Edgar Allen Poe and Humor Essay -- Edgar Allen Poe Humorous Essays

Edgar Allen Poe and HumorEdgar Allen Poe is most often recognized, and certainly most famous, for his poem The precede as well as other decidedly dark and often gothic poems and stories, stories such(prenominal) as The Fall of the Ho habituate of Usher, The Telltale Heart The barrelful of Amontillado. He also wrote many others mostly involving rather macabre, dark topics and characters as well as heavy themes such as insanity, madness, incest, murder and revenge. While this nature is certainly well earned there is a nonher side of Poe that is not quite so obvious. Poe was also a master of humor, especially in the use of parody and satire. One might ask how is it that a writer with such an inclination towards the darker side of humanity can possibly write humorously, and do it with such skill. Poes brand of humor is decidedly different than that which the mainstream contemporary audience is used to and can readily understand, but it is there if one cares to look closely. The title of Poes humor is not like that of the mainstream humorous writers in that he does not use the common comic strategies, but he instead was adequate to(p) to turn his wit on the masses of society or their rulers with trenchantly satiric effect by creating situations so ridiculous and outrageous that it becomes hysterical (Budd 133). Or as John Bryant says he was a satirist specializing in burlesque, parody, and hoax. Humor was not his style, nor benevolence his manner Poes barbed humorous stories are goaded by caricature rather than character (88). Some of Poes more humorous stories are How to Write a Blackwood Article, and A Predicament, and maybe not so obviously The Murders in the Rue Morgue. In a close look at How to Write a Blackwoo... ...er because his well known theory of the briefly story consistently emphasizes the importance of each and every detail in constructing the effect that an author of a short story has to have clearly in mind before beginning th e task of composition (Haugen 102). It may not be what the casual reader of Poe is expecting, or even wanting, but it is exactly what Poe intend and in truth that is what makes it humorous.Works CitedBryant, John. Melville and Repose The Rhetoric of Humor in the American Renaissance. rude(a) York Oxford University Press, 1993.Budd, Louis J, and Edwin H. Cady, eds. On Poe. Durham Duke University Press, 1993.Haugen, Hayley Mitchell, eds. Readings on The Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. San Diego Greenhaven Press, Inc.2001.Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York Vintage Books, 1975.