is Edgar Allan Poe’s Most Famous Poem?
• What Is the Meaning of Poe’s “The Raven”?
• What Language Did Edgar Allan Poe Use to Create Atmosphere and Suspense?
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IvyPanda. (2024, February 27). 113 Edgar Allan Poe Essay Topics & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/edgar-allan-poe-essay-examples/

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "113 Edgar Allan Poe Essay Topics & Examples." February 27, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/edgar-allan-poe-essay-examples/.

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34 Poe and His Global Advocates

Department of English, Bringham Young University

• Published: 05 April 2018
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This essay explores Edgar Allan Poe’s extraordinary relationships with various literary traditions across the globe, posits that Poe is the most influential US writer on the global literary scene, and argues that Poe’s current global reputation relies at least as much on the radiance of the work of Poe’s literary advocates—many of whom are literary stars in their own right—as it does on the brilliance of Poe’s original works. The article briefly examines Poe’s most famous French advocates (Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Valéry); glosses the work of his advocates throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas; and offers a concise case study of Poe’s influence on and advocacy from three twentieth-century writers from the Río de la Plata region of South America (Quiroga, Borges, and Cortázar). The essay concludes by reading the relationships between Poe and his advocates through the ancient definition of astral or stellar influence.

To claim that no other US writer has had as much influence on world literature as Edgar Allan Poe is not to practice hyperbole. To stake this claim in the active voice that it deserves: Poe is the most influential US writer in the world. The United States has certainly produced other writers whose works have influenced literature on a global scale, but we (as scholars, readers, consumers) would be hard-pressed to find another US author whose global presence is as broad and whose international impact resonates as deeply as Poe’s. Poe is ubiquitous. His works and his image manifest themselves in highbrow (literature, critical theory, art, classical music, and cinema), popular (B movies, T-shirts, comic books, various genres of popular music, and all sorts of kitsch), and social media cultures (YouTube videos, blogs, Twitter accounts, and countless memes) across the world. Most Poe audiences—regardless of the language(s) in which they access Poe—come to Poe in more than one way, and these varied avenues to Poe speak to the lasting power of his works themselves and to the rejuvenating power of what translation studies scholar André Lefevere calls “refractions,” “rewrites,” or “rewritings” of literary works. Lefevere argues that translators, literary critics, creators of anthologies, and literary historians are all rewriters of texts and that their works or rewritings wield significant power that keeps “original” works or source texts and their authors alive in the literary marketplace and in our literary canons. 1 Linking this type of rewriting with the creative responses to Poe that poets and fiction writers have created since Poe’s death in 1849 reveals the almost incalculable strands of influence Poe’s works and his persona have generated.

Although the scope of this essay does not allow me to prove quantitatively my claim about Poe’s global impact with raw data, a brief list of the distinct threads of Poe’s influence on world literature and culture, along with my analysis, substantiate my declaration. Poe’s invention of the detective genre, alone, puts him on a short list of globally influential US writers. The influence of Poe’s Dupin tales and other stories of ratiocination, the weight of his tales of terror, the power of his pre-Freudian explorations of the human psyche, the resonance (both formal and narrative) of his melancholy poetry, the timeliness of his attempts at early science fiction, and the longevity of his theory of effect on the way we think about short fiction all combine to make a clear case for Poe’s position as the most influential US writer. 2 In short, Poe came fairly early in the US literary tradition, he wrote in more genres than many influential US writers, and, importantly, his disparate works have led to his being championed by some of the most significant writers in various global literary traditions from the middle of the nineteenth century until now.

My argument rests on this last point—on the championing of Poe and the advocacy for his literature that numerous writers who are considered important, or even essential, to their own literary traditions have adopted from the late 1840s onward. Poe influenced these writers, but they also influenced him (or, stated more directly, they influenced his reputation and his overall image) by giving his work and his life special attention in their own literary corpora. 3 These literary stars act as advocates who “plead for,” “speak on behalf of,” “support, recommend, [and] speak favorably of” Poe. 4 Their advocacy continually refreshes and maintains Poe’s image while spreading Poe’s work across divides of both time and space.

Considering the reciprocal relationship between Poe and his global advocates allows us to reread the opening paragraph of Rufus Griwold’s now infamous obituary for Poe as ironic or unintentional foreshadowing:

EDGAR ALLAN POE is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was well known, personally or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England, and in several of the states of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends; and the regrets for his death will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary art has lost one of its most brilliant but erratic stars. 5

Several positive obituaries and rebuttals to Griswold’s caustic commentary demonstrate that Poe did, in fact, have plenty of friends when he died in 1849. 6 However, Griswold’s nod to Poe’s growing reputation outside of the United States unwittingly points toward the friendships that would later salvage Poe’s reputation from Griswold’s character assassination. These “foreign” friends or advocates treated Poe’s work with a seriousness and his image with a reverence that, in the former case, would not be seen in his own country until at least the modernist period and, in the latter case, might never be equaled on Poe’s home turf. Many of them were vivid literary stars who brought a stability to Poe’s reputation, raising it to the astral level regardless of Griswold’s attempt to diminish Poe’s brilliance by qualifying it as erratic.

In the following pages, I offer both a sweeping and a specific analysis of Poe and his global advocates. In the first section, I examine in broad terms, beginning with France and then glossing East Asia and Latin America, how Poe’s writings and his persona resonated with key literary figures from disparate nations throughout the globe, how these writers became strong advocates for Poe, and how their advocacy made Poe a central figure in many of their specific literary traditions and a cardinal presence on the global literary map. For most of this section, I approach authors from literary and linguistic traditions outside of my own training and expertise, and although I cite some of the primary texts in their source languages, most of the scholarship with which I engage in this section is in English. This section hints at the extensive reach of both Poe’s global influence and the world’s influence on Poe, inherently reveals the linguistic limits of any single-authored project on Poe’s global presence, and demonstrates that the significance of the relationships between Poe and these particular writers has reached a level in which entire bodies of literary criticism in the source languages and in English are dedicated to their analysis. I then offer a case study of three particular writers who were Poe advocates in the Río de la Plata region of South America, a literary and linguistic tradition I know well, as a detailed example of Poe’s reciprocal influence and the positive power of his advocates. I conclude by examining the ancient concept of astral influence, describing these advocates as literary stars, and arguing that, in both the broad and the specific cases, Poe’s current global reputation relies at least as much on the radiance of the advocacy as on the brilliance of his original works.

Global Advocates from France and Beyond

Poe’s global advocates have received increased attention in the English-language academy since the middle of the twentieth century. While T. S. Eliot wondered aloud about what the French saw in Poe in a Library of Congress lecture in 1948 and walked away seeing Poe with new eyes, 7 other scholars have produced several important treatises on Poe and France over the last century, including Célestin Pierre Cambiaire’s 1927   The Influence of Edgar Allan Poe in France (which predates Eliot’s musings), Patrick F. Quinn’s 1957   The French Face of Edgar Poe , and many works by Lois Davis Vines. 8 Poe’s relationship with both Spanish American letters and peninsular Spanish literature has received serious treatment since 1934, when John Eugene Englekirk published what was, at the time, an exhaustive book on Poe and his Spanish-speaking advocates on both sides of the Atlantic— Edgar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature . 9 In more recent decades, several edited collections have reiterated the importance of the French and Spanish/Spanish American Poe connections while casting broader nets that demonstrate Poe’s resounding influence and its reciprocal responses across Asia, the Americas, Europe, northern Africa, and various islands throughout the world’s oceans: Benjamin Franklin Fisher’s 1986   Poe and Our Times: Influences and Affinities ; Lois Davis Vines’s 1999   Poe Abroad: Influence, Reputation, Affinities ; Barbara Cantalupo’s 2012   Poe’s Pervasive Influence ; and my and Margarida Vale de Gato’s 2014   Translated Poe all expose and examine Poe’s impact on disparate world sites and literary traditions and the enormity and intensity of the efforts of his global advocates. 10

French poet Charles Baudelaire serves as the archetypal Poe advocate. Although not Poe’s first foreign reader or his first French translator, Baudelaire took to Poe with an alacrity rarely seen in a relationship between two literary giants. Their literary affinity became the relationship that delivered Poe to a truly global audience, and it still serves as the most powerful example of a major literary figure in his own right dedicating a significant amount of time, effort, and love to the spreading of Poe’s work and the cultivation of his image. Literary advocacy can take many forms, and in the case between Baudelaire and Poe, we could describe Baudelaire as a disciple, a translator, and a biographer/literary critic of Poe—all particular parts that other Poe advocates tend to play as well, although not every advocate adopts all three roles.

Baudelaire’s Poe discipleship might best be captured in the oft-quoted passage from Mon cœur mis à nu [ My Heart Laid Bare ] in which he resolved: “Faire tous les matins ma prière à Dieu, réservoir de toute force et de toute justice, à mon père, à Mariette et à Poe , comme intercesseurs;” [“To pray every morning to God, the source of all power and all justice; to my father, to Mariette and to Poe , as intercessors.”] 11 This resolution, made during Baudelaire’s final years of life, demonstrates both his intimate relationship with Poe (as he places the dead author on the same level as his own dead father and his family’s deceased servant who had cared for him in his youth) and his elevation of Poe to the very position which Baudelaire himself had spent his adult life fulfilling for Poe—the role of the advocate. The Oxford English Dictionary ’s first and oldest definition of the noun “advocate” describes the word in clearly religious terms as follows: “1. Christian Church . A person or agent believed to intercede between God and sinners; spec. Christ or the Virgin Mary.” 12 While Baudelaire places Poe in the position of a spiritual advocate as an intermediary between himself and God, Baudelaire had already placed himself as a literary advocate, first between Poe and France and then between Poe and the world, for almost two decades according to the OED ’s more common definition of the term: “Advocate: 4. gen . a. A person who pleads for or speaks on behalf of another; a person who supports, recommends, or speaks favorably of another.” 13

Baudelaire’s advocacy for Poe is most visible through his massive translation project of Poe’s prose and his treatment of Poe’s persona in his biographical sketches of the US writer. As Vines notes, “[b]etween 1848 and his premature death in 1867, Baudelaire published translations of forty-four of Poe’s tales, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Eureka , and other prose pieces while continuing to write” his own works. 14 He also wrote a lengthy biographical piece on Poe that opened his famous 1856 collection of Poe translations, Histoires extraordinaires . 15 In all, the French poet “devoted” a total of “1,063 pages [ . . . ] to Poe.” 16 In short, Baudelaire maintained a career within a career as a Poe advocate, and the global impact of his Poe advocacy is incalculable. The various essays in Poe Abroad and Translated Poe reiterate how Baudelaire, his translations, and/or his writings on Poe’s biography served as founding elements of Poe’s rising reputation across Europe (especially in Portugal, Spain, and Romania) and the Americas (from Mexico to Argentina, from Nicaragua to Brazil, and most literary traditions in-between). Each of these literary polysystems embraced Poe, but by comparing story titles, which stories appear (and often in which order), and basic details from Poe biographies available in these places in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we know that this Poe is primarily Baudelaire’s Poe. As Poe’s primary advocate, he also served as a filter that influenced which type of Poe these traditions initially received and which type of Poe they originally revered. Even in the twenty-first century, Baudelaire’s proclivity for the darker, guilt-ridden, or mysterious Poe tales that he published in Histoires extraordinaires and Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires still reveals itself through the way contemporary readers and scholars view Poe in these traditions.

Staying closer to Baudelaire’s home, his work with Poe also brought about profound effects on several French writers who wrote in his wake—especially Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Valéry. Mallarmé continued the Poe translation project where Baudelaire had left off and translated a small number of Poe’s poems into verse and a large number into prose. 17 In another move of discipleship, he purportedly moved to London with the expressed purpose of improving his English so that he could better understand Poe’s works. 18 Mallarmé’s own poem, “Le tombeau d’Edgar Poe,” advocates for Poe by chastising Poe’s “blasphemous” detractors in his and Mallarmé’s own century and by marking eternity as Poe’s territory. 19 Valéry, in contrast, was more interested in Poe as thinker and gravitated toward pieces such as “The Philosophy of Composition,” the Dupin tales, and Eureka . His own Monsieur Teste develops a character who can be read as an extension or exaggeration of Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin or as an attempt at capturing self-consciousness. 20 By approaching Poe’s thoughts on thought rigorously, Valéry acts as a different kind of Poe advocate who assigns a seriousness to Poe that, as we have already seen with Eliot’s “From Poe to Valéry,” affects Poe’s reputation and his standing back in his own country.

In short, France was and is a special place for Poe advocacy, and this first wave, or set of three waves, of French advocacy for Poe functions as a clear example of how translation studies theorist Itamar Even-Zohar describes the integration of “translated literature” into a “central position” in a particular “literary polysystem.” 21 Even-Zohar argues that

to say that translated literature maintains a central position in the literary polysystem means that it participates actively in shaping the center of the polysystem. In such a situation it is by and large an integral part of innovatory forces, and as such likely to be identified with major events in literary history while these are taking place. This implies that in this situation no clear-cut distinction is maintained between “original” and “translated” writings, and that often it is the leading writers (or members of the avant-garde who are about to become leading writers) who produce the most conspicuous or appreciated translations. 22

The overwhelming success of Baudelaire’s translations of Poe inserted Poe firmly into the French literary tradition, making Poe (not just Baudelaire) influential on Mallarmé, Valéry, and the French Symbolists. These latter writers’ work as Poe translators, as poets, and as thinkers further wrote Poe into the French literary polysystem, where his writings and persona continue to influence new generations of French writers. We cannot, however, separate this Poe influence from these “leading writers” who did happen to be “members of the avant-garde who . . . bec[a]me leading writers.” 23 In other words, Poe–Baudelaire–Mallarmé–Valéry are so entangled that it can be difficult to distinguish between Poe’s influence per se on French literature and art versus Poe’s influence via his three most famous French advocates. One thing, however, remains certain: without the advocacy there would be no French Poe. A Poe in France would certainly exist, but Poe’s position as a writer central to the French literary tradition relies on the pointed and painstaking advocacy of these three writers who, themselves, form essential parts of the French canon. 24

The early start date, deep national impact, and widespread global influence of Poe’s relationship with his French advocates make this particular example of Poe advocacy remarkable, but Poe’s good fortune with significant writers on the global scene is not singular to France. Essential writers in several disparate literary traditions discovered (some through the French and some on their own), enjoyed, and advocated for Poe. In some cases, these advocates played more than one part—translator, biographer, literary critic, anthologizer, poet, fiction writer—in their advocacy for Poe, whereas in other circumstances individual advocates adopted single roles. Poe Abroad and Translated Poe demonstrate time after time how Poe influenced important literary figures and how these writers then became Poe advocates in numerous ways and at various levels of intensity.

In the rest of Europe and in Russia, important national writers continually advocated for Poe. Elvira Osipova describes Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s publication of Dmitry Mikhailovsky’s Russian translations of “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” in the former’s magazine Vremya as an important “turning point” in Poe’s well-documented Russian reception, 25 and both Osipova and Eloise M. Boyle examine the reciprocal relationship between Poe and the Russian Symbolist poets Konstantin Bal’mont and Valery Brjusov. 26 Liviu Cotrău calls two of Poe’s early translators in Romania—Mihai Eminescu and Ion Luca Caragiale—“Romania’s best poet and best playwright, respectively” and demonstrates how these authors both translated Poe via Baudelaire. 27 This early interest by important Romanian authors in a French Poe cast the US writer as a significant figure and led to an extensive tradition of Poe translation and retranslation in Romania that has flourished throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 28 Margarida Vale de Gato examines how Fernando Pessoa, “the leading figure of Portuguese modernism,” continually returned to Poe “in his prolific unpublished papers” and published three of his translations of Poe’s poems. 29 And this list could continue. Whether early in Poe’s global reception (e.g., Baudelaire), much later in that reception (e.g., the postmodern German writer Arno Schmidt), or somewhere in between (e.g., late nineteenth-century Swedish writers Ola Hansson and August Strindberg), many European writers who were key movers in their own national literary traditions “supported” and “spoke for” Poe by translating, responding to, and/or rewriting his works.

Poe’s influence in East Asia began later than his influence in Europe, and although that influence might seem less reciprocal than the Poe–Europe relationship (with the influence running from Poe to the local writer rather than from the East Asian writer back to Poe’s reputation), Japan stands out as one site of two-way influence and powerful Poe advocacy. 30 Takayuki Tatsumi demonstrates Poe’s lasting influence in Japan from the Meiji period (1868–1912) through the contemporary Heisei period, noting that Poe was particularly influential during the twentieth century and that Japanese artists of that century actively responded to Poe rather than passively receiving his influence: “from the Taisho period (1912–1926) through the Showa period (1926–1989), Poe was deeply imbibed, further developed, and creatively rewritten by a number of talented Japanese writers.” 31 Along this path, Poe was privileged enough to be translated or adapted by “the distinguished novelist Aeba Kōson” and “noted journalist” Morita Shiken during the earlier Meiji period as a part of Japan’s major shift from archaic, formal written expression to modern, conversational writing; 32 to be translated by Sato Haruo and Tanizaki Jun’Ichiro and rewritten by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke—all “major Romantic and even decadent writers of the Taisho period” 33 —and to be taken up by the popular detective writer Edogawa Rampo of the Showa period, who “established the Japanese literary subgenre of detective fiction” and whose penname references Poe. 34 Tatsumi clearly demonstrates the reciprocal relationship between Poe and Rampo in specific terms that we can apply to the Poe–Japan relationship more generally: “While it is true that Poe’s arabesque, grotesque, and ratiocinative tales exerted great influence upon Rampo’s Ero-Gro-Nonsense detective fiction, it is also true that Rampo’s powerful and creative misreadings of his precursor compel us today to reread the earlier tradition through the prism of his modern re-creations.” 35 Poe has influenced several of Japan’s important writers, these writers have advocated for his work (particularly his fiction), and their own work now influences how the contemporary Japanese audience reads Poe.

Significant writers from various nations in Latin America have also adopted Poe into their literary systems and served as his faithful advocates. At several moments over the last one hundred and forty years or so, the literary relationships between specific Latin American writers and Poe have been nearly as productive as the reciprocal or symbiotic relationship between Poe and Baudelaire. Not surprisingly, some of the earliest relationships between Poe and his Latin American advocates were also mediated by Baudelaire, but scholars have demonstrated that Poe’s long-term connections with the Spanish American literary tradition rely on a three-headed source of Poe in English, French, and Spanish and that his relationship with Brazilian letters includes English-, French-, and Portuguese-language texts. 36 Poe’s presence in Brazil, as Carlos Daghlian argues, “developed independently from the American author’s renown in the Spanish-language countries of the continent[,]” and it began with the “good fortune of being discovered by Brazil’s most outstanding writer, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis.” 37 Machado translated Poe’s “The Raven” in 1883, and both the bird and its author have been significant figures in Brazilian literature ever since. While Machado introduced Brazil to Poe, many other Brazilian writers and translators have advocated for Poe either in their own works or as Poe translators, and at times their “supplications” have taken new and interesting routes. For example, the acclaimed postmodern novelist Clarice Lispector translated eighteen of Poe’s tales for a collection aimed specifically at teenage readers. 38 Although Lispector’s own novels are known for their narrative complexity, Lenita Esteves demonstrates how Lispector’s translations of Poe’s stories partially “abridge” Poe’s texts while both “simplif[ying]” Poe’s language and shifting it to “a more colloquial register,” 39 serving as a powerful and peculiar example of how one of Poe’s advocates speaks both “favourably” and “on behalf of” him to a very specific audience: Brazilian teens. This audience, it appears, has openly received Lispector’s message about Poe since her translated collection was in its twenty-second edition in 2014. 40

Spanish America’s advocacy for Poe has been even more tireless than Brazil’s, with key figures from the late nineteenth century through the early twenty-first century praising, responding to, and interacting with Poe. Adaptations/translations of three of Poe’s tales were circulating in Peru as early as the late 1840s, and Poe’s works were being translated in various Spanish American locales during the 1860s and 1870s. 41 However, Poe truly entered Spanish American letters with force in the late 1880s and early 1890s as a part of the modernista movement headed by the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Darío. The Venezuelan poet Juan Antonio Pérez Bonalde had translated Poe’s “The Raven” in 1887, 42 just a year before Darío’s collection Azul openly launched Spanish American modernismo and six years before Darío consecrated Poe as one of the “special” or “rare ones” in his 1893 text “Los raros.” 43 Pérez Bonalde’s translation was not the first in the Spanish language, but its rigor and its timing made it an extremely effective tool for promoting Poe across the Spanish-speaking world, and it remains the Spanish-language version of Poe’s most famous poem, even though other Spanish-language translations of “The Raven” that follow in its wake do a better job of re-creating Poe’s odd rhyme and meter. 44 Pérez Bonalde’s translation, coupled with Darío’s Baudelaire-influenced praise for Poe as the ultimate artist for art’s sake—“un sublime apasionado, un nervioso, uno de esos divinos semilocos necesarios para el progreso humano, lamentables cristos del arte, que por amor al eterno ideal tienen su calle de la amargura, sus espinas y su cruz” [“a passionate sublime being, a nervous man, one of those divine partially madmen necessary for human progress, lamentable Christs of art who for the love of an eternal ideal have their via dolorosa , their thorns, and their cross”] 45 —cast Poe as one of modernismo ’s primary icons and fountains of influence. This particular Poe, Englekirk argues, “was to fertilize the intellect and imagination of Central and South America more than any other American author,” and as he avers, “almost all of the followers of Modernism were directly or indirectly influenced by Poe.” 46 This influence spans the American continent from Mexico to Central America and from the equatorial nations of Colombia and Venezuela down to the southern cone. Several Poe pieces appeared in periodicals in Spanish America before the modernistas , and his presence significantly increased via the translation work of his French advocates, but the advocacy of Pérez Bonalde and Darío—the former as translator and the latter as image-curator—fused Poe and Spanish American modernismo in a way that was beneficial to both parties while permanently inscribing both the movement itself and its foreign poet-prophet into Spanish American literary history.

The reciprocal relationship of influence and advocacy between Poe and his Spanish American advocates remained strong through the twentieth century and continues today. Poe was a significant influence on the writers of the so-called Boom—especially on the Argentine Julio Cortázar and the Mexican Carlos Fuentes—and on major authors after the Boom like the Chilean Roberto Bolaño. Contemporary Spanish American writers also continue to sing his praises. For example, in 2008 Mexican author Jorge Volpi and Peruvian writer Fernando Iwasaki coedited a new edition of Cortázar’s Poe translations in which they engaged sixty-seven current Spanish American and peninsular writers (including themselves) with Poe, inviting each contemporary author to write a brief introduction for one of Poe’s tales. This edition clearly shows Poe’s influence on the Boom and on the generation that followed. It also demonstrates the Poe advocacy of writers from both eras since, along with Cortázar’s translations and the sixty-seven contemporary introductions, the volume begins with an essay from Fuentes and another from the Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa as prologues. 47

Perhaps the most pointed example of extended Poe advocacy in Spanish America comes from the Río de la Plata region of Argentina and Uruguay. This example spans the twentieth century from the latter part of the modernista era well through the Boom via the works of Horacio Quiroga, Jorge Luis Borges, and Julio Cortázar—each author a major figure in Spanish American literary history, each indebted to Poe, and each a powerful advocate for Poe who helped to solidify his presence in the national/regional traditions of the Río de la Plata and in the broader literary polysystem of Spanish America.

A Trinity of Advocates

Quiroga, Borges, and Cortázar, each in his own right, continue to wield significant influence over the literature of the Río de la Plata region and over Spanish American letters in general several decades after their respective deaths in 1937, 1986, and 1984, and each writer served and continues to serve as a powerful Poe advocate for Spanish-language readers. Grouping the three authors as a trinity rather than simply a trio might appear problematic on the surface since they did not hold a singular purpose, literary or otherwise. Indeed, Borges was a rather harsh critic of Quiroga’s writing, and Cortázar, while heavily influenced by and indebted to Borges’s poetics, clearly disagreed with his fellow Argentine’s politics. In their advocacy for Poe, however, these three literary giants find some common ground, although they each played distinct roles as Poe advocates. Each of these writers was influenced by Poe, and each one spent a significant amount of time responding to Poe. Quiroga’s advocacy can best be defined in terms of discipleship; Borges’s advocacy for Poe was multilayered, but many of his interactions with Poe (whether articles, prologues, or anthologized pieces) can all fit under the broader umbrella of the work of the literary critic; and Cortázar’s advocacy, although also multifaceted, remains most visible through his translations of the vast majority of Poe’s prose. The disciple, the critic, and the translator all spoke for, supported, and recommended Poe to their reading public. This trinity’s advocacy for Poe is matched only by the earlier trinity of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Valéry, whose French advocacy for Poe—to the bemusement of Borges and to the pleasure of Cortázar—had already placed Poe in a space of privilege in the Río de la Plata by the beginning of Quiroga’s career. 48

Quiroga’s Poe discipleship began early and continued throughout his publishing career, and Quiroga advocated for Poe via imitation of, conversation with, and prescription of the techniques and themes of his literary master. In the realm of imitation, Quiroga’s first attempt to re-create the horrors of revenge (felt both by the seeker of vengeance and by the victim) in Poe’s famous “The Cask of Amontillado” appeared as a brief prose entry entitled “El tonel de amontillado” in Quiroga’s first published book—a modernista collection of poetry titled Los arrecifes de coral that Quiroga published in 1901. 49 The very title reveals the lack of distance between this tale and Poe’s text since it is simply a translation of the title of Poe’s most famous revenge story. Quiroga’s piece begins: “Poe dice que, habiendo soportado del mejor modo posible las mil injusticias de Fortunato, juró vengarse cuando éste llegó al terreno de los insultos. Y nos cuenta cómo en una noche de carnaval le emparedó vivo, a pesar del ruido que hacía Fortunato con sus cascabeles” [“Poe says that, having tolerated in the best way posible the thousand injustices of Fortunato, he swore to avenge himself when Fortunato entered the territory of insult. And he tells us how in a night of carnival he walled Fortunato up alive, despite the noise that Fortunato made with his bells.”] 50 After this brief summary of Poe’s story, which strangely inserts Poe into the role of Montresor, Quiroga’s tale, in less than three hundred words, has a lime-covered Fortunato relate his “aventura anterior” [“previous adventure”] to the story’s narrator, Montresor—first in front of a large mirror and then in the catacombs where he attempts to reverse Poe’s tale by taking revenge on the narrator. 51 In Quiroga’s next rendition of this tale, “El crimen del otro” from 1904, he changes the setting to turn-of-the-century Montevideo, but he once again repeats Poe’s plotline as the narrator buries his friend—named Fortunto—alive. 52 In this rendering, the narrator does not seek revenge so much as try to rid himself of a friend whom he has driven mad by introducing him to the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Although both of these stories interrogate the character of Montresor more than Poe’s source text, they do so only through a direct rewriting that relies overwhelmingly on Poe’s characters and plotline.

After these first two attempts, Quiroga repeatedly captures the horror of “Cask” and other Poe tales in several stories that seek to create Poe’s effect in new settings with original characters who have their own story arcs. As Caroline Egan has argued, two of these stories—“La lengua” and “Una bofetada” [“A Slap in the Face”]—subtly converse with “Cask” and the theme of revenge, 53 but several of Quiroga’s most famous stories create a Poe-like horror without even faintly referencing any of Poe’s source texts. For example, Quiroga’s “El almohadón de pluma” [“The Feather Pillow”] from 1907, “La miel silvestre” from 1911, and “El hijo” [“The Son”] from 1928 each creates a nervous tension that builds to a painful and horrific climax that leaves the reader both shocked and satisfied. 54 In all three cases, Quiroga relies on his own characters, settings, and plotlines rather than on Poe’s creations to develop this sense of horror. “La gallina degollada” [“The Decapitated Chicken”], perhaps Quiroga’s most masterful piece of horror fiction, finds a middle ground between his own creation and Poe’s influence. This 1909 tale creates a horrendous scene in which four sick brothers whose parents have treated them like animals kill their younger, healthy sister. 55 The setting and the plot are Quiroga’s, and while this story almost allows for a reading of the killing in terms of revenge that might put it in conversation with other Poe stories, it appears to more pointedly reference Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” since the boys, like the orangutan in Poe’s tale, imitate common human actions that create terrible outcomes. In Poe’s story, the orangutan’s aping of his master shaving leads to the vicious death of two women—a mother and a daughter (M 2: 565–568). In Quiroga’s story, the boys’ imitation of the decapitating and bleeding of the family’s evening meal—a chicken—leads to their sister’s brutal death and to the metaphorical destruction of their parents, who have placed all of their hopes in their one healthy child while neglecting their four disabled sons. 56 With a brilliant stroke, Quiroga taps into the latent horror of Poe’s initial detective story to create an effect that significantly veers away from the feeling of awe surrounding Dupin’s intellect toward a localized terror that Quiroga hones and masters during his prolific career.

Finally, along with imitating and then conversing with Poe’s works and methods, Quiroga eventually prescribed them to aspiring writers. In his 1925 article “El manual del perfecto cuentista,” Quiroga taps into Poe’s theory of effect by explaining that authors must know the end of a story before they write that story’s introduction. 57 In his 1928 article “Decálogo del perfecto cuentista,” he approaches the hopeful writer in even more didactic terms by listing ten rules for writing. His first rule, “[c]ree en un maestro—Poe, Maupassant, Kipling, Chejov—como en Dios mismo” [“believe in a master—Poe, Maupassant, Kipling, Chekov—as in God himself”], reiterates his belief in following established models and reifies his Poe discipleship in the latter portion of his career. 58 His fifth rule echoes Poe’s theory of effect and the concept that authors must know where they want to arrive before they can start writing. 59

Quiroga’s discipleship functions as advocacy for Poe through both his fiction and his writing instructions. Englekirk notes that younger Spanish American writers in the 1930s were absorbing Poe via “Quiroga’s genius,” but his “Poesque spirit” 60 was still visible over sixty years later in an article by Bolaño from the late twentieth century. In a piece called “Consejos sobre el arte de escribir cuentos” [“Advice on the Art of Writing Short Stories”], Bolaño takes up Quiroga’s model for offering tips on how to write short fiction, names Quiroga as one of the authors an aspiring writer needs to read, and claims that “[l]a verdad de la verdad es que con Edgar Allan Poe todos tendíamos de sobra” [“[t]he honest truth is that with Edgar Allan Poe, we would have more than enough good material to read.”] 61 Quiroga, the Poe disciple, continues to speak for and recommend Poe both directly and indirectly.

Borges sustained a lengthy and complex literary relationship with Poe that included several types of advocacy. He translated two of Poe’s stories (“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” and “The Purloined Letter”) with his friend and writing partner Adolfo Bioy Casares, anthologized the former in Antología de la literatura fantástica and the latter in Los mejores cuentos policiales (two anthologies with major staying power that have each been reprinted several times since their original publication dates in the early 1940s), 62 responded to Poe’s Dupin tales with a detective trilogy of his own, conversed with several of Poe’s themes and creative ideas in his other fictional works, mentioned Poe in over 130 articles, and discussed Poe in scores of interviews and question/answer sessions. John T. Irwin has thoroughly examined Borges’s conscious conversation with Poe’s detective fiction in The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story , and I have analyzed Borges’s relationship with Poe beyond their detective stories in Borges’s Poe: The Influence and Reinvention of Edgar Allan Poe in Spanish America . 63 Here, I would simply like to focus on Borges as a literary critic and public intellectual whose returns to Poe kept the US writer in the Argentine literary spotlight throughout the twentieth century.

Borges was an insatiable reader, and Poe was one of the writers whom Borges first encountered in his youth in his father’s library and whom he reread time and again throughout his long life. 64 After going blind in the mid-1950s, Borges continued to reread Poe by having the latter’s works read to him aloud by his mother (Leonor Acevedo de Borges), his students, his friends, and his second wife, María Kodama. 65 For example, as late as 1985, Borges claimed that he could no longer count the times that he had read and reread Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” and suggested that he would continue rereading it in the future. 66 Borges could not stop reading Poe, and he could not stop writing and talking about him either. Borges wrote only two articles dedicated specifically to Poe—“La génesis de ‘El cuervo’ de Poe” in La Prensa in 1935 and “Edgar Allan Poe” in La Nación in 1949—but he mentioned Poe in over 130 other solo-authored pieces, often framing his discussions of detective fiction, US literature, translation, and several other subjects around Poe. 67 His references to Poe reached disparate reading audiences in Argentina, the Río de la Plata region, and Spanish America from the popular and local/national readers of the daily papers La Prensa and La Nación , to the middle-class and typically female audience of the household magazine El Hogar , to the highbrow and international readership of the literary journal Sur . Borges perennially returned to Poe in his public persona as well. He taught Poe in the classroom, mentioned Poe in lectures at university campuses and in public forums throughout the Americas and Europe, and talked about Poe in several interviews that were broadcast to wide audiences over the radio.

Borges, unlike Quiroga and Cortázar, was more willing to openly criticize Poe. He did not admire everything that Poe wrote, he was particularly critical of Poe’s poetry, and he occasionally questioned Poe’s taste. However, his praise for Poe as the inventor of the detective genre and as a powerful writer of the fantastic not only kept Poe in front of Borges’s local, regional, and international readerships, but it also created a new version of Poe in the Río de la Plata region and Spanish America in general. Despite Quiroga’s reciprocal relationship with Poe’s fiction, most Río de la Plata and Spanish American readers still considered Poe a poet during the last years of Quiroga’s life and the early years of Borges’s career. Borges’s advocacy permanently shifted Poe’s image from dark poet-prophet to masterful story writer. Borges was the type of advocate who admitted that Poe had weaknesses but championed him nonetheless. In this sense, Borges’s advocacy for Poe also resonates with the religious definition of the noun “advocate” since he acted as an agent between Poe and the reader in spite of what he saw as some of Poe’s literary “sins.” Borges did not ignore Poe’s problems, but he felt that the positive far outweighed the negative and asked that Poe’s readers judge Poe for his strengths and forgive him for his weaknesses.

Like Borges, Cortázar maintained a long and multilayered relationship with Poe that began in his youth and flourished during his adult life. Cortázar also read Poe as a child, and according to various personal accounts, he had to do so on the sly because his mother thought he “was too young.” 68 “[S]he was right,” Cortázar later claimed, and his earliest encounters with Poe’s texts purportedly scared him to the point of illness. 69 These early readings of Poe thrust Cortázar into the realm of the fantastic, a space that he thoroughly enjoyed as a reader and consistently recreated in his own work, particularly his short fiction. Several of Cortázar’s most famous short pieces—“Casa tomada” [“House Taken Over”], “Lejana” [“The Distances”], “La noche boca arriba” [“The Night Face Up”], “La isla al mediodía” [“The Island at Noon”], and “El ídolo de las Cíclades” [“The Idol of the Cyclades”]—function within this supernatural mode while others such as “Axolotl” or “Carta a una señorita en París” [“Letter to a Young Lady in Paris”] turn from the fantastic toward magical realism. 70 The theme of the double appears throughout Cortázar’s tales, and he often employs it in ways that resemble works by Poe. “Lejana,” for example, creates a powerful inversion of Poe’s “William Wilson” as Cortázar’s protagonist—Alina Reyes—literally loses herself in an open battle of wills against her double. 71 Cortázar’s first published story under his own name, “Casa tomada,” itself plays the double since one of the most common yet influential interpretations of the tale reads it as an Argentine doubling of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

Although Cortázar’s stories spread Poe’s themes and approaches to new audiences, he advocated for Poe most powerfully as a translator. In a 1983 interview with Jason Weiss, Cortázar claimed that when translating Poe he learned to appreciate Poe’s language, regardless of the critiques that various English-speaking readers had offered: “I explored his language, which is highly criticized by the English and the Americans because they find it too baroque, in short they’ve found all sorts of things wrong with it. Well, since I’m neither English nor American, I see it with another perspective. I know there are aspects which have aged a lot, that are exaggerated, but that hasn’t the slightest importance next to his genius.” 72 Cortázar spent two years in the early 1950s translating that genius into Spanish before becoming a famous writer in his own right, and he returned to, refined, and republished those translations over the next two decades, even though he had already made an international name for himself as a novelist and story writer.

Before the 1956 release of Cortázar’s two-volume set of Poe’s prose translations, Obras en prosa , no single Spanish-language translator in the Americas or on the Iberian Peninsula had tackled the majority of Poe’s fiction. 73 Poe’s poetry was readily available in Spanish translation, and many of his stories were also available, but the fictional titles were spread throughout disparate periodicals across Spain and the Americas, found in short collections in which a single translator would offer a dozen or so stories, or combined into larger collections that contained translations by several different translators. For example, the Argentine translator Carlos Olivera offered thirteen of Poe’s tales in Spanish as Novelas y cuentos in 1884; an anonymous collection of translations of twelve Poe tales appeared in Buenos Aires in 1903 under the Hispanicized Baudelaire title Historias extraordinarias ; and Armando Bazán edited a substantial Poe collection, Obras completas , that included, along with several poems, over forty prose pieces translated by five different translators. 74 Cortázar’s volumes, in contrast, include all of Poe’s short fiction, Pym, Eureka , and hundreds of pages of Poe’s other prose pieces. He republished both volumes in 1969, and then in 1970, he split the first volume into two, revised the translations, and published this new two-volume set as Cuentos, 1 and Cuentos, 2 . 75 Finally, in 1973, he revised and rereleased the second volume of his Obras en prosa as Ensayos y críticas . 76

Out of all of these translations and repackagings, the 1970 two-volume set of the stories has had, by far, the most significant impact. The Madrid publishing house Alianza has republished these two volumes over thirty times in Madrid and Buenos Aires, and these two books (often released as inexpensive paperback “libros de bosillo” or “pocket books”) are now almost synonymous with Poe in the Spanish-speaking world. In the introduction to their 2008 rerelease of Cortázar’s translations in their Edición comentada , Volpi and Iwasaki venerate this particular two-volume set, claiming that each of the sixty-seven writers whom they have chosen to introduce Poe’s stories have come to Poe via Cortázar’s two-volume edition of the tales and stating that their goal is to celebrate Poe’s bicentennial by “rescatando aquellos míticos tomitos azules” [“rescuing those mythic little blue volumes.”] 77 In short, Cortázar advocated for Poe by translating what he saw as Poe’s “extraordinary genius” 78 into Spanish, regardless of any perceived shortcomings with Poe’s language. His translations provided previously unprecedented access to that genius to millions of new readers through a single translation filter, and many of those readers, who are also writers, continue to distribute Cortázar’s Poe to future generations.

The Influence of the Stars

Throughout this essay, I have referred to both the general definition and the more specific, Christian definition of the noun “advocate.” I would like to end by playing with an older and more specific definition of the noun “influence.” The O xford English Dictionary shows that “influence” was used as a noun for almost three hundred years before it was used as a verb and that the oldest usage of the noun referred to a phenomenon between heavenly bodies and human bodies:

2. a. spec . in Astrol. The supposed flowing or streaming from the stars or heavens of an etherial fluid acting upon the character and destiny of men, and affecting sublunary things generally. In later times gradually viewed less literally, as an exercise of power or “virtue,” or of an occult force, and in late use chiefly a poetical or humorous reflex of earlier notions. b. transf . The exercise of personal power by human beings, figured as something of the same nature as astral influence. Now only poet . 79

My use of “influence” throughout this essay, of course, typically refers to the “b” definition of the noun or to the common definitions of the verb, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “1. trans. To exert influence upon, to affect by influence. a. To affect the mind or action of; to move or induce by influence; [ . . . ] b. To affect the condition of, to have an effect on.” 80 The ancient and astral definition of the noun, however, also seems relevant. Baudelaire symbolically raised Poe into the heavens as a celestial advocate between himself and God, and Poe’s work and his image certainly appear to have had an elevated effect “upon the character and destiny of” many of his readers that could be compared to a “supposed flowing or streaming” from above. However, it took Baudelaire, Borges, Rampo, Bal’mont, Pessoa, and many other significant writers to elevate Poe to this level. These Poe advocates, literary stars during their own lifetimes, made him into a literary star who could then influence us, and his and their astral influence continue to affect other literary stars as well as the mere mortals or “sublunary” beings that we, Poe readers and scholars, tend to be.

One of these stars, Vargas Llosa, describes Poe as a fortunate writer, not in life, but in his posthumous rise to prominence through the work of two amazing advocates: “Aunque su vida estuvo marcada por la desgracia, Edgar Allan Poe fue uno de los más afortunados escritores modernos en lo que concierne a la irradiación de su obra por el mundo” [“Even though his life was marked by misfortune, Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most fortunate modern writers in what concerns the irradiation of his work throughout the world”] because he was translated by both Baudelaire, the “poeta más grande del siglo XIX” [“greatest poet of the nineteenth century”], and Cortázar, “uno de los mejores escritores de nuestra lengua y un traductor excepcional” [“one of the best writers in our language and an exceptional translator.”] 81 To Vargas Llosa’s shortlist, we could add the names of dozens of other literary stars from distinct traditions who have served as Poe advocates. Some of these stars, Baudelaire-Mallarmé-Valéry and Quiroga-Borges-Cortázar, have formed guiding constellations that direct readers to Poe, while others have acted as solitary beacons that radiate Poe’s works and image. The advocacy of these literary stars—via translation, discipleship, rewriting, literary criticism, and other creative and critical endeavors—keeps Poe in orbit to shine down on future generations of readers and on occasional rising stars.

1. André Lefevere , Translating Literature: Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Context (New York: MLA, 1992), 6–7, 13–14. Lefevere uses the terms “rewrites” and “refractions” rather than “rewritings” in other works to describe the same concept. See “Why Waste Our Time on Rewrites? The Trouble with Interpretation and the Role of Rewriting in an Alternative Paradigm,” in The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation , ed. Theo Hermans (New York: St. Martins, 1985), 215–243 ; and “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a Theory of Literature,” in The Translation Studies Reader (3rd ed.), ed. Lawrence Venuti (New York & London: Routledge, 2012), 203–219.

This list could go on to include Poe’s hoaxes, his biting satires, and his contributions to science via Eureka: A Prose Poem .

3. I see this type of reciprocal influence functioning in two ways. The first way is fairly intuitive—translators, critics, anthologizers, biographers, and others openly affect how we understand and interpret the writers they approach in their work. The second way is less intuitive and recalls Jorge Luis Borges’s descriptions of influence in his famous essay “Kafka y sus precursores” [“Kafka and His Precursors”] in which Borges argues that newer writers influence the works of older writers by changing us, the readers, so that we see the work of a newer writer in the work of an older writer and, thus, experience the strange, anachronistic sensation of seeing Kafka in a poem by Robert Browning or in a text by Søren Kierkegaard and feeling that these earlier texts are actually Kafkaesque. See “Kafka y sus precursores,” in Obras completas (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 2007), 2:107–109 and “Kafka and His Precursors,” in Selected Non-Fictions , ed. and trans. Eliot Weinberger (New York: Penguin, 1999), 363–365.

5. Rufus Wilmot Griswold , “Death of Edgar A. Poe,” New-York Daily Tribune , October 9, 1849, p. 2, cols. 3–4, Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, http://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1827/nyt49100.htm .

6. See, for example, George R. Graham , “The Late Edgar Allan Poe,” Graham’s Magazine (Philadelphia), March 1850, 36:224–226, http://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1827/18500301.htm ; Henry B. Hirst , “Edgar Allan Poe,” McMakin’s Model American Courier , vol. XIX, no. 33 (whole no. 969), October 20, 1849, p. 2, cols. 3–4, http://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1827/hbh18491.htm ; or Nathaniel Parker Willis , “Death of Edgar Poe,” Home Journal (New York), October 20, 1849, p. 2, cols. 2–4, http://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1827/18491020.htm .

7. Thomas Stearns Eliot , “From Poe to Valéry,” in The Recognition of Edgar Allan Poe , ed. Eric W. Carlson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), 205–219.

8. Célestin Pierre Cambiaire , The Influence of Edgar Allan Poe in France (New York: G. E. Stechert & Co., 1927) ; Partick F. Quinn , The French Face of Edgar Poe (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1957) ; Lois Davis Vines , Valéry and Poe: A Literary Legacy (New York: New York University Press, 1992). Also see Vines’s chapters in Poe Abroad: Influence, Reputation, Affinities , ed. Lois Davis Vines (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999) ; and “Poe Translations in France,” in Translated Poe , ed. Emron Esplin and Margarida Vale de Gato (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2014), 47–54.

9. John Eugene Englekirk , Edgar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature (New York: Instituto de las Españas en los Estados Unidos, 1934). There are many other titles that tackle Poe’s relationship with specific national or regional literary traditions—books on Poe and Scandinavia, Poe and Germany, Poe and Japan, or Poe and Russia, for example.

10. Benjamin Franklin Fisher , ed., Poe and Our Times: Influences and Affinities (Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1986) ; Lois Davis Vines , ed., Poe Abroad: Influence, Reputation, Affinities (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999) ; Barbara Cantalupo , ed., Poe’s Pervasive Influence (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2012) ; Emron Esplin and Margarida Vale de Gato , eds., Translated Poe (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2014).

11. Charles Baudelaire , Œuvres complétes (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968), 642 ; Christopher Isherwood , trans., My Heart Laid Bare , in Intimate Journals (New York: Howard Fertig, 1977), 61.

Oxford English Dictionary Online , s.v. “advocate.”

14. Lois Davis Vines , “Poe Translations in France,” in Translated Poe , 48. Vines also notes that Baudelaire translated four of Poe’s poems (48–49).

Vines, “Poe Translations in France,” 49.

Vines,“Poe Translations in France,” 49.

19. Stéphane Mallarmé , “Le tombeau d’Edgar Poe,” Œuvres complétes. (Paris: Gallimard, 1998), 38.

Vines avers that “[t]he unpublished manuscript of an early draft of Valéry’s Evening with Monsieur Teste bears the title ‘Memoirs of Chevalier Dupin’ ” (51).

21. Itamar Even-Zohar , “The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem,” in The Translation Studies Reader (3rd ed.), ed. Lawrence Venuti (New York: Routledge, 2012), 162–167.

Even-Zohar, “The Position of Translated Literature,” 163.

Poe’s centrality to the French literary canon is clearly demonstrated by the fact that he was the first non-French writer included in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade and the fifth writer, regardless of language, included in this monumental series. The Pléiade edition of Poe, which uses Baudelaire’s translations, was first published in April 1932, only six months after the series published its first book—the first volume of Baudelaire’s complete works. See “Le catalogue—Par année de parution,” La Pléiade, http://www.la-pleiade.fr/Le-catalogue/Par-annee-de-parution, for historical details about books published in this series.

25. Elvira Osipova , “The History of Poe Translations in Russia,” in Translated Poe , 73.

26. Osipova, 73 , and Eloise M. Boyle , “Valery Brjusov and Konstantin Bal’mont,” in Poe Abroad , 177–182. For a monograph-length study of Poe in Russia, see Joan Delaney Grossman , Edgar Allan Poe in Russia: A Study in Legend and Literary Influence (Würzburg: Jal-Verlag, 1973).

27. Liviu Cotrău , “Edgar Allan Poe in Romanian Translation,” in Translated Poe , 77.

Cotrău, “Edgar Allan Poe in Romanian Translation,” 77–84.

29. Margarida Vale de Gato , “Poe Translations in Portugal: A Standing Challenge for Changing Literary Systems,” in Translated Poe , 9–10.

Essays in Poe Abroad, Poe’s Pervasive Influence , and Translated Poe demonstrate Poe’s presence in China and South Korea, but more research into the literary traditions of these two nations would need to be conducted in order to discover whether important artists in these two countries who are influenced by Poe also act as Poe advocates.

31. Takayuki Tatsumi , “The Double Task of the Translator: Poe and His Japanese Disciples,” in Translated Poe , 171. For more on Poe’s relationship with Japan, see Noriko Mizuta Lippit’s pair of essays in Poe Abroad , several essays in Poe’s Pervasive Influence , and Scott Miller’s analysis of Japanese translations of “The Black Cat” in Translated Poe , 261–270 and 416–417.

Tatsumi, “The Double Task of the Translator,” 167–168.

Tatsumi, “The Double Task of the Translator,” 168–171.

Tatsumi, “The Double Task of the Translator,” 171–172.

Tatsumi, “The Double Task of the Translator,” 172, emphasis in the original.

36. For Spanish America, see Esplin , “From Poetic Genius to Master of Short Fiction: Edgar Allan Poe’s Reception and Influence in Spanish American from the Beginnings through the Boom,” Resources for American Literary Study 4 (2007): 31–54. For Brazil, see Carlos Daghlian , “Poe in Brazil,” in Poe Abroad , 130–134.

Daghlian, “Poe in Brazil,” 130.

38. Clarice Lispector , trans., Histórias Extraordinárias , by Edgar Allan Poe (Rio de Janeiro: Ediouro, 1998). This book appeared in a series for youth readers entitled Clássicos para o Jovem Leitor .

39. Lenita Esteves , “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Edgar Poe in the Brazilian Literary System,” in Translated Poe , 157.

Esteves, “The Unparalleled Adventure,” 158.

For details about the early reception of Poe in Spanish America, see Esplin, “From Poetic Genius to Master of Short Fiction,” 33–38.

42. Juan Antonio Pérez Bonalde , trans., “El cuervo” by Edgar Allan Poe , 1887, in J. A. Pérez Bonalde: Estudio preliminar de Pedro Pablo Paredes , ed. Pedro Pablo Paredes (Caracas: Academia Venezolana, 1964), 2:151–157.

43. Rubén Darío , Azul , 1888 (Buenos Aires: Espasa- Calpe, 1945) ; Darío , “Los raros,” 1893, in Obras completas (Madrid: Afrodisio Aguado, 1950), 2:245–517.

See Esplin, “From Poetic Genius to Master of Short Fiction,” 35–38 and 43–46, for a comparative analysis of Pérez Bonalde’s translation, “El cuervo,” and Carlos Obligado’s more meticulous version of the poem from 1932.

Darío, “Los raros,” 267, my translation.

Englekirk, Edgar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature , 146.

47. Fernando Iwasaki and Jorge Volpi , eds., Cuentos completos: Edición comentada , by Edgar Allan Poe , trans. Julio Cortázar , prologues by Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa (Madrid: Páginas de Espuma, 2008).

48. Borges notes in several texts that he thinks it is strange that Poe, a writer born in Boston, makes his way to Argentina via France. See, for example, Borges , “Prólogo de prólogos,” in Obras completas (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2007), 4:13 ; and Borges , “Sobre los clásicos,” in Páginas de Jorge Luis Borges: Seleccionadas por el autor (Buenos Aires: Celtia, 1982), 231. Cortázar, contrastingly, calls Baudelaire “el doble de Edgar Allan Poe” [“the double of Edgar Allan Poe”] and claims to have kept a copy of Baudelaire’s Poe translations nearby while translating Poe into Spanish. See Ernesto González Bermejo , Conversaciones con Julio Cortázar (Barcelona: Editora y Distribuidora Hispano Americana, 1978), 35–36.

49. Horacio Quiroga , “El tonel de amontillado,” 1901, in Todos los cuentos (Madrid: Allca, 1997), 813. The few prose pieces from Los arrecifes de coral appear in Todos los cuentos from pages 807–824.

Quiroga, “El tonel de amontillado,” 813, my translation.

Quiroga, “El tonel de amontillado,” 813.

52. Quiroga , “El crimen de otro,” 1904, in Todos los cuentos , 871–879.

53. Caroline Egan , “Revivification and Revision: Horacio Quiroga’s Reading of Poe,” The Comparatist 35 (2011): 239–248.

54. Quiroga , “El almohadón de pluma,” “La miel silvestre,” and “El hijo,” in Todos los cuentos , 97–102, 122–128, and 752–757. The Quiroga titles for which I provide English translations all come from Margaret Sayers Peden , trans., The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories , by Horacio Quiroga (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976).

55. Quiroga , “La gallina degollada,” 1911, in Todos los cuentos , 89–96 ; Peden , trans., “The Decapitated Chicken,” in The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories , 49–56.

Quiroga, “La gallina degollada,” 94–95; “The Decapitated Chicken,” 55–56 .

57. Quiroga , “El manual del perfecto cuentista,” in Todos los cuentos , 1189–1191.

58. Quiroga , “Decálogo del perfecto cuentista,” in Todos los cuentos , 1194–1195 , my translation.

Quiroga, “Decálogo del perfecto cuentista,” 1194–1195.

Englekirk, Edgar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature , 368.

61. Roberto Bolaño , “Consejos sobre el arte de escribir cuentos,” in Entre paréntesis (Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2004), 324–325 ; Bolaño , “Advice on the Art of Writing Short Stories,” trans. David Draper Clark , World Literature Today 80, no. 6 (2006): 48–49. Although published in 2004, Bolaño begins the essay by noting that he is forty-four years old, showing that he wrote the essay in 1997 or 1998.

62. Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares , trans., “La verdad sobre el caso de M. Valdemar,” by Edgar Allan Poe , in Antología de la literatura fantástica , 1940, eds. Jorge Luis Borges , Bioy Casares , and Silvina Ocampo (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1971), 371–379 ; Borges and Bioy Casares , trans., “La carta robada,” by Edgar Allan Poe , in Los mejores cuentos policiales , 1943, eds. Borges and Bioy Casares (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1997), 23–38.

63. John T. Irwin , The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994) ; Esplin , Borges’s Poe: The Influence and the Reinvention of Edgar Allan Poe in Spanish America (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016).

64. Borges often mentioned reading Poe in his childhood. See, for example, Borges and Norman Thomas di Giovanni , “Autobiographical Notes,” New Yorker , September 19, 1970, 42 and 78.

Copies of books by Poe held at the Fundación Internacional Jorge Luis Borges and at Argentina’s national library in the Sala del Tesoro reveal Borges’s continual return to Poe. The books contain notes in Borges’s hand, in Leonor Acevedo de Borges’s hand, and/or in Kodama’s hand.

66. Borges , “Prólogo,” in Edgar Allan Poe, La carta robada , ed. Franco Maria Ricci . (Madrid: Siruela, 1985), 12–13.

67. Borges , “La génesis de ‘El cuervo’ de Poe,” La Prensa (Buenos Aires), August 25, 1935 ; Borges , “Edgar Allan Poe,” La Nación (Buenos Aires), October 2, 1949 , sec. 2. For detailed accounts of Borges’s Poe references, see Esplin , “Jorge Luis Borges’s References to Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Bibliography, Section 1,” Poe Studies 48 (2015): 120–160 ; and “Jorge Luis Borges’s References to Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Bibliography, Section 2,” Poe Studies 49 (2016): 128–159.

68. Jason Weiss , “Writing at Risk: Interview with Julio Cortázar,” in Critical Essays on Julio Cortázar , ed. Jamie Alazraki (New York: G. K. Hall & Company, 1999), 73. Cortázar makes similar claims in François Hébert’s “An Interview with Julio Corázar,” in Critical Essays on Julio Cortázar , 62.

Weiss, “Writing at Risk,” 73; Hébert, “An Interview with Julio Corázar,” 62.

70. Although originally published in various collections, each of these Cortázar short stories is available in Cortázar , Relatos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1970). All of the cited English translations of Cortázar’s stories except “The Island at Noon” are available in Cortázar , Blow-Up and Other Stories , trans. Paul Blackburn (New York: Pantheon, 1967).   “The Island at Noon” appears in Cortázar, All Fires the Fire , trans. Suzanne Jill Levine (New York, Pantheon, 1973), 90–98.

Cortázar, “Lejana,” 437–438; Cortázar, “The Distances,” 26–27.

Weiss, “Writing at Risk,” 73.

73. Julio Cortázar , trans., Obras en prosa by Edgar Allan Poe , 2 vols. (Madrid: Revista de Occidente; Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1956).

74. Carlos Olivera , trans., Novelas y cuentos , by Edgar Allan Poe (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1884) ; Edgar Allan Poe , Historias extraordinarias (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca de la Nación, 1903) ; and Armando Bazán , ed., Obras completas , by Edgar Allan Poe (Buenos Aires: Claridad, 1944).

75. Cortázar , trans., Obras en prosa by Edgar Allan Poe , 2 vols. (Barcelona: Editorial Universitaria de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1969) ; Cortázar , trans., Cuentos , by Edgar Allan Poe , 2 vols. (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1970).

76. Cortázar , trans., Ensayos y críticas by Edgar Allan Poe (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1973).

77. Volpi and Iwasaki , “Poe & Cía,” in Cuentos completos: Edición comentada , 13.

Weiss, Writing at Risk,” 73.

81. Mario Vargas Llosa , “Poe y Cortázar,” Cuentos completos: Edición comentada , 19–20.

Cantalupo, Barbara , ed. Poe’s Pervasive Influence . Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2012 .

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Englekirk, John Eugene.   Edgar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature . New York: Instituto de las Españas en los Estados Unidos, 1934 .

Esplin, Emron. “ From Poetic Genius to Master of Short Fiction: A Map of Edgar Allan Poe’s Reception and Influence in Spanish America from the Beginnings through the Boom. ” Resources for American Literary Study 31 ( 2006 ): 31–54.

Esplin, Emron , and Margarida Vale de Gato , eds. Translated Poe . Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2014 .

Even-Zohar, Itamar. “The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem.” In The Translation Studies Reader (3rd ed.), edited by Lawrence Venuti , 162–167. New York: Routledge, 2012 .

Fisher, Benjamin Franklin , ed. Poe and Our Times: Influences and Affinities . Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1986 .

Iwasaki, Fernando , and Jorge Volpi , eds. Cuentos completos: Edición comentada , by Edgar Allan Poe . Translated by Julio Cortázar . Prologues by Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa . Madrid: Páginas de Espuma, 2008 .

Lefevere, André . Translating Literature: Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Context . New York: MLA, 1992 .

Quinn, Patrick F.   The French Face of Edgar Poe . Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1957 .

Vines, Lois Davis.   Valéry and Poe: A Literary Legacy . New York: New York University Press, 1992 .

Vines, Lois Davis , ed. Poe Abroad: Influence, Reputation, Affinities . Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999 .

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Edgar Allan Poe Biography Reading Comprehension Passage Printable Worksheet PDF

Subject: English

Age range: 10 - 16

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

21 March 2024

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Edgar Allan Poe was a famous American writer known for his spooky stories and poems. Despite a difficult life filled with tragedy, Poe was intelligent and had a passion for reading and writing. He attended the University of Virginia but had to drop out due to lack of funds. Undeterred, Poe pursued his dream of becoming a writer and gained fame for his unique and eerie style. He worked as an editor for magazines and struggled financially throughout his life. Poe’s life ended tragically and mysteriously at the age of 40, but his stories and poems continue to captivate readers worldwide. His legacy as a master of suspense and horror lives on, inspiring writers and entertaining readers.

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