Poe and the Dreck of Poverty

¶ … Poe

"Always in debt, Poe both sought and sneered at the popular audience of his day." -- Andre Carrilho

Poe is said to have believed that fiction was art only as much as it avoided didactics and carried the meaning lightly, leaving much to the imagination of the reader (Jannaccone 1974). Telling a story that engages readers deeply and introducing characters that readers truly care about are attributes of interesting fiction. Poe's literary style is invitational, encouraging readers to fully engage in the story. Fans of Poe will enjoy his "virtuosic, showy, lilting, and slightly wilting quality, like a peony just past bloom" (Lepore 2009). If the readers are enthralled in a gothic tale, they may anticipate an ending capable of thrilling and astonishing them; nonetheless, they will remain gripped by the emerging story until the dramatic ending. Poe further compelled his readers by setting realistic details in his fiction so as to convince the reader of the rationality of the story. As often as not, the details were presented as scientific fact, but were made up by Poe to add color, texture, and authority.

Poe's literary style is a particularly good fit with several analytical approaches. Indeed, this match supports the use of three methods of analysis, in particular: Textual analysis, reception theory, and Narratology. One objective of using these three particular analytical approaches is to demonstrate how acutely they contribute to a platform that facilitates a considered literary critique. A brief description of each of these approaches follows below.

Textual analysis suggests that the reader negotiates the meaning of a literary work, rather than passively accepting it (Gursimesek & Krotner, 2014). That is to say that the readers are free to identify and interpret the meaning of a text according to their own perceptions, which are necessarily an artifact of their culture, education, and life experiences (Gursimesek & Krotner, 2014). Clearly, the relation that the reader establishes with the work is what determines the meaning, rather than the meaning of a work being integral to the work (Gursimesek & Krotner, 2014).

The concept of reception theory is close kin to rhetorical analysis, which considers a literary work to be an "artistically structured instrument" that serves as communication (Corbett, 1985). Rhetorical criticism "is more interested in a literary work for what it does than for what it is," and in this way attempts to figure out what effect the author seeks to establish on a particular audience in a particular work (Corbett 1985).

Narratology also serves as a way to structure perceptions of the world around us, and especially the cultural artifacts that are fundamental to those perceptions (Mosher 1987). Narratology fosters an analysis of a literary work that makes distinctions between the story that is told through the narrative, and the discourse, a term that refers to the essential way in which the story is told. From this, the research question emerges: To what extent do the narrative and discursive strategies of the named Poe texts invite the reader to take part in the building of the story and enable the reader to become an active participant (reader-actor/accomplice)?

Poe understood the likeability factor of gothic and of supernatural tales. Indeed, he applied his intellect to deducing what the public wanted to read and what the public would buy. Gothic stories sold well and Poe concluded, "The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in nature -- to Bernice" (Lepore, 2009). Having ascertained the public appetite, Poe set to work writing stories that compelled readers to stay with the story, and to engage fully in the tale. Certainly, Poe experimented with different types of stories and wide range of topics, albeit with undergirding romantic or gothic themes. The following works are points in a unified constellation of stories:

William Wilson; The Oval Portrait; The Tell-Tale Heart; The Fall of the House of Usher; Ligeia; The Murders in the Rue Morgue; Eleonora; The Mask of the Red Death; The Gold-Bug; The Black Cat; Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar; Pit and the Pendulum; Shadow; a Parable; and The Cask of Amontadillo. Poe so aptly understood the public tastes to which he learned, through his narrative and discursive strategies, to expertly craft stories that would engage readers sufficiently to buy a copy of the periodicals that carried his stories, and to escape for however brief a time from the economic and social woes that were everywhere around them..

Poe lived most of his life in dire poverty; this was a driving force in the development of his ability to interpret the public's literary sentiment and effectively write to sell to the market. Indeed, this may be truest application of the reception theory to literary works, for what is the good of writing if no one reads (or buys) the fruits of a writer's labor.

Poe's best horror stories at face value, they are wonderfully, flawlessly terrifying. "Half-banter, half-satire" is how Poe once describe them" (Lenore 8). Indeed, the gothic stories often have burlesque types of endings that are inchoate tricks that readers half guess, but must still pursue and verify in their reading.

In writing The Gold Bug -- as one reviewer wrote -- Poe chose "evidently to write a popular tale: money, and the finding of money being chosen as the most popular thesis" (Lepore, 2009: 16). The timing of Poe's penning of The Gold Bug was interesting as it was released just before the nations began to recover from the depression (2009: 16).