The Death of Beautiful+Beloved Women - an Analysis of E.A.Poe Works

Es handelt sich hier um eine Arbeit zum Thema:

The Death of Beautiful and Beloved Women - an
 analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's "Eleonora", "Annabel Lee" and "To One in Paradise".

Inhalt:

- Introduction

- Biography of E.A. Poe

- The Ideal of Beauty

- The Change: from Beauty to Horror

- Nature as a State of Being and a State of Soul

- The Understanding of Love

- The Mourning and Coping with the Death of Beautiful and Beloved Women

- Conclusion

Introduction

In this work I will analyse Edgar Allan Poe´s short-story ”Eleonora” and his two poems ”Annabel Lee” and ”To One in Paradise”. I will pay special attention to his relationship towards women and so I will explain what beauty, love, horror and death seem to mean to him. To be able to show my following results I had to compare the three works with Poe´s essays, in which he explains what poetry means to him. Like this I could find out about the deeper meaning of, for example, the rhetorical devices he uses. This led again to a better understanding of the different parts of his works, which, if put together, finally showed the real message of them. The difficulty was to keep in mind that the author is never the same person as the narrator. While working with Edgar Allan Poe´s works this is an important rule because his own biography seems very similar to the situation of the narrator in his poetry. This was quite confusing. But in the end I got clear results, which I will present in my following essay.

Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was born on the 19th of January in 1809 in Baltimore. When he was 18 months old, his pregnant mother was left by his father and had to look after two young children. She had to fight hard against pulmonary tuberculosis, but died in 1812, Edgar being three years old. After her death, young Edgar was taken up by M. and Mrs. Allan. M. Allan wanted him to be a gentleman and so he sent him to a university and later to a military school. He completely ignored Edgar´s passion for poetry and so Edgar started drinking and gambling. After the death of M. Allan, Edgar did not have any money. That was why his aunt allowed him to live with her and her daughter, Edgar´s cousin Virginia. In 1836, Edgar and Virginia, who was 13 at that time, married. But Virginia had the same disease as Edgar´s mother and so she died in 1847. After this event Edgar´s live got even worse and he died in 1849 under mysterious circumstances.