2。1 Poe’s personal life

No great author in the American literary circles had a more tragic life than Poe, a talented but tormented man。 There is always an air of darkness and horror in Poe's works, this is mainly because of his southern aristocratic education，impetuous personality and rough personal life。 文献综述

Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809, the child of struggling traveling actors。 Both his parents died within two years after his birth。 Edgar was taken into the home of John Allan, a merchant of Richmond, Virginia, whose name Poe later added to his own。 He received rigorous British education when he was a child。 Poe entered the University of Virginia in 1826。 During his college time, he had great academic performances but then he was addicted to the habit of gambling。 He didn’t get along well with his foster father and even had quarrels with him because of Poe’s accumulating gambling debts。 Ultimately, Poe broke away from his family and commence his literary career which is full of hardships。 Without the backup of his family, Poe could not feel love and care, a sense of belong and security, he had to fill his solitude heart with illusion，in order to let out the horror hidden deeply within his soul。 His life, on balance, was unstable and parlous, frequently poverty-stricken and completely necessitous。 That is why his works are full of lament and terror。

During the twelve years from 1833 to 1845, Poe continuously shifted his editorial work from the Southern Literary Messenger to the Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, the Graham’s Magazine and the Broadway Journal, and he conduced plenty of short fictions and insightful reviews to his editorial work。 He won the championship in a literary competition by his first story “MS．Found in a Bottle”(1833) and gradually build up his literary reputation。 However, it was until the publishing of his poem Raven that further cemented his literary position。 His very first collection of short fictions Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque published in 1839。 To sum up, Poe produced seventy short fictions and fifty poems or so that fell into the verse collections of Tamerlane and Other Poems(1827), Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems(1829), Poems(1831)and The Raven and Other Poems(1845)。 He also wrote quite a number of worthwhile essays and literary reviews。 Among them, The philosophy of Composition(1846), The Poetic Principle(1850), Review of Twice-Told Tales(1842) are the most famous。 In his lifetime, he went through consecutive setback in his marriage。 He was found hallucinating at the end of his life and died at the age of forty in Baltimore on October 3rd , 1849。来*自~优|尔^论:文+网www.youerw.com +QQ752018766*

2。2 Poe and the British gothic novel

Because of the Industrial Revolution, the alter of the way to print leads to the devalue of the price of books in Poe’s age。 As a result, many middle and lower class readers began to have the chance to read literary works instead of just only aristocratic and upper class readers。 So for those writers, they have to take the different taste of different readers into consideration。, and Allan Poe is with no exception。 He digged into a deep research and found that people were feverish about gothic novels which is filled with horror and terror。 Readers are often drawn by the morbid characters in Poe’s tales and are impressed by the hair-raisingly mysterious and melancholy atmosphere in Poe’s literary works。 And we call Poe’s short stories gothic fictions。

The blossom of the gothic romance is in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century。 It owes its birth to Horace Walpole’s “The Castle of Otranto”(1765) in England。 This piece of work enjoys immense success by making many readers too terrified to fall asleep。 And as soon as it was published, it attracted massive attention toward gothic romance。 Byron spoke highly of Walpole as “the author of the last tragedy and the first romance in the language” (Beers, 1966:238)。 Scott labeled the novel an“original’’work created by a “great genius” (Peeples。 1998:96—97)。 So far, “The Castle of Otranto” is still recognized as the pioneering work in gothic history and an irreplaceable piece of art in English literature。