第 12 章 埃德加•爱伦•坡
教学设计
课程名称：美国文学
适用对象：英语（国际贸易）专业专升本二年级学生
使用教材：《美国文学史及选读 1、2》吴伟仁（编）
主讲教师：邵林
American Literature
Chapter 12 Edgar Allan Poe
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Teaching Objectives
a. To help students to know something about the life and major works of Edgar
Allan Poe
b. To help students understand Poe’s literary point of view
c. To help students recognize Poe’s theme and style
d. To encourage students to enhance their understanding of the poem “Annabel
Lee” through discussion
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Teaching Content
a. Poe’s Life
b. Major Works
c. Literary Point of View
d. Theme and Style
e. Analysis of “Annabel Lee”
f. Influence
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Important and Difficult Teaching Points
a. Poe’s theories of short stories and poetry
b. Poe’s literary style

Teaching Methods
a. Content-based instruction
b. Student-centered learning
c. Discussion and interaction

Teaching Aid
Multimedia courseware

Suggested Time
90 minutes

Teaching Plan
I. Poe’s life (1809-1949)
Edgar Allan Poe held a unique position in the American literary history. He was
an American poet, short story writer, critic, editor, novelist and essayist.
Poe lived a brief and tragic life. His childhood was a miserable one. He lost both
of his parents when he was two years old and then he was adopted by a wealthy
merchant, John Allan, whose name Poe later added to his own. Poe’s relation with the
Allans was unhappy. At the age of 17, he entered University of Virginia and then West
Point but did not finish because of his heavy debts from gambling and drinking. He
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American Literature
worked as editor and writer most of his life, and he was always poor. At the age of 27,
he married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, whose death in 1847 left him
inconsolable.
Two years later, at forty, Poe himself was dead. He had traveled to Richmond to
make arrangements for his marriage to a widow, Mrs. A.B. Shelton. On the return trip
to New York, he stopped in Baltimore to visit some friends, where he was found
unconscious on the street. He died four days later on Oct. 7.
II. Major Works
Poe distinguished himself in three areas: poetry, short stories and criticism.
• Poetry
“To Helen” (1831) is one of the most famous of Poe’s lyrics. It was inspired by
the beauty of the mother of a schoolmate of Poe’s in Richmond, Virginia. The poem is
famous for a number of things, for example, its rhyme scheme, its varied line lengths,
its metaphor of a travel on the sea, and its oft-quoted lines, “To the Glory that was
Greece/ And the grandeur that was Rome.”
“The Raven” (1845) is a narrative poem. The poem is often noted for its
musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven’s
mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man’s slow fall into madness. The
lover is lamenting the loss of his love, a beautiful young woman (“the rare and radiant
maiden”), Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further instigate his
distress with its constant repetition of the word “Nevermore”.
“Annabel Lee” (1849) (“The beautiful Annabel Lee” will be discussed later)
Have you noticed that these three poems have something in
common?
Each of them describes a beautiful woman, Helen, Lenore, and Annabel Lee,
respectively.
• Short Stories
“MS. Found in a Bottle” (1833) is about an unnamed narrator at sea who finds
himself in a series of frightening circumstances. As he nears his own disastrous death
while his ship drives ever southward, he writes a manuscript telling of his adventures
which he casts into the sea. Some critics believe the story was meant as a satire of
typical sea tales.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) begins with the unnamed narrator
arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him
in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. As he
arrives, the narrator notes a thin crack extending from the roof, down the front of the
building and into the lake, and he also notes that Roderick seems afraid of his own
house. Roderick later informs the narrator that his twin sister Madeline has died of a
strange disease, and the narrator helps Roderick put her body in the tomb. But one
night, Madeline rises from the tomb and attacks Roderick. Roderick dies of fear. The
narrator flees the house. As he escapes, the entire house cracks along the break in the
frame and crumbles to the ground. “The Fall of the House of Usher” possesses the
typical features of the Gothic story: a haunted house, dreary landscape, mysterious
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American Literature
sickness, and doubled personality.
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) was Poe’s first collection of short
stories, including more than twenty previously published short stories, such as “MS.
Found in a Bottle” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”.
Do you know why Arthur Conan Doyle, who is famous for his
stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr
Watson, once said that Edgar Allan Poe’s stories were “a model for
all time”?
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) has been recognized as the first modern
detective story. In the story, C. Auguste Dupin is a man in Paris who solves the
mystery of the brutal murder of two women. Numerous witnesses heard a suspect,
though no one agrees on what language was spoken. At the murder scene, Dupin finds
a hair that does not appear to be human. The murder turns out to be an orangutan.
Therefore, C. Auguste Dupin is generally acknowledged as the first detective in
fiction. The character served as the prototype for many that were created later,
including Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle and Hercule Poirot by Agatha
Christie. Conan Doyle once wrote, “Each of Poe’s detective stories is a root from
which a whole literature has developed... Where was the detective story until Poe
breathed the breath of life into it?”
• Criticism
“The Philosophy of Composition” (1846)
“The Poetic Principle” (1848)
III. Literary Point of View
• Theories of Short Stories
According to Poe, a short story must be of such length as to be read at one sitting
(brevity), so as to ensure the totality of impression. The very first sentence ought to
help bring out the “single effect” of the story. No word should be used which does not
contribute to the “pre-established” design of the work (compression). A tale should
reveal some logical truth with “the fullest satisfaction”, and should end with the last
sentence, leaving a sense of finality with the reader.
• Theories of Poetry
According to Poe, poems should be short, concise and readable at one sitting. The
aim of poem writing is beauty, that is, to produce a feeling of beauty in the reader; the
most beautiful thing described by a poem is the death of a beautiful woman; the
desirable tone of a poem is melancholy. He opposed didactic poems and called for
pure poetry. He stressed the form of poem, especially the beautiful and neat rhyme.
He defined poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty”.
All his poems were written according to his poetry theory and his poems have
strong dreamy color.
Do you think Poe’s poetic principles can be applied to every
good poem?
Poe’s poetic principles are not fair at all time. For example, according to him,
John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost”, which consists of over ten thousand lines, is
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American Literature
not a good poem.
IV. Theme and Style
Poe is a romantic poet who is preoccupied with the subject of the death of one’s
beloved lover of great intelligence and beauty. He also writes about horror stories,
murder, and insanity.
Poe’s style is traditional. It is much too rational, too ordinary to reflect the
peculiarity of his theme. He is not easy to read.
V. Analysis of “Annabel Lee”
• Brief Introduction
“Annabel Lee” is the last complete poem composed by Edgar Allan Poe. Like
many of Poe’s poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. In this
lyric, the narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a
love for her so strong that even angels are envious. He retains his love for her even
after her death. There has been debate over who, if anyone, was the inspiration for
“Annabel Lee”. Though many women have been suggested, Poe’s wife, Virginia Eliza
Clemm Poe who died young in 1847, is one of the more credible candidates. Written
in 1849, it was not published until shortly after Poe’s death that same year.
• Analysis
Beautiful and good-sounding female name (Annabel Lee) and the words with
long vowel (sea, we, me) constitute the rhyme pattern. The poem has rich imagery
(sea and land, high-born kinsmen and jealous angels). Gothic atmosphere (a sad night
with pale moonlight, an ancient Kingdom, a grave by the side of the sea) is created in
the poem.
How are Poe’s poetic principles shown in “Annabel Lee”?
“Annabel Lee” obviously fits all of the criteria established by Poe. Only 41 lines
long, the poem is brief enough to be read at one sitting. The topic is suitably
melancholy as it deals with the death of a beautiful, beloved woman told from the
perspective of her desolate lover. The setting creates a portrait effect as the angels
swoop through heaven and the sea beats against the beach while the narrator remains
alone by the grave of his beloved Annabel Lee.
Annabel Lee and her relationship with the narrator is set up as an ideal. She
“lived with no other thought / Than to love and be loved by [the narrator]” (Line 5-6),
and these children experienced emotions beyond the understanding of most adults
“who were older than we / . . . far wiser than we” (28-29) as they “loved with a love
that was more than love” (9). This relationship only ends because of the jealous
interference of the angles who were “not so happy in heaven” (21) and sent a “chilling
and killing” wind (26) to separate the young lovers. It’s interesting, however, that love
itself isolates the couple from the rest of the world; the power of their bond makes
them unique in a world filled with adults who don't understand and angels who kill
out of spite.
The poem ends with a melancholy connection that survives the supernatural
powers of heaven and hell: “And neither the angels in heaven above / Nor the demons
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American Literature
down under the sea / Can ever dissever my soul from the soul / Of the beautiful
Annabel Lee” (30-33); the forces of nature: “For the moon never beams, without
bringing me dream / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee / And the stars never rise, but I feel
the bright eyes / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee” (34-37); and even death itself as the
mourning lover lies “down by the side / Of [his] darling . . . [his] life and [his] bride /
In her sepulchered there by the sea / In her tomb by the sounding sea” (38-41).
VI. Influence
Poe’s influence is world-wide in modern literature. His aesthetics and conscious
craftsmanship, his attack on “the heresy of the didactic”, and his call for “the
rhythmical creation of beauty” influenced French symbolists and the devotees of “art
for art’s sake”. Poe is the father of psychoanalytic criticism and the father of detective
story. He influenced later writers of Gothic and supernatural fiction.
Poe was a controversial figure in American literary history. He was criticized by
several famous American writers, such as Emerson, Henry James and Mark Twain.
However, his works was welcomed in Europe, especially in France.
VII. Assignments
A. Write a two-page paper on Poe’s “The Raven”.
B. Read Chapter 13 Ralph Waldo Emerson and think about the following
questions:
1) What is Transcendentalism?
2) What are Emerson’s major works?
3) How did Emerson express the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his
essays “Nature” and “Self-reliance”?
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