Edgar Allan Poe - BrainPop UK
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00:00Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door.
00:08Quote the raven.
00:09Still creepy.
00:19Dear Tim and Moby, my class is reading poems from a guy named Edgar Allan Poe.
00:25Who is he?
00:26From Jeffrey.
00:28Edgar Allan Poe was a 19th century American author who wore many heads, uh, uh, hats.
00:35He was a magazine editor, literary critic, novelist, and of course, a poet.
00:40But he's best known for his short tales of gothic horror.
00:45That's a genre of fiction defined by gloomy settings, supernatural events, and dark mysteries.
00:52Gothic stories often take place in spooky settings like old castles or dark forests.
00:59And the characters tend to be, well, a bit odd and scary.
01:05Poe didn't invent gothic literature, but he was one of the first writers to treat it seriously.
01:10Beyond thrilling readers, his stories explore complex themes like grief, guilt, mortality, jealousy, and love.
01:19Take The Fall of the House of Usher.
01:22The narrator describes his visit to the home of Roderick Usher, a man suffering from an unknown disease and haunted by a sense of impending doom.
01:31During the narrator's visit, Usher's twin sister Madeline dies and the two men seal her body in a vault beneath the house.
01:39But one stormy night, Madeline escapes!
01:41They had buried her alive!
01:45You're telling me.
01:46The setting, characters, and plot all come together to create a truly frightening atmosphere.
01:52But there's also a lot going on beneath the surface.
01:55The house itself is a character with windows that are vacant and eye-like, probably symbolizing Usher himself.
02:02Early on, the narrator describes a crack in the side of the house, which mirrors Usher's crumbling health and descent into madness.
02:11The house's decay and final collapse are powerful reminders of the certainty of death.
02:19Right, death also plays a role in The Telltale Heart.
02:23The narrator in this short story confesses to murdering an old man because he couldn't stand the sight of his pale, vulture-like eye.
02:32Well, of course it sounds crazy. That's exactly the point.
02:36Many of Poe's characters are insane, though this one tries to prove his sanity by bragging about how carefully he planned out the murder.
02:44He also claims to suffer from a disease that sharpens his senses, which turns out to be his undoing.
02:50After killing the old man and hiding his body under the floor of his room, the narrator can still hear the beating of his victim's heart.
02:57Maybe the heartbeat was just the sound of insects in the walls, or maybe the narrator imagined the heartbeat out of guilt for the terrible crime he committed.
03:07Poe leaves it up to you to decide.
03:10Okay, okay, I was just getting to you.
03:13Poe's childhood hero was the British poet Lord Byron, so he actually grew up wanting to be a poet.
03:20But none of his poems got much attention until late in his career when he published The Raven.
03:24Well, the poem has a musical quality thanks to a catchy rhyme scheme.
03:29Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.
03:37While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
03:46Alliteration, the repeating of first-syllable sounds, adds to the poem's rhythmic quality.
03:51Right, it also has plenty of the gothic elements you expect from Poe, starting with The Raven itself.
03:57In some folklore, a raven is the symbol of the afterlife, which fits perfectly with the poem's theme of lost love.
04:04The raven flies into the narrator's study while he's mourning the death of his beloved, Lenore.
04:10Perched above the door, it pokes at the narrator's grief by repeating one word over and over.
04:15Perched above the door, it pokes at the narrator's grief by repeating one word over and over.
04:21Nevermore.
04:24Yeah, you'd think Poe must have led a tragic life to write all this stuff.
04:28But in truth, he experienced his share of tragedy and triumph.
04:32As a writer, he achieved great fame and popularity during his lifetime.
04:37He enjoyed a happy marriage, and even wrote the poem Yuleli as a celebration of romantic love.
04:42His wife's chronic sickness and early death may have influenced his dark fiction, though.
04:48Still, if you look at Poe's whole body of work, it wasn't all gloom and doom.
04:53He wrote humorous articles, including a fake news story about hot air balloons that's considered an early example of science fiction.
05:00He's also credited with inventing the modern detective story, almost 50 years before Sherlock Holmes solved his first mystery.
05:06Unfortunately, Poe's career came to an early end when he died in 1849.
05:11The cause of his death remains a mystery to this day.
05:15But his impact is clear.
05:17As a pioneer of the short story, he influenced pretty much anyone who later wrote in that form.
05:23As a master of gothic horror, his reach extends beyond literature and into popular culture.
05:29His fiction and poems have been adapted many times for television, movies, and theater.
05:33And of course, they're still widely read in classrooms everywhere.
05:38Nevermore, Moby. Nevermore.