The Eldritch Storyteller: Revisiting Edgar Allan Poe’s inimitable oeuvre

Abstract

Abstract: Allan Poe’s standalone fame rests to an extent, on the fact that he was a conjurer of macabre tales of ‘mystery, supernatural and suspense’ unrivalled and inimitable even today. His stories and poems weren’t influenced by personal factors like unrequited love (except maybe ‘The Raven’), bereavement or tragic events of that sort. He wrote for the sake of writing and usually out of an uncanny impulse, unlike Mary Shelley who wrote her magnum opus ‘Frankenstein’ based on events from her own life. Poe’s preoccupation with the occult gravitated towards the themes of death and decay and a contemplation of the same in a manner quite unexplored by writers of this genre. The theme of madness/ insanity was never dealt more tactfully in the history of horror genre. Poe’s predilection for the macabre enabled him to explore uncharted arenas. His ‘Metzengerstein’, for example, is regarded as the first story to have ‘metempsychosis’ as its central theme. His poems were also not different in its preoccupation with the enigmatic, supernatural and the Gothic.