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The Masque of the Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Masque of the Red Death is a prime example of his Gothic horror fiction. Poe evokes a dark and eerie mood in a story that focuses on images of blood and death, while the personification of the Red Death lends an element of the supernatural. The Masque of the Red Death embodies Poe’s mastery of the short story; in addition, it illustrates his literary philosophy. According to Poe, a short story should be tightly focused so that every word, from beginning to end, contributes to the overall effect. In this story, powerful imagery and an illusive narrative voice are tightly woven into a macabre tale of horror with insight into the human condition.
“The Masque of the Red Death: Introduction.” Short Stories for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 8. Detroit: Gale, 1998. eNotes.com. January 2006. 15 August 2007.
Continue reading...The Tell-Tale Heart
14 August 2009
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe is simultaneously a horror story and psychological thriller told from a first-person perspective. It is admired as an excellent example of how a short story can produce an effect on the reader. Poe believed that all good literature must create a unity of effect on the reader and this effect must reveal truth or evoke emotions. The Tell-Tale Heart exemplifies Poe’s ability to expose the dark side of humankind and is a harbinger of novels and films dealing with psychological realism. Poe’s work has influenced genres as diverse as French symbolist poetry and Hollywood horror films, and writers as diverse as Ambrose Bierce and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Watch the animated film of The Tell-Tale Heart on YouTube. It was narrated by James Mason and nominated for an Academy Award in 1954.
Continue reading...The Raven
13 August 2009
When it appeared in 1845, the dark poem of lost love, The Raven, brought Edgar Allen Poe national fame. “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.” (from The Raven and Other Poems, preface, 1845) In a lecture in Boston the author said that the two most effective letters in the English language were o and r – this inspired the expression “nevermore” in The Raven, and because a parrot is unworthy of the dignity of poetry, a raven could well repeat the word at the end of each stanza.
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- Animal Farm - Chapter 1
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Chapter 4
- Animal Farm - Chapter 7
- The Raven
- Animal Farm - Chapter 8
- The Tell-Tale Heart
- The Wife - Chapter 1
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Chapter 7
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Chapter 1
- Winesburg, Ohio - Introduction and Chapter 1
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15 August 2009
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