How does Poe criticize Romanticism and Transcendentalism through his works?

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2002

Answers

Rather vast? Try Poe's essays on individuals in those movements and his essays on poetry at www.eapoe.org or your library. I think Poe was very much influenced, but that his own deeply original feelings and theories went beyond any discipleship to his predecessors or contemporaries.

Poe was deeply critical, personally so, of the Boston Transcendentalists, in a truly visceral way. So be wary of comparing "Eureka" too much with their brand of philosophy. It SOUNDS somewhat like the pseudo-Hindu pantheism of the Bostonians, but it rather fits into other contemproary sciences and Poe's own unique and personal poetic cosmology. Still, as with other disagreements, he shouldn't have been casting stones considering his own enthusiasm for certain ideas.

-- Anonymous, June 18, 2002