One literary device that is immediately evident is alliteration, the repetition of initial consonant sounds. In this case, the alliterative words are "sooner," "sunk," and "silence"; both words begin with the letter "s," creating a specific form of alliteration called sibilance (repetition of the "s" sound). Sibilance is evident also within the words "answered" and "voice."

Another device that appears is assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds. The long “u” sound in “sooner” repeats in “tomb.” The long “o” sound in “blows” repeats in “voice.”

How he had done it....?

Parallelism

This story contains various parallel structures. Typically at the beginning of the story which shows parallel features and repetition of key words.

“In their consequences, these events have terrified, - have tortured – have destroyed me.”

The phrases are parallel, which have an effect of clarifying the narrator’s actual condition. He is in a great tension by the consequences of his madness deed. The phrases put at the beginning of the story intentionally, in order to indicate the coming ghostly event. The negative words like, “terrified”, “tortured”, “destroyed” give emphasis for the message.

The purpose of these parallel features is to give emphasis to the narrator’s hard condition. There is also another parallel, written after he accidentally killed his wife, in the presence of the police men.

“I walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro.”

The parallel sentences show the enormous anxiety of the murderer. They create image of the circumstances. The power of this parallel structure and lexical choice makes the narration interesting.

The process of torturing the cat is presented by the use of repetitions and a parallel construction in order to emphasize the psychological state of the murderer and points out his concentration on what he is doing, his being caught in an endless loop of reflection on this terrible deed, here is the example:

“One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; - hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; - hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; - hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin…."

This clearly makes the thoughts of the character displayed and helps the reader get closer to his bizarre nature. By the means of parallelism, the write could make connections between ideas and claims of his character and also helped keep the reader on track. 

Repetition

The repetition is due to some specific reasons, which all support to describe the narrator's state of mind, his thoughts and views when telling the story. It is important to mention that these kinds of repetition sometimes create parallel structures too. Some of the examples are: 

"I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others."

"When reason returned with the morning -- when I had slept off the fumes of the night's debauch -- I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse,"

“These walls are you going, gentlemen? – these walls are solidly put together…”

“Some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place – some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own.”

"I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity"

The purpose here is to emphasize on the condition of narrator's mind and how he wants to declare his destroyed mood and sometimes stressing on the speeches to attract reader's attention.

Metaphor and Personification

The story under the analysis is rich in metaphors. Metaphors which are used to illustrate the changes of the inner world of the character and his behaviour with others can be found in such cases as:

 “Many projects entered my mind.”

“I had walled the monster up within the tomb!”

“…and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.” 

“the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder…”

 “This peculiarity of character grew with my growth.” 

“The fury of a demon instantly possessed me.” 

“…and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.”

 “But at length reflection came to my aid.”

Personification is used as regards to the abstract inanimate objects and notions in order to present them as some kind of mystical powers that “grow upon” the narrator and that he is unable to control:

“evil thoughts became my sole intimates”,

“the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man”,

“and then came…the spirit of PERVERSENESS”

“My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame”

Paradox

In the first line of the first paragraph, there is an obvious paradox with a parallel structure, which grabs the attention of the reader, as below:

“For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.

The narrator introduces his story, which deviates from the normal story, in an antonyms parallel approach, that his story is peculiar. The paradoxical phrases, “most wild” and “most homely” create contradictory vision to the reader since they are nearly antonyms. The one who reads this first line becomes eager to know what wild and homely narration is. There is also another paradoxical expression which is an antonym parallel at the same time. In the middle of the story saying:

“...even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.”

He referred to God as the most merciful and most terrible. This also reflects his madness, that how could be merciful and terrible at the same time. Yet, the paradox here holds a purpose, for to show in what kind of dilemma he has been to.

Symbolism and Allusion

This story has a great deal of symbolism which plays an important role throughout the whole story. From the symbolism in the story we learn a lot about the hidden messages that are behind the narrators actions.

“The Black Cat” symbolizes death, darkness in traditional terms. As in one of the speeches of the wife of the narrator usually regarding that, “… all black cats are witches in disguise.” Yet black cats can symbolize a lot more things such things as death, sorcery, witchcraft, spirits of the dead, and most common a symbol of bad luck.  The cat s name itself can be interpreted as a symbol. Pluto, the name of the cat, can symbolize what we know from Greek and Roman mythology, which is that Pluto was the god of the dead and ruler of the underworld which is an Allusion also (Nilsson, 1997).  Another part in the story which can symbolize a lot of things is the fact that the cat is half blinded, this could exemplify that the narrator too is somehow half blinded maybe by drinking, or by guilt, or the disinclination to see disturbing things. The physical harm the narrator imposes upon the cat can symbolize how he instead wants to harm his wife.

Even though the narrator blinded and hanged the black cat. Another white-spotted black cat appears. This makes the story deviant, that it is connected with the spiritual world. Here, the symbol is clearly seen that the evil spirit is not flesh and blood that could be killed. He follows the human beings as the black cat follows the narrator.

Fire is another symbol in the story which represents the judgment for the committed crime, in the story. His house is burned after the killing of the black cat. (Adera, 2013)

“The plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the fire -”

The story is enriched by these symbols which gained the author a good reputation in terms of style variation.

Irony

There are various ironies in this story. The typical one is when the narrator worries that after he relates his story, others will not give it much thought and will not probably consider it as an ordinary event. Nonetheless, the narrator is telling the story from his prison cell awaiting his death, and his tale is a criminal one out of his wrath. Undoubtedly, this seems very far from ordinary. He describes his events as normal and that he had committed no mistakes or faults which in fact he is a dangerous murderer. This example clarifies how he narrates in an ironical way:

"Yet, mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events."

As we see, we get the first impression as if we are listening to a very rational and intelligent man who is about to explain a series of bizarre events (Harris: 1990: 285), consequently, we identifies how ironically he impressed his feeling when we find out he is really a mad person.

Irony also can be found when the narrator cuts out Pluto's eye, the cat sees well "…but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual...". Previously, the cat loved and trusted the narrator, following him everywhere, and they were fond of each other. But after the cat misses an eye, it sees the narrator for what he is, an imprudent, dangerous man.

Simile

This is a prevail figure of speech and its use is inevitable in the sequences of the story. The narrator attempts to liken and associate between things. The famous conventional belief about the evil spirits of the cats is confirmed by such a simile: 

"all black cats as witches in disguise."

The collapse of the narrator's soul is revealed through the following simile:

"the spirit of PERVERSENESS as if my final and irrevocable overthrow."

The case of simile is also used in the final part of the story to intensify the tension of the events:

 "a cry…like the sobbing of a child."

There other multitude uses of simile which has been used by the author to attach between images and meanings of phrases and expressions.

As for the style of the text under analysis, the general atmosphere of mysticism, dark romanticism and extreme terror is brilliantly presented in the story and well emphasized by the appropriately applied stylistic devices that enable the readers to feel and live through all the events described by the author.

Obviously, all these elements made the story deviated semantically and contributed prominently to the effect of shocking events in Poe’s work “The Black Cat”. Poe’s skillful use of all of these elements needs further deep stylistic analysis under other methods, but since we attempted our focus to be on the semantic method, we could only discover and analyze the story according to the features we discussed previously.

What about characters....?

THE NARRATOR

The narrator has major issues. This unnamed character is an abusive bully and a murderer. He made home a living hell for his wife, pets, and himself. He's writing to us from his prison cell, on the eve of his scheduled death by hanging. In addition to the details of his heinous crimes, he reveals his psychological transformation from nice-guy to villain. He tells us that around the time he murdered his wife, all "good" had been driven from his personality .
And he doesn't seem to be confessing out of a sense of guilt. Over the course of the story, the narrator provides several reasons for his various behaviors. But mostly he seems to be blaming the cat (or cats) for all his problems. According the narrator, it's the cat's fault that the domestic scene of the story ultimately turned so foul. This seems to be his real point in telling us the story.

THE NARRATOR'S WIFE

The brief outline the narrator provides us of his wife suggests that she is kind, giving, loyal, and even heroic at the end. The narrator says she has "in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been [his] distinguishing characteristic." She is a highly sympathetic character, in her own right. The fact that the narrator abuses her, and her beloved pets, makes her even more sympathetic, and makes us think that the man is a complete bad character.

PLUTO

Pluto is fine specimen of a cat. All black, large, fuzzy, and "and sagacious to an astonishing degree". (Sagacious is a cool word to know. It means extremely wise, intelligent, and perceptive.) Over the years Pluto moves from a pampered pet to an abused beast. He is blinded and ultimately murdered by his owner. The narrator might have us believe that he is actually a witch in disguise (see the "Character Analysis" for the narrator's wife more), transforming from witch to Pluto, to the second black cat. To be fair, we gave the second cat his own "Character Analysis," so be sure to check that out. For now, we are focusing on the cat the narrator calls Pluto.
Or Pluto is a cat, and only a cat or he is a symbol or allegory for other things or  he's both. Poe had pets of his own, and is suspected to have been an animal lover. At a most basic level, the story seems designed to invite sympathy for animals, and raise awareness of animal abuse. Since you probably don't need a lecture on being nice to cats, we'll focus on a few allegorical and symbolic possibilities.

THE SECOND CAT

The second black cat looks almost exactly like Pluto. He's big, black, and missing an eye. The only difference is the white spot. The spot starts off innocently enough, but then grows into an image of the gallows, if the narrator can be believed.
With all these similarities, and with the narrator's insistence that the cat is more than just a cat, we might think the second black cat is some kind of supernatural version of Pluto. 

The story is presented as a first-person narrative using an unreliable narrator. He is a condemned man at the outset of the story. The narrator tells us that from an early age he has loved animals. He and his wife have many pets, including a large, beautiful black cat (as described by the narrator) named Pluto. This cat is especially fond of the narrator and vice versa. Their mutual friendship lasts for several years, until the narrator becomes an alcoholic. One night, after coming home completely intoxicated, he believes the cat to be avoiding him. When he tries to seize it, the panicked cat bites the narrator, and in a fit of rage, he seizes the animal, pulls a pen-knife from his pocket, and deliberately gouges out the cat's eye.

From that moment onward, the cat flees in terror at his master's approach. At first, the narrator is remorseful and regrets his cruelty. "But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of perverseness." He takes the cat out in the garden one morning and ties a noose around its neck, hanging it from a tree where it dies. That very night, his house mysteriously catches fire, forcing the narrator, his wife and their servant to flee the premises.

The next day, the narrator returns to the ruins of his home to find, imprinted on the single wall that survived the fire, the apparition of a gigantic cat, with a rope around the animal's neck.

At first, this image deeply disturbs the narrator, but gradually he determines a logical explanation for it, that someone outside had cut the cat from the tree and thrown the dead creature into the bedroom to wake him during the fire. The narrator begins to miss Pluto, feeling guilty. Some time later, he finds a similar cat in a tavern. It is the same size and color as the original and is even missing an eye. The only difference is a large white patch on the animal's chest. The narrator takes it home, but soon begins to loathe, even fear the creature. After a time, the white patch of fur begins to take shape and, to the narrator, forms the shape of the gallows. This terrifies and angers him more, and he avoids the cat whenever possible. Then, one day when the narrator and his wife are visiting the cellar in their new home, the cat gets under its master's feet and nearly trips him down the stairs. Enraged, the man grabs an axe and tries to kill the cat but is stopped by his wife- whom, out of fury, he kills instead. To conceal her body he removes bricks from a protrusion in the wall, places her body there, and repairs the hole. A few days later, when the police show up at the house to investigate the wife's disappearance, they find nothing and the narrator goes free. The cat, which he intended to kill as well, has also gone missing. This grants him the freedom to sleep, even with the burden of murder.

On the last day of the investigation, the narrator accompanies the police into the cellar. They still find nothing significant. Then, completely confident in his own safety, the narrator comments on the sturdiness of the building and raps upon the wall he had built around his wife's body. A loud, inhuman wailing sound fills the room. The alarmed police tear down the wall and find the wife's corpse, and on rotting head, to the utter horror of the narrator, is the screeching black cat. As he words it: "I had walled the monster up within the tomb!".

What events I have found in the story....

Edgar Allan Poe explored the psychology of the criminal mind; in addition, he often investigated evil in the hearts of men. “The Black Cat” becomes then an example of Poe’s probing the mind of someone so obsessed that he commits murder for no sane reason.

The narrator of the story is the main character, a nameless murderer.  As in many of Poe’s stories, the speaker intends to convince the reader that he is not insane, and he should not be held responsible for the crimes of which he is accused.  Of course, since he is to be hanged the next day, he is desperate to persuade the reader of his innocence.

Poe provides few details about his settings.  Unlike many of his stories with elaborate decorations, this story focuses more on the action of the main character.  There are several settings:

the  jail cell      

This is a small space where the narrator is forced to examine    his    actions and his life.  He still refuses to take responsibility for his actions.

the narrator’s home

The first house becomes a prison cell for the wife and the pets. The reader discovers that the family has been rich and even had servants. When the house is destroyed by fire, after years of abuse, the pets finally escape their awful "home," and die tortured by the flames.

The bedroom wall that is left standing after the fire with its raised image of the cat foreshadows the second cat’s arrival in the man’s life.  It also represents the psychological hold that Pluto has on the narrator. 

the yard of the burned house

This is the place where Pluto is hung.  This foreshadows the death of the narrator as he will be hung the next day after his story is completed.

the new house

The second house is old and depressing.  The family has lost their wealth in the fire.

the bar where the second cat is found

The bar is a dirty, dank place where the narrator notices the cat sitting atop a huge barrel of wine.

the cellar

The cellar is another important aspect of setting.

One day she [the wife] accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit…

It becomes a horrific scene because the wife innocently tries to protect her pet but is brutally killed. Her tomb becomes the cellar wall where her body will decompose and eventually be mutilated by the second cat, who has to live there for four days

It is unclear how much time elapses during the story. The span of time is detected only by the narrator’s perverted thoughts and actions which determine the course of the story.

I think, it is an amasing story, but not everybody will understand it)

I offer you to watch it. May be it will help you to understand and to feel him and his masterpieces)))

15 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT EDGAR ALLAN POE

 I’ve studied Edgar Allan Poe in-depthly over the past three months, I began to compile a list of obscure facts that I didn’t know about Dear Poe. I’m ready to share with you some of the tidbits that I didn’t quite fully know before.

1. His mother was Elizabeth Arnold Poe

2. Elizabeth, Poe’s mother, died when Edgar was just three years old.

3. Edgars’s father, David, was an alcoholic and abandoned Edgar and his two siblings after Elizabeth’s death. He supposedly died 2 days later.

4. John and Frances Allan took Edgar in but never officially adopted him. They were well-to-do and were able to afford Edgar’s education

5. Edgar gambled away whatever money the Allan’s would send him while he was at the University of Virginia. He was eventually kicked out. They became estranged shortly after.

6. Edgar, who was not on great terms with his biological or guardian families, enlists in the Army as Edgar. A. Perry

7. When he began to write, he wrote under the name Edgar Allan Poe, assuming both surnames.

8. Obsessed with cats, Edgar often wrote with a cat on his shoulder.

9. Edgar’s one and only novel Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was about a boat capsizing and the crew members drawing straws for who would be eaten; they drew straws and ate Richard Parker. The book bombed. Even though Poe said it was a true story, in his time most of the critics didn’t believe him. They were right to think so because at the time Poe’s book wasn’t true, but just 5 years later a similar wreck happened with the same lead character name Richard Parker, but no cannibalism. Then in 1884 there was another shipwreck where there was cannibalism, and the one who was eaten was indeed Richard Parker.

10. He introduced the first recorded literary detective in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The detective character would lead to become the prototypical detective we know today. On a side note, a lot of people cite the word detective wasn’t in existence in 1841 for Poe to use in describing his lead character, but it’s been proven to have been printed in 1840, a year before Poe’s novel. It’s very well possible that the word was used commonly in speech at the time.

11. Poe is credited for defining the modern short story.

12. He was early adopter of the genre of Science Fiction. In 1844, he published “The Balloon” in Sun Newspaper. He described a lighter than air balloon that transversed the Atlantic Ocean in three days. The accounts were so believable that the newspaper had to retract the story two days later. However untrue the story was, the Sun newspaper made a ton of money off of newspapers, and they did not give Poe a cent. From then on, Poe hated the Sun newspaper.

13. “The Raven” was a personal challenge Edgar imposed upon himself. He wanted to write 100 line poem, enough for one sitting. He ended up with 108 lines, which apparently was good enough for Poe.

14. Poe originally wanted to use a parrot instead of a raven, but he thought it didn’t evoke the right tone.

15. Edgar changed the writing and publishing world. Before Poe, writing was a noble profession where not many were able to make a living off of solely writing. Edgar insisted that writing would be his career, and he made major strides to find an audience for his entertaining articles, which would become the initial spark of the magazine industry. He even was given $1,500 the last week of his life to start a magazine. However, in his life he was plagued by international copycats where he had no protection that we have now with international copyrights. In many ways, he paved the way for writers to be compensated enough to have a career.

Bonus Fact! In 1848 after his wife’s death in 1847, Poe attempted to commit suicide by ingesting opiates. Four days later, he sat to take this daguerreotype.

Edgar Allan Poe,  (born January 19, 1809, Boston,Massachusetts, U.S.—died October 7, 1849, Baltimore,Maryland), American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor who is famous for his cultivation of mystery and the macabre. His tale The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His “The Raven” (1845) numbers among the best-known poems in the national literature.

Life

Poe was the son of the English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe, Jr., an actor from Baltimore. After his mother died in Richmond, Virginia, in 1811, he was taken into the home of John Allan, a Richmond merchant (presumably his godfather), and of his childless wife. He was later taken to Scotland and England (1815–20), where he was given a classical educationthat was continued in Richmond. For 11 months in 1826 he attended the University of Virginia, but his gambling losses at the university so incensed his guardian that he refused to let him continue, and Poe returned to Richmond to find his sweetheart, (Sarah) Elmira Royster, engaged. He went to Boston, where in 1827 he published a pamphlet of youthful Byronic poems,Tamerlane, and Other Poems. Poverty forced him to join the army under the name of Edgar A. Perry, but, on the death of Poe’s foster mother, John Allan purchased his release from the army and helped him get an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Before going, Poe published a new volume at Baltimore, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829). He successfully sought expulsion from the academy, where he was absent from all drills and classes for a week. He proceeded to New York City and brought out a volume of Poems, containing several masterpieces, some showing the influence of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, andSamuel Taylor Coleridge. He then returned to Baltimore, where he began to write stories. In 1833 his MS. Found in a Bottle won $50 from a Baltimore weekly, and by 1835 he was in Richmond as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. There he made a name as a critical reviewer and married his young cousin Virginia Clemm, who was only 13. Poe seems to have been an affectionate husband and son-in-law.

Poe was dismissed from his job in Richmond, apparently for drinking, and went to New York City. Drinking was in fact to be the bane of his life. To talk well in a large company he needed a slight stimulant, but a glass of sherry might start him on a spree; and, although he rarely succumbed to intoxication, he was often seen in public when he did. This gave rise to the conjecture that Poe was a drug addict, but according to medical testimony he had a brain lesion. While in New York City in 1838 he published a long prose narrative, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, combining (as so often in his tales) much factual material with the wildest fancies. It is considered one inspiration of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. In 1839 he became coeditor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in Philadelphia. There a contract for a monthly feature stimulated him to writeWilliam Wilson and The Fall of the House of Usher, stories of supernatural horror. The latter contains a study of a neurotic now known to have been an acquaintance of Poe, not Poe himself.

Later in 1839 Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque appeared (dated 1840). He resigned from Burton’s about June 1840 but returned in 1841 to edit its successor, Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, in which he printed the first detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. In 1843 his The Gold-Bug won a prize of $100 from the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper, which gave him great publicity. In 1844 he returned to New York, wrote The Balloon-Hoax for the Sun, and became subeditor of the New York Mirror under N.P. Willis, thereafter a lifelong friend. In the New York Mirror of January 29, 1845, appeared, from advance sheets of theAmerican Review, his most famous poem, “The Raven,” which gave him national fame at once. Poe then became editor of the Broadway Journal, a short-lived weekly, in which he republished most of his short stories, in 1845. During this last year the now-forgotten poet Frances Sargent Locke Osgood pursued Poe. Virginia did not object, but “Fanny’s” indiscreet writings about her literary love caused great scandal. His The Raven and Other Poems and a selection of his Talescame out in 1845, and in 1846 Poe moved to a cottage at Fordham (now part of New York City), where he wrote for Godey’s Lady’s Book (May–October 1846) “The Literati of New York City”—gossipy sketches on personalities of the day, which led to a libel suit.

Poe’s wife, Virginia, died in January 1847. The following year he went to Providence, Rhode Island, to woo Sarah Helen Whitman, a poet. There was a brief engagement. Poe had close but platonic entanglements with Annie Richmond and with Sarah Anna Lewis, who helped him financially. He composed poetic tributes to all of them. In 1848 he also published the lecture“Eureka,” a transcendental “explanation” of the universe, which has been hailed as a masterpiece by some critics and as nonsense by others. In 1849 he went south, had a wild spree in Philadelphia, but got safely to Richmond, where he finally became engaged to Elmira Royster, by then the widowed Mrs. Shelton, and spent a happy summer with only one or two relapses. He enjoyed the companionship of childhood friends and an unromantic friendship with a young poet, Susan Archer Talley.

Poe had some forebodings of death when he left Richmond for Baltimore late in September. There he died, although whether from drinking, heart failure, or other causes was still uncertain in the 21st century. He was buried in Westminster Presbyterian churchyard in Baltimore.

Appraisal    

Poe’s work owes much to the concern of Romanticism with the occult and the satanic. It owes much also to his own feverish dreams, to which he applied a rare faculty of shaping plausible fabrics out of impalpable materials. With an air of objectivity and spontaneity, his productions are closely dependent on his own powers of imagination and an elaborate technique. His keen and sound judgment as an appraiser of contemporary literature, his idealism and musical gift as a poet, his dramatic art as a storyteller, considerably appreciated in his lifetime, secured him a prominent place among universally known men of letters.

The outstanding fact in Poe’s character is a strange duality. The wide divergence of contemporary judgments on the man seems almost to point to the coexistence of two persons in him. With those he loved he was gentle and devoted. Others, who were the butt of his sharp criticism, found him irritable and self-centred and went so far as to accuse him of lack of principle. Was it, it has been asked, a double of the man rising from harrowing nightmares or from the haggard inner vision of dark crimes or from appalling graveyard fantasies that loomed in Poe’s unstable being?

Much of Poe’s best work is concerned with terror and sadness, but in ordinary circumstances the poet was a pleasant companion. He talked brilliantly, chiefly of literature, and read his ownpoetry and that of others in a voice of surpassing beauty. He admired Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. He had a sense of humour, apologizing to a visitor for not keeping a pet raven. If the mind of Poe is considered, the duality is still more striking. On one side, he was an idealist and a visionary. His yearning for the ideal was both of the heart and of the imagination. His sensitivity to the beauty and sweetness of women inspired his most touching lyrics (“To Helen,” “Annabel Lee,” “Eulalie,” “To One in Paradise”) and the full-toned prose hymns to beauty and love in “Ligeia” and “Eleonora.” In “Israfel” his imagination carried him away from the material world into a dreamland. This Pythian mood was especially characteristic of the later years of his life.

More generally, in such verses as “The Valley of Unrest,” “Lenore,” “The Raven,” “For Annie,” and “Ulalume” and in his prose tales, his familiar mode of evasion from the universe of common experience was through eerie thoughts, impulses, or fears. From these materials he drew the startling effects of his tales of death (The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, The Premature Burial, The Oval Portrait, Shadow), his tales of wickedness and crime (Berenice, The Black Cat, William Wilson, The Imp of the Perverse, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart), his tales of survival after dissolution (Ligeia, Morella, Metzengerstein), and his tales of fatality (The Assignation, The Man of the Crowd). Even when he does not hurl his characters into the clutch of mysterious forces or onto the untrodden paths of the beyond, he uses the anguish of imminent death as the means of causing the nerves to quiver (The Pit and the Pendulum), and his grotesque invention deals with corpses and decay in an uncanny play with the aftermath of death.

On the other side, Poe is conspicuous for a close observation of minute details, as in the long narratives and in many of the descriptions that introduce the tales or constitute their settings. Closely connected with this is his power of ratiocination. He prided himself on his logic and carefully handled this real accomplishment so as to impress the public with his possessing still more of it than he had; hence the would-be feats of thought reading, problem unraveling, andcryptography that he attributed to his Legrand and Dupin. This suggested to him the analytical tales, which created the detective story, and his science fiction tales.

The same duality is evinced in his art. He was capable of writing angelic or weird poetry, with a supreme sense of rhythm and word appeal, or prose of sumptuous beauty and suggestiveness, with the apparent abandon of compelling inspiration; yet he would write down a problem of morbid psychology or the outlines of an unrelenting plot in a hard and dry style. In Poe’s masterpieces the double contents of his temper, of his mind, and of his art are fused into a oneness of tone, structure, and movement, the more effective, perhaps, as it is compounded of various elements.

As a critic, Poe laid great stress upon correctness of language, metre, and structure. He formulated rules for the short story, in which he sought the ancient unities: i.e., the short story should relate a complete action and take place within one day in one place. To these unities he added that of mood or effect. He was not extreme in these views, however. He praised longer works and sometimes thought allegories and morals admirable if not crudely presented. Poe admired originality, often in work very different from his own, and was sometimes an unexpectedly generous critic of decidedly minor writers.

Poe’s genius was early recognized abroad. No one did more to persuade the world and, in the long run, the United States, of Poe’s greatness than the French poets Charles Baudelaire andStéphane Mallarmé. Indeed his role in French literature was that of a poetic master model and guide to criticism. French Symbolism relied on his “The Philosophy of Composition,” borrowed from his imagery, and used his examples to generate the modern theory of “pure poetry.”