Which writers influenced Edgar Allen Poe?

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Which writers influenced Edgar Allen Poe?

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1ScribbleScribe
Editado: Jul 16, 2010, 10:39 am

I've been thinking a lot about how authors influence each other. For example:

Poe influenced the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, who in turn influenced the now wildly popular Stephen King. Now I'm wondering which writers influenced Poe.

It's funny, I can hear Poe's voice in some of the stories of Lovecraft. The themes, the images...whisper hints of Poe.

Now I want to know what Poe read and was inspired by because even though he was a genuis, I'm sure he had some literary inspirations.

Any ideas which writers inspired him? Feel free to discuss in general how different horror authors/writers have influenced each other within the genre as well.

2ScribbleScribe
Editado: Jul 16, 2010, 10:38 am

Would you say that this is correct? "Poe was influenced by an earlier generation of European writers: Coleridge, De Quincy, Byron, Shelley, Keats."

Source: http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00AKza

and what about this?

"The young Poe was heavily influenced by the Romantic poets and other european writers(German Gothic, philosophers). Later, he admired Tennyson's natural lyricism. One of Mary Shelley's biographers implies with good reasoning that Mary's sole popular poem has been incorporated into "To One in Paradise" which also seems to owe a lot(and the story containing it("The Assignation") to Byron and Byron's affair with Mrs. Chatsworth. Percy Shelley, Byron in both verse and ideas are part of Poe's first poems, but even then he was showing his originality and argumanetation. Often he would take a poem by Moore and fashion a rebuttal or new approach. His organization would be tighter, more ingeniously organized and musically lyrical. He reviewed Moore and it worthwhile reading that essay.

he emulated Coleridge in musciality and vision, also writing about him, and also tried to analyse and advance a theory of poetics and practice in short essays. Poe was of the type who was deeply rational, in search of answers and the primacy of reason, but much less than Mary Shelley being himself a deeply inutitive poet possesed by his Muse more than possessing it. No easy answers, no emotional comfort in dream or memory. He more honestly faced the drought, the darkness, the weariness of obsessions with happiness removed beyond life. reducred, less flowery, less defined by idea than the sheer experience of poetic emotion itself abstracted and artfully expressed in lyric or powerful stories."

Source: http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00CFh9

I think I recall that Edgar Allan Poe created the Short Story? So I guess there are no short story authors that could've influenced him. Because I think Keats, Byron & Coleridge were poets, werent they? And Shelly was a novelist. (wasn't she?)

3JonathanGorman
Jul 16, 2010, 10:36 am

I realized you mentioned influences on Poe and not Lovecraft, but I'd thought would throw out Chambers and Dunsany as influences on Lovecraft as well. (Indeed, arguably more than Poe).

I'm drawing a blank early in this morning on influences on Poe. However, Lovecraft wrote an essay called "Supernatural Horror in Literature" which has a section on Poe. A quick Google search turned up... http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Supernatural_Horror_in_Literature/Edgar_Allan_Poe. Been a while since I read the essay and don't have time this morning, but maybe this can be a good starting point.

4JonathanGorman
Jul 16, 2010, 2:06 pm

People have attributed Poe with the creation of the short story, but there are other published examples. It would probably be more fair to say he was one of the writers who greatly refined and publicized it. However, Washington Irving had already published by then if I remember correctly. (Wikipedia seems to back this up). Also Hawthorne was writing short stories. Given Poe's editorial and publishing work, he most likely would have been familiar with contemporaries.

And of course a good deal of novels of the time and before that were actually published as serials in magazines and newspapers, so it's not such a leap to a one-shot short story from there.

I just remembered Poe wrote an essay on composition, but I haven't read it since high school: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Composition.

Part of the problem of course is the diverse nature of his works. Although he's known for his tales of horror/terror, he also wrote other works including humor, love poems, and of course he's probably just as influential in mysteries as horror.

5stretch
Jul 16, 2010, 7:39 pm

Plus, Science Fiction. Poe's "Adventure of Hans Pfaall" is the prototype to Julies Verne's from The Earth to the Moon

6ScribbleScribe
Jul 17, 2010, 6:43 am

#5: There was also the balloon hoax :)

This cartoon making fun of Verne & Poe's baloon stories made me laugh SO HARD.

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=213

It's really hilarious :P

7Round-One
Jan 29, 2013, 3:25 pm

Things we do to make a comment, ye Gads! No question, Poe was a Washington Irving fan.

8PJGraham
Jan 30, 2013, 5:29 pm

I wonder if anyone has suggested a Legacy Library for Poe? If we knew what he had in his library (provided he had one that people took note of), we might know some of his influences.

9petine
Out 22, 2013, 3:34 am

If you are to believe Wikipedia, E T A Hoffman was one of Poes sources of inspiration. His weird and uncanny tales of ghosts and the supernatural are well in line with anything Poe himself wrote, only earlier. I think most of his stories were written in thw 1820's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._T._A._Hoffmann

10pgmcc
Out 22, 2013, 7:25 am

I never trust Wikipedia; especially close to Halloween.

11PJGraham
Out 22, 2013, 11:10 am

Actually, Hoffman came to my mind even without the help of Wikipedia – it fits quite well. (And Wikipedia is a good beginner source; I usually just scroll to the bottom of an entry and look at what is cited.) But not knowing what Poe read, I don't know that we could say that Hoffman influenced him for sure. Hmmm, I wonder if there is a LT Legacy library for Poe?

12pgmcc
Out 22, 2013, 11:43 am

#11 just scroll to the bottom of an entry and look at what is cited.)

Agreed.

13petine
Nov 12, 2013, 12:37 pm

Be that as it may, but Hoffman definitely wrote short stories long before Poe, and I doubt he was the only one.