Edgar Allan Poe’s“The Poetic Principle”

•Published as an essay in 1850, the year after Poe’s death•Based on lectures he had given throughout his life• Is a discussion of Poe’s aesthetic and literary theories.

Edgar Allan Poe’s“The Poetic Principle”

•The purpose of a poem is to elevate the soul.•Beauty, which humans naturally desire and strive for, should be the aim of a poem.•A poem should be short enough to draw the soul to the beautiful and yet long enough to be profound.•There is no such thing, really, as a long poem. A long poem is just a collection of short poems.•A poem should have unity

Edgar Allan Poe’s“The Poetic Principle”

• Imagination should be controlled by thought. Thought is the activity in which people are most like God.•The purpose of a poem is not to pursue truth; the demands of truth are too severe for poetry.•A poem which is just a poem, and not trying to teach anything, is the most dignified kind.•The most intense sense of pleasure comes from contemplation of beauty.

Edgar Allan Poe’s“The Philosophy of Composition”

•This first appeared in the April 1846 issue of Graham’s Magazine, not long after “The Raven” was published in 1845.• It explains Poe’s aesthetic theories and, trading on the success of “The Raven,” describes the way he composed it.

Edgar Allan Poe’s“The Philosophy of Composition”

•Americans are too busy to read long novels.• It should be possible to read any literary text (except a novel) in one sitting.•Everything in a literary composition should be contemplated step-by-step with the precision of a mathematics problem. •This is the antithesis to the idea that poets write purely out of intuition or inspiration which was a common Romantic conceit)

Edgar Allan Poe’s“The Philosophy of Composition”

•A writer should predetermine the final outcome of the composition and ensure that everything in the composition moves toward that ending.•There should be no word in a composition that is not meaningful to its purpose.•The brevity of a work should have a direct relationship to the intensity of the intended effect, although a certain amount of length is necessary.

Edgar Allan Poe’s“The Philosophy of Composition”

•The tone of the highest manifestation of beauty is sadness. Melancholy is the most legitimate of poetic tones.•The most melancholy topic is death. Because death becomes poetical when it is aligned with beauty, the most poetic topic is the death of a beautiful woman.