| Edgar Allan Poe is the most controversial writer in America. During his lifetime he was not favored by any writer of his contemporary. However, he is regarded as the pioneer for the aestheticism, symbolism and the modernism after his death.Poe pursues beauty in his poetry. He aims most of his poems at the themes about beauty and death, which are not juxtaposed with each other. Poe elaborates his images of beauty with a mystery and visional air, because he does not treat beauty just as something common or worldly, but immortal and sacred. The other theme frequently appearing in Poe's poems is death. It can best illustrate the immortality and sacredness of beauty. Through death beauty can shake off the yoke of life and the mortal world. Beauty, when combined with death, appears mystery as never before and finally becomes sacred.Besides, Poe also achieves an astonishing and fantastic effect by means of various literary techniques. And these leave the readers a strong sense of mystery and inspire wonderful fancies and imaginations in the readers as well as convey the themes.Presently, most study about Poe in China concentrates on his fiction, while the study about his poetry is comparatively less. This essay tries to interpret the mystery complex in Poe's poems in virtue of some aesthetic theories. |
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