I have a 5-10 page paper due very soon about how poes works have influenced what it is to be an american today.

-- Anonymous, May 28, 2001

Answers

For a variety of Poe's works try www.eapoe.org and essays there such as "Pay for American Writers" "Exordium" "Some Secrets of the Magazine Prison-House" "American Poetry" "American Novel Writing" which you can see by the titles indicate his interest in championing a supported, truly American and democratic, QUALITY literature that can stand up with its Eurpoean predecessors.

His tales, compared with European tales- even when the setting is ancient and European- exhibit the American talent for scientific ingenuity and problem solving, using the latest discoveries progress has made available to the self-reliant man("The Maelstrom" "The Pit and the Pendulum", the Dupin detective stories). His poetry goes passionately beyond the European models(more rugged individualism)towards the creation of symbolism and modern verse and art(Usher)wherein the sound or artistry is is worked to a certain effect first and foremost.

Poe was patriot to country and region, a champion of nature and the environment that he worried was being eaten away by progress and lack of public appreciation. He valued scientific studies and exploration(the South Polar Expedition inspired by Jeremiah Reynolds, "Junius Rodman" "The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym" the Balloon stories). He wished the south was as advanced in the education of its youth as the North(as so do we all still).

Most of all he has been an icon and author of the first rank of some of the most appealing works in our heritage(The Raven, the terror tales, the detective stories), still accessible and appreciated by Americans of all ages and still bearing a depth of quality and artistry that transcends their mere story.

And he hated(though sometimes practiced a bit)- plagiarism!

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2001