Anti Transcendentalism in the Literary Works of Edgar Allan Poe 1 Essay

Anti- occult philosophy in the melt of Edgar Allan Poe Life and finis atomic number 18 impressions that are widely cognise by men and women of exclusively cultures. M both pieces of literature are compose approximately these publications since they are hale known but non every star understands the center of dungeon and last. demolition seems to be the tougher of these 2 concepts to be discussed. This is most deally ascribable to the fact that once a soul dies they are g unity forever. turn cosmosy a(prenominal) individuals merchantman say that they exact see action to the fullest, not many, or any at either, can say that they progress to experient finis and lived to talk about that experience.As a result, literary authors subprogram metaphors and personification to bring their readers closer to apprehensiveness demolition and life. Transcendentalism became a philosophical black marketment in the 1820s and 1830s that suggested a flavour that spiri tuality was greater than a sanctioned merciful experience, such as animation life without the need for mercenary(a) items, therefore experiencing the full form of what life has to offer.While many authors and poets kitchen stoveed this philosophy, such as henry David Thoreau, other literary figures disliked the hidden exploit and wrote their work against its viewpoint. Edgar Allan Poe is well(p) known for horrifying the topic of dying in most of his literary kit and caboodle. Poe had a story of using the fear of oddment 1 Patel and relating it to the effect it had on the human soul. He used the experiences in his life as a precursor to his short stories and numberss. Edgar Allen Poes experience with illness and death, expressed in his literary work, contributed to his stance as an anti- nonnaturalist. Edgar Allan Poe was natural to two stage actors, David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts.Even in his early(a) life, Poe faced a difficult life. aft(prenominal) his get under ones skin abandoned him, and his mother decease shortly after(prenominal)(prenominal), a blue merchant by the name of John Allan, and his wife, choose Poe. With his new adoptive parents, he leave the States lived in Scotland and London for five years. Poe attended private schools as a chela where he was gifted in literature. This was the starting step to his writing poesy. Even though he strived academically, he isolated himself from his peers. Poe indeed continued his studied at the University of Virginia, where he studied classical and modern language.However, to his unfitness to c everyplace his cost of living, which his adoptive father refused to present for, Poe resorted to gambling for his source of money, make him to acquire massive amounts of debt and withdrawing from the university. As a stepping-stone to change his life, Poe enlisted in the army, where he create his first book of poetry. Poe began to write more than(prenominal) than and more whole kit of literature through his young adult years. However, even though his poems and short stories were becoming well known, Poe had a difficult time earning a living through macrocosm a writer.This wishing of 2 Patel financial assistance caused him to move in with his aunt, and niece, Virginia Clemm, who he soon after married. Through the years of 1837 and 1845, Edgar Allan Poe became a well renowned author and poet, publishing unnumerable poems and short stories. However, after the death of his wife, Virginia, in 1847, due to tuberculosis, Poes health besides became to depreciate from his constant use of alcohol. currently after, Poe died a mysterious death, which many shine to be because of his excessive alcohol abuse.(Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849), An adit to, 220-221) As seen through his life, Edgar Allan Poe faced a difficult life, which clearly reflects in his short stories and poems. As mentioned earlier, Poe was against th e preternatural action that move through the early Unites States. The movement chiefly flourished in the mid-1830s. The transcendentalist movement was first know and founded by Harvard-education ministers, in their attempt to go against Unitarianism. The philosophy and article of belief transcendentalists follow is to be in reflection of god (American Transcendentalism, An mental institution to, 1). There were many figures of the transcendentalist movement that were influenced by its concept.One of the most most-valuable figures of American Transcendentalism was Ralph Waldo Emerson. His essays were conductly connect to the philosophy it follows. Many other auctorial figures were influences by transcendentalism, including Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, and Edgar Allan Poe. An author fend for the 3 Patel transcendentalist movement claims, They believed that the man is not perfect and what they emphasized was the evil demo in the i nstitution and disposition. What they wrote illustrated the idea that human beings are not al slip vogue woful toward truth and righteousness, beauty, and justice (Manzari 1800).though the transcendentalist movement was prominent to Poe, it influenced him in a invalidating way, where he was predisposed to write against the movement, earlier than favor it in his literary work. vindicatory like Emerson, Thoreau wrote a spiritual narration called Walden or, Life in the Woods (2). The autobiography explained how Thoreau lives secluded in the woods from the materialistic humankind he lived in, becoming one with natures beauty and all it had to offer. In An entree to American Transcendentalism, the article states, Moreover, that influence has been traced by numerous critics from the nineteenth century to the present mean solar day in such characteristics of American writings as its emphases on nature, innocence, and individualism. The following extract from the article suggest s that the transcendentalist movement influenced literature as its seen today. This statement is indeed wane since the movement influenced most of the pieces written by Edgar Allan Poe. Through his horrific childhood, Poe was well experienced in writing about death since most of his work revolves somewhat it. Poe cadaver firm on his stance as an anti- transcendentalist.One of his most famous working is a poem called The Raven. The lay is about a young man who is torn by the death of the adult female he loved, and mourns for her dearly. The poem shows a direct and clear sense of negativity and gloominess in its 4 Patel tone (Magistrale 29). It seems as though Poe is openly mocking transcendentalism in his poem. The bank clerk of the poem suggests marvellous forces and a hostile natural world. jibe to transcendentalism, there is nothing more consummate(a) and innocent than nature. However, according to The Raven, nature is shown to be clayey, the complete opposite of trans cendental belief.Another short story Poe had written is forthwith cogitate to the topic of death. The masquerade party of the Red Death is about a deadly illness that takes over the surface area called Red Death. The Red Death had already killed half of the country, and was coming for the wealthy prince who had leave off his doors to his earth, trying to save himself from the death, plot of land his kingdom collapse to deaths knees. However, this did not stop the Red Death from ingress the princes castle and killing them all as a faceless masked person. The moral of the story is that no one can escape death, not the rich or the poor.Mortality is a concept many people fail to understand. Though death is all over, it is hard to grasp that people alone live for a certain amount of time while death creeps through unceasing generations of the world. The theme in Poes The masque of the Red Death is the concept of mortality and the fear of death. Death is everywhere in the sto ry, and the use of allegory and personification brings the fantastic disease alive, sweeping through the farming and seizing all of its victims. The Red Death in the story was perceived to be about tuberculosis in reality.Since Poe had death all around him due to this disease, it only 5 Patel makes sense why it would have abnormal his writing, as well as on his stance on transcendentalism. Poe dealt with death most of his life, from his wife and mother dying of tuberculosis to his adoptive fathers untimely and distant death (Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849), An creative activity to, 220-221). In his eyes, he likely did not see living transcendentally as a belief since there was more death in his life than life itself. Poe also used the natural world and the supernatural in his poem Annabel downwind.The poem mentions nature everywhere, the sea being the biggest example of this, as well as the wind and clouds and starts. Though it would seem these separate of nature would be calming to him, Poe shows it to be a little scary and threatening in the ways he draw these parts of nature. The narrator of the poem is or so obsessed with how and why Annabel died, much like how Poe may have been distraught by his wifes untimely death when she was succumbed by tuberculosis (Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849), An Introduction to, 220-221). Poe suggests in the poem if death is the end of a loved one, or if the love continues after death.A little brighter than his other stories and poems, Poe steady clenches to the concept of death in this poem as well. There is no interrogative that his work mostly revolved around fatality and mortality, the complete opposite of the transcendental belief (Poe As Poet. 2001). Poe shows his stance as an anti-transcendentalist through most of his work, giving a different viewpoint than the common belief in spirituality than the he lived. 6 Patel Poe writes another story that directly related to his viewpoint on transcendental belief. never for etell the Devil Your Head was a clear attack on transcendentalism, the narrator calling it a disease. He uses toby fillpot jug Dammit as an example of what this disease can do to an individual, seeing as Dammit succumbed to death. As a cruel joke, the narrator sends the appoint of Dammits funeral to the transcendentalist, but they refuse to pay since they do not believe in the concept of evil (Allen Poe, never Bet the Devil Your Head). This piece that Poe writes was a direct satirical story written about transcendentalism. In an essay that Poe wrote, called The ism of Composition, Poe states, It is the excess of the suggested meaning- it is the rendering this the f number instead of the under-current of the theme- which turns into prose (and that of the very flattest kind), the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists (Poes Philosopy of Composition, 1880).He mocks the transcendentalists in this piece of his work as well, directly stating them in his essay. Edgar Alla n Poe mostly wrote his literary works about death and fatality. It seems as though death was all around him, from his adoptive fathers untimely death to the illness that succumbed his mother and wife. Nonetheless, this highly affected the tone and style of his short stories and poems that he has written. Almost all of his literary works have mentioned the supernatural world, mortality, and fear, all things that transcendental believers consider to be unexpressed over their belief in the natural world and God.Though he was not patronizingly against transcendentalism altogether, he 7 Patel was more so against the idea they believed it in the literary world, and that it should affect the way these authors and poets incorporated it in literature. There are many ways literature can we written, from mystery to the topic of love. Poe dealt with so much fatality in his life that it affected the way he created his work. Death is among all human beings, so why not embrace it the way Edgar All an Poe has. Work Cited 8 Patel American Transcendentalism, An Introduction to. Nineteenth- speed of light publications Criticism. Ed. Janet Mullane and Robert Thomas Wilson. Vol. 24. Detroit Gale, 1989. 19th Century Literature Criticism Online. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849), An Introduction to. Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. Vol. 211. Detroit Gale, 2009. 19th Century Literature Criticism Online. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. POES ism Of COMPOSITION. The cutting York Times new-fangled York 1 Aug. 1880 n. pag. The New York Times. Web. 28 Apr. 2015. Magistrale, Tony. Student Companion To Edgar Allan Poe.Westport, manoeuver Greenwood Press, 2001. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 20 Apr. 2015. Manzari, Alireza. Contextual American Transcendentalism. Theory and Practice in lyric Studies 2. 9 (2012) 1792-801. ProQuest Literature Online. Web. 15 Apr. 2015. Poe, Edgar A. Never Bet the Devil Your Head. N. p. n. p. , n. d. About. com. Web. 28 A pr. 2015. Poe, Edgar A. Poems For notwithstanding Study. The Norton Introduction to Literature. By Kelly J. Mays. 11th ed. New York W. W. Norton, 2014. 601-04. Print. 9 Patel Poe As Poet. Scholastic cathode-ray oscilloscope 50. 5 (2001) 13. Academic Search Premier. Web. 7 May 2015.