Professor Candia's class was 110% different from my English 101 class in every aspect.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Romanticism and Poe
- Usually in a Romantic story, the setting is in some obscure or unknown place, or else it is set at some distant time in the past.
- Poe's detective fiction is set in France rather than in America, thus giving it a Romantic distance from the reader.
- The Romantic writer is often both praised and condemned for emphasizing the strange, the bizarre, the unusual, and the unexpected in his or her writing, and it is out of the Romantic tradition.
- The purpose of art, for Poe, was to choose subjects which could affect the reader in a manner which he would not encounter in everyday life.
- Poe hated the idea of stories that could be related to or brought into an everyday life situation; he looked at them as mundane.
- The subject of many of his tales dealt with living corpses, with frightening experiences, with horrors which startled the reader, and with situations which even we have never imagined before.
Citations
- "16 Little Known Facts About Edgar Allan Poe." Phactual. Web. 22 Apr. 2015 https://www.phactual.com/16-little-known-facts-about-edgar-allan-poe/
- "Ask An English Professor: How Ridiculous Is The Following's Edgar Allan Poe Obsession?" Vulture. Web. 22 Apr. 2015 http://www.vulture.com/2013/01/how-ridiculous-is-the-following-edgar-allen-poe-obsession.html
- "Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven"" The Poe Decoder. Web. 22 Apr. 2015 http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/raven/
- "Poe's Short Stories By Edgar Allan Poe Critical Essays Edgar Allan Poe And Romanticism." Edgar Allan Poe And Romanticism. Web. 22 Apr. 2015 http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/poes-short-stories/critical-essays/edgar-allan-poe-and-romanticism
- "Poe's Poetry "The Raven" Summary and Analysis." Poe's Poetry "The Raven" Summary and Analysis. Web. 22 Apr. 2015 http://www.gradesaver.com/poes-poetry/study-guide/summary-the-raven
- Rooney, Kathleen. "The Raven." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Web. 22 Apr. 2015. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178713
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Poe and Joe
In this television show, The Following, Ryan Hardy (the at-the-time ex FBI investigator who first captured Joe before he escaped prison) easily devoted his life to figuring out all of Joe's reasons for doing what he's doing. He learned his entire life, he learned everything and everyone that had made contact with Joe in order to try and decipher who's his follower or not. Also, because Ryan spent many years investigating Joe, he can easily determine and use his FBI skills on figuring out the meanings to many of the symbols Joe and his followers are giving at the murder scenes they leave behind.
In the first episode of The Following, there’s a moment in which FBI investigator Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) stands in the middle of a horrid crime scene, looking at the word nevermore scrawled on the wall in blood. A lightbulb goes on. “The Raven!” Bacon blurts out. “Poe is symbolizing the finality of death!” That pretty much captures the show's approach to Edgar Allan Poe.
Joe Carroll is a well-known literature professor who creates this cult of random people to initiate Poe-inspired kills. (For example, they cut out victims’ eyes because of “eye motifs” in “The Black Cat” and “The Telltale Heart.”)
Poe was chosen to be the "go-to" connection for Joe because of his background that we know about. Poe lived a sorrowful life, many tragic events happened to him. Although some of the things Joe tells his students, or says about Poe to justify the reason to kill aren't exactly on point; they still have somewhat of a connection with they gruesome stories that Poe told, and the gruesome executions that were made.
In the first episode of The Following, there’s a moment in which FBI investigator Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) stands in the middle of a horrid crime scene, looking at the word nevermore scrawled on the wall in blood. A lightbulb goes on. “The Raven!” Bacon blurts out. “Poe is symbolizing the finality of death!” That pretty much captures the show's approach to Edgar Allan Poe.
Joe Carroll is a well-known literature professor who creates this cult of random people to initiate Poe-inspired kills. (For example, they cut out victims’ eyes because of “eye motifs” in “The Black Cat” and “The Telltale Heart.”)
Poe was chosen to be the "go-to" connection for Joe because of his background that we know about. Poe lived a sorrowful life, many tragic events happened to him. Although some of the things Joe tells his students, or says about Poe to justify the reason to kill aren't exactly on point; they still have somewhat of a connection with they gruesome stories that Poe told, and the gruesome executions that were made.
The Following
One of the main characters of this television series, Joe Carroll, is a cult leader who has a countless amount of "followers" that will do anything that he says because they want to please him and make him happy. They look at Joe as a Godly figure.
Joe Carroll manipulated so many people, and he had an inspiration for all of his doings;
Edgar Allan Poe.
Joe used Poe's writings as leeway to carry out all of the murders he conducted.
Throughout the first season of The Following, Joe's followers recite many of Poe's lines, most famous the ones from his poem, "The Raven". One of his followers put on an Edgar Allan Poe mask and stood outside on a stoop and recited lines from the poem, which in the town it wasn't abnormal to do this sort of thing, but the twist was the follower went over to a man (who happened to be a critic of his leader, Joe Carroll), soaked him with gasoline and lit him on fire; therefore killing him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gti9R2pYCHM (promo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7QxT990LRo (1:35-2:45)
Joe Carroll manipulated so many people, and he had an inspiration for all of his doings;
Edgar Allan Poe.Joe used Poe's writings as leeway to carry out all of the murders he conducted.
Throughout the first season of The Following, Joe's followers recite many of Poe's lines, most famous the ones from his poem, "The Raven". One of his followers put on an Edgar Allan Poe mask and stood outside on a stoop and recited lines from the poem, which in the town it wasn't abnormal to do this sort of thing, but the twist was the follower went over to a man (who happened to be a critic of his leader, Joe Carroll), soaked him with gasoline and lit him on fire; therefore killing him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gti9R2pYCHM (promo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7QxT990LRo (1:35-2:45)
The Raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Edgar Allan Poe
Background on Poe:
- Born on January 19th, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts.
- Died on October 7th, 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland.
- His father abandoned the family when he was a child.
- Mother died of tuberculosis when Edgar Allan Poe was just the age of 2.
- Was adopted by John and Frances Allan (where his name came from)
- His childhood and adolescence were plagued by the deaths of those closest to him (i.e. his mother, his first love when he was 15, and his foster mother when he was 20.)
- He's known as the the founder of the detective fiction genre.
- He had a gambling problem and it got so bad he ended up dropping out of college when his foster father stopped giving him money and he enlisted into the army.
- After the death of his foster mother, his foster father disowned him.
- In 1835, Poe married his 13 year old cousin. (She was half his age, on marriage certificate it was listed as 21, not 13)
- In 1849, Poe was found disorientated walking through Baltimore and was hospitalized.
- He was never coherent enough to explain what had happened before he died.
- His cat, Catterina died the same day as Poe, miles away.
- Poe was nowhere near the drug-addled, drunken image we have of him today. His work as a writer left him little time to drink, and he once took a small dose of an opiate that made him so sick he swore it off for life.
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