Questions tagged [edgar-allan-poe]
For questions about the 19th-century author Edgar Allan Poe and his writings, which include both poetry and short stories, some of which have had widespread influence in their genres. Questions about his poems and short stories should be tagged [poetry] and [short-stories] respectively.
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Why did the Pit and the Pendulum lack historical authenticity?
The Pit and the Pendulum is set in Toledo, Spain during the height of the Spanish Inquisition which began in 1478.
In the story, Poe references the Jacobin club, which was an influential political ...
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Why Pallas in "The Raven"?
In Poe's famous poem "The Raven", the eponymous bird, after tapping on the narrator's window, steps smartly inside and perches upon a bust of Pallas.
Why Pallas? As far as I know, this ...
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Does "Landor's Cottage" have a real-life match?
I'm currently doing some research on E. A. Poe's Landor's Cottage (1849).
This short story—really a description by an unnamed narrator of an ideal(ized) locale—is "a pendant to 'The Domain of ...
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Short story by Poe where the killers of an evil king escape by ladder
I believe there is a short story by Poe in which an evil king is killed, and the killers escape by a ladder to the roof. What is the title of this story?
I read this story several decades ago, in a ...
user5699
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What do the yellow banners in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Haunted Palace" symbolize?
The story "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe contains a poem, "The Haunted Palace", which starts like this:
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels ...
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What's the significance of leap years in Poe's “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade”?
Edgar Allan Poe's story “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade” (link to full text) has this curious sentence. This is about Scheherazade volunteering to marry the king, despite knowing that ...
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Can Edgar Allan Poe’s Alone be analyzed in the light of Existential Loneliness? [duplicate]
Can Edgar Allan Poe’s Alone be analyzed in the light of Existential Loneliness? The very first lines
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not ...
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Why does Poe's "Arthur Gordon Pym" become so Technical and Scientific all of a sudden?
I was re-reading Edgar Allen Poe's magnificently disturbing novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, this last month and began to wonder why suddenly, starting with Chapter 14 and going ...
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What does Edgar Allan Poe mean by "supererogation is not presumable of any Divine Act"?
I am reading Edgar Allan Poe's Eureka: A Prose Poem, "an essay on the material and spiritual universe". I have come across a sentence where I can't get what the author is trying to say. It ...
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Edgar Allan Poe's "Alone"
The short poem "Alone" by Edgar Allan Poe was written in 1829 or 1830, when he was a young man, but only published in 1875 long after his death. Its full text is as follows:
From childhood’s hour I ...
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What does Hanns Heinz Ewers mean in this quote about Edgar Allan Poe?
There are men who radiate a special charm. They attract without wanting to, —one must believe in their personality, and then there is a certain quality which repels. One is not conscious what it ...
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Where is the Poe quote "Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them" from?
While researching an answer for the question What does Dupin mean about a seal formed of bread?, I was looking up material related to the author Edgar Allan Poe and his use of puns. I found this quote,...
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What does Dupin mean about a seal formed of bread?
In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Purloined Letter", a minister known only as D-- has a letter which he is keeping for the purposes of blackmail, and the police prefect G-- comes to Dupin for help ...
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Was Lovecraft influenced by Poe's "The Black Cat"?
While researching a question about Lovecraft, I was reading the article Stephen A. Black, "Literary Biography and Psychological Criticism: In the Matter of H. P. Lovecraft", Canadian Review of ...
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What is the meaning behind Poe's "The Assignation"?
Has anyone read and analyzed Poe's "The Assignation"? I read it and have a preliminary understanding of it but failed to perceive greater nuances by far.
