Poe's Romanticism and Appeal

Edgar Allan Poe is considered to be America's first significant literary critic or, at least, the first major writer in America to write seriously about criticism, about the theory of composition, and about the principles of creative art. He was also the first to set down a consistent set of principles about what he thought was acceptable in art and what should be essentially rejected in art (Poe: 263).

As an editor of a magazine, Poe's views on literary criticism were influenced by the nature of the short works of art that would appeal to the magazine-reading public. But irrespective of his journalistic position, his critical views on the nature of what was and was not acceptable in a work of art have become famous and have had an enormous influence on subsequent writers.

In Poe's review of Twice-Told Tales and in his two main essays on criticism, "The Poetic Principle" and "The Philosophy of Composition," we have access to Poe's critical statements — stated, restated, emphasized, and applied to his own works ("The Philosophy of Composition," for example, deals in detail with his methodology of composing his most famous poem, "The Raven"), and not only does he apply his own principles to his own works but he applies them to the works of other writers for critical evaluations. From these cited works, we can easily compile certain key principles that Poe consistently believed in and used (Poe: 263). These include his emphasis on (1) the unity of effect, (2) his rejection of allegory and didacticism, (3) the epic poem's being a non-poem, (4) the brevity of a work of art, (5) the appeal to the emotions, (6) the ideal subject matter for art, and (7) the importance of emotional responses; in addition, each of these separate ideas is closely associated with the others (May: 102).

Anything that appealed solely to the intellect could not be considered art because art existed in the world of the beautiful, the refined, and the aesthetic. Consequently, Poe, as a Romantic writer, dismissed most of the literary works of the eighteenth century, a period which concerned itself mainly with satire. For Poe, satire could create no sense of the beautiful within the reader. And also, much of eighteenth-century literature is epigrammatic (something short), and Poe believed that the epigrammatic approach to art could not create a lasting emotional impression within the reader. Writings that were moralistic or allegorical were likewise unacceptable to Poe because they failed to appeal to one's sense of beauty.

In much of his poetry, the effect he most aimed for was one of beauty and melancholy. "The most elevating and the most pure pleasure is found in the contemplation of the beautiful," he said in the same essay, and "if beauty is the province of the poem, then the tone should be one of sadness. . . . Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones." As a result of these views, Poe felt that the most effective ...