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The original text included the line "It was a dark and stormy night" as a tribute to Edward Bulwer-Lytton. [5] The line was removed in later editions. Poe retitled the story "Bon-Bon—A Tale" when it was republished in the Southern Literary Messenger in August 1835. [6] It was later published in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1845. [7]
Unlike much of Poe's work, the story has no supernatural elements. [6] The "realism" of the story is enhanced through Poe's focus on reporting sensations: the dungeon is airless and unlit, the narrator is subject to thirst and starvation, he is swarmed by rats, the razor-sharp pendulum threatens to slice into him and the closing walls are red ...
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Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, poet and literary critic. The Boston native only lived until he was 40 years old, but he was one of the most famous literary pioneers.
Poe purposely presents the story as a sort of mystification, inviting readers to surmise the old man's secret themselves. [4] At the beginning of the tale, the narrator surveys and categorizes the people around him in a similar way as Walt Whitman in "Song of Myself". Poe's narrator, however, lacks Whitman's celebratory spirit. [7]
Poe probably had seen the terms used by Sir Walter Scott in his essay "On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition". [6] Both terms refer to a type of Islamic art used to decorate walls, especially in mosques. These art styles are known for their complex nature. Poe had used the term "arabesque" in this sense in his essay "The Philosophy of ...
The story may have been inspired by John Neal's, "Idiosyncracies," a short story similar to Poe's published two years earlier in Brother Jonathan. [4] The story has been noted for its psychological analysis of human behavior and motivations presaging the concepts of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and psychoanalysis.
Poe considered the tale "not ended so well as it might be". This might be due to the vagueness of the reason of the narrator being absolved, which is mentioned to be only revealed in Heaven. Compared to the endings of other Poe tales where the dead lover returns from beyond the grave (like " Ligeia " and " Morella "), this is a "happy" ending ...