Short Fiction Unit

Lecture: Overview of Poe and "The Cask of Amontillado"

Overview of Edgar Allan Poe and "The Cask of Amontillado"

This overview gives some background information about the author Edgar Allan Poe and his short story, "The Cask of Amontillado." Edgar Allan Poe lived between the years 1809 and 1949. Poe's talent was unusually broad, in that he wrote short stories, poetry, and literary criticism.  Although best known for his spooky works such as "The Cask of Amontillado," he is sometimes credited with inventing the detective story. The photograph below is a portrait of Poe taken in 1848:

Portrait, Edgar Allan Poe, 1848

The bulleted list that follows is a brief timeline of key events in Poe's life:

  • Born in Boston, MA on January 19, 1809 (Bradley)
  • Birth parents were actors; his father deserted the family and his mother died during a tour in 1811 (Bradley)
  • Became a ward to the prosperous Allan family though never legally adopted; though brought up w/ a proper education, became estranged from his foster father (Bradley)
  • Attended West Point, but was dismissed by an infraction of duty (Bradley)
  • Secretly married his cousin Virginia Clemm in 1836; she later died of TB in 1847 (Bradley)
  • Died October 7, 1849 at the age of 40 due to unknown circumstances (Bradley)

During his lifetime, Poe worked as a literary critic and magazine editor. He had exacting technical standards and well developed theories about what made a piece of writing good. Poe's theories and concepts help us to better understand his own writing. The bulleted list that follows presents some ideas that were important to Poe's career and to his literary works:

  • Unity and brevity were essential
  • “Poe’s primary concern was ‘unity of effect,’ which means that every element of a story should help create a single emotional impact.” (“Educational Resources”)
  • He produced the first body of valuable aesthetic criticism this side of the Atlantic (Taylor)
  • Ingredients of his writing were rhythmic description, matter-of-fact reasoning, Gothic terror, wild humor (Taylor)
  • Poe catered to popular demand for thrills (sensational taste of the time) (Taylor)

Poe did not invent the short tale, but he made the modifications in the bulleted list below:

  • He had a hero and heroine (Taylor)
  • The typical hero had these qualities: ancient but decayed family, misanthropic, hereditary madness, lover of obscure learning, a haunter of night and shadows, a quivering bundle of neuroses (Taylor)
  • The typical heroine had these qualities: physically fragile, possibly diseased, beautiful, passionately intense (Taylor)
  • The work as a whole had a vivid rhythm and meticulous workmanship (Taylor)
  • The work as a whole had structural unity, a single emotional effect, was concise, had vigorous beginnings (Taylor)
  • Poe saw the tale as a high form of literary art (Taylor)

Ghost, Halloween, Horror, Bride

Poe's short story, "The Cask of Amontillado," features these three characters:

  1. Montresor, the narrator
  2. Fortunato
  3. Luchesi, a minor character

This bulleted list below provides information about the story's time period and setting:

  • Seventeen-hundreds to eighteen-hundreds (1700 to 1800)
  • Unknown city in Italy
  • Carnival or Supreme Madness (a festival in Italy similar to Mardi Gras in the United States)
  • Montresor palazo or family catacomb

A catacomb is an underground burial chamber with elaborate passageways. The image below should give you an idea of what catacombs looked like:

 

Paris, Catacombs, Cemetery

The bullet points below list the main themes of the story:

  • Revenge
  • Deception
  • Mortality
  • Hubris
  • Freedom / Confinement

Mortality, Skull and Crossbones

 

 

Skull, Human Skull, Fire, Burning


Works Cited

Bertrams, Reimund. “Mortality, Skull and Crossbones.” Pixabay, 26 July 2014, https://pixabay.com/illustrations/mortality-skull-and-crossbones-401222/. Accessed 17 June 2021.

Bradley, Scully. “Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849).” The American Tradition in Literature, Norton, 1918, pp. 348-51.

Dr StClaire. “Skull, Human Skull, Fire, Burning.” Pixabay, 29 Apr. 2020, https://pixabay.com/illustrations/skull-human-skull-fire-burning-5102326/. Accessed 17 June 2021.

“Educational Resources.” The Poe Museum, http://www.poemuseum.org/educational-resources. Accessed 7 May 2021.

Kellner, Hartmut. “Paris, Catacombs, Cemetary.” Pixabay, 16 Sept. 2016,
https://pixabay.com/photos/paris-catacombs-cemetery-2156511/. Accessed 17 June 2021.

Taylor, Walter Fuller. “IV. Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849).” The Story of American Letters, H. Regnery Co., 1956, pp. 110-19.

Voicu, Adina. “Ghost, Halloween, Horror, Bride.” Pixabay, 25 Mar. 2014,
https://pixabay.com/photos/ghost-halloween-horror-bride-white-518322/. Accessed 9 June 2021.

WikiImages. “Portrait, Edgar Allan Poe, 1848.” Pixabay, 20 Dec. 2012, https://pixabay.com/photos/portrait-edgar-allan-poe-1848-62996/. Accessed 9 June 2021.