Is there any evidence that the Gothics of the Romatic Era, specifically Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and other Romantic Era poets, influenced Poe's poetry or prose? If so, where (ie books, periodicals, other)could I locate the references to this? Thank you

-- Anonymous, July 28, 2004

Answers

Thomas Mabbott's book "Complete Poems" of Poe's poetry is very thorough on identifying admitted and probable sources for Poe's poetic influences and specific references. A biography and Poe's own literary essays on the Romantics at www.eapoe.org is alos necessary.

The young Poe was heavily influenced by the Romantic poets and other euopean 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.

Links from the Poe site to the Poe Studies online archives might lead you to more articles of help. Obviously once you understand Poe, you can understand his preferences for the more musical artists and, like any rock music fan of today, his identification of their stormy lives with his own- which in his case was often more real and justified and certainly more artistically authentic than those early experimenters.

-- Anonymous, July 28, 2004