First Exam
Poe's Life
Major questions: How would you describe Edgar Allan Poe? What were the dominant aspects of his character? What was his childhood like, and what impact might that have had on his later life? What were the most important relationships in his life? How would you characterize his relations with women? What were his major struggles? What were his major themes? How do you see those themes illustrated in the fiction, essays, and poetry we have read? What are Poe's major contributions to literature?
Key terms: Al Aaraaf, Frances Allan, John Allan, Annabel Lee, arabesque, Charles Baudelaire, The Bells, Berenice, The Black Cat, Broadway Journal, William Cullen Bryant, Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, The Cask of Amontillado, Thomas Holley Chivers, The City in the Sea, Maria Clemm, Virginia Clemm, cryptograms, Charles Dickens, C. Auguste Dupin, Thomas Dunn English, The Fall of the House of Usher, Margaret Fuller, The Gold-Bug, Rufus Griswold, hoaxes, Israfel, The Journal of Julius Rodman, John Pendleton Kennedy, Ligeia, Longfellow War, Anne Lynch, Maelzel's Chess-Player, Marginalia, The Masque of the Red Death, mesmerism, Morella, MS. Found in a Bottle, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Fanny Osgood, Penn Magazine, penny press, The Pit and the Pendulum, David Poe, Eliza Poe, Rosalie Poe, William Henry Leonard Poe, The Poetic Principle, The Purloined Letter, ratiocination, The Rationale of Verse, The Raven, Elmira Royster, Marie Louise Shew, Southern Literary Messenger, The Stylus, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, Tamerlane, To Helen, transcendentalism, Ulalume, Roderick Usher, Sarah Helen Whitman, Walt Whitman, William Wilson
Reading: Silverman, 1-407; Tamerlane (CT 1005-12); Alone (CT 1026); The Fall of the House of Usher (CT 231-246); The City in the Sea (CT 963-965); The Black Cat (CT 223-231); Descent Into the Maelstrom (CT 127-141); The Raven (CT 943-946); The Philosophy of Composition; The Purloined Letter (CT 208-223); "The Memory of Love: The Life of Henry Craft"
Final Exam
Poe's Times
Coming soon.
|
