Text: Ruth Leigh Hudson, “Introduction,” Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story, dissertation, 1935, pp. 1-5 (This material is protected by copyright)

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Introduction: A Point of View

In the three quarters of a century that have elapsed since his death, the peculiar personality and unique literary achievement of Edgar Allan Poe have caught the attention of many scholars. No other American literary figure has been the inspiration for an equal amount of investigation and interpretation. It would seem, therefore, as if there were little left to render a re-examination of his career fresh and vital. The field of scholarship, however, is generous enough to welcome any new study of a great artist whether it serves to present a new point of view or merely to substantiate the findings of others. Moreover, even a casual acquaintance with the literature on Poe makes clear that opinions about him conflict strongly, largely because of the sympathies or antipathies which familiarity with his strange personality is sure to arouse.

He posed as a greater scholar than he was. Consequently doubts have arisen in some quarters as to the validity of any of his scholarship. He took care to make much of his own diversity and originality of mind. Traces of his unacknowledged borrowings have [page 2:] sometimes rendered suspect the whole of his subject-matter; and his opinion of himself has been at times wholly rejected and again pretty thoroughly accepted by critics. It happened that much of what he wrote took the form of a first-person point of view. Some of his critics, therefore, have accepted his work as autobiography thinly veiled; others, intent upon avoiding this pitfall, have interpreted it as the product of a literary machine. He has been for so long associated with a clearly formulated theory of the short story and with the best known of his finished stories, in a form carefully decided upon by the mature art of an expert craftsman, that the amateur and evolving tale-writer has sometimes been overlooked. Above all, scholars have sought so diligently in that most fascinating field of research — specific parallels and sources of his tales and poems — that we have frequently lost sight, I think, of the more vital question of his general intellectual background.

A few things stand out as rather generally accepted conclusions about Poe: He possessed a unique, if limited, genius. His work was unmistakably marked by his own eccentric temperament. He stood apart from his American contemporaries and the clearly defined [page 3:] stream of literature in his own country. He was a finished craftsman who brought to his work definite literary principles and wrought his productions, somewhat coldly, in accordance with these intellectual ideals.

The necessity of taking cognizance of the obvious abnormalities in Poe's make-up has been an ever-present stumbling-block in the way of a simpler examination of his work. It is the purpose, therefore, of this present study to regard Poe, in so far as is possible, as a normal literary figure who by dint of native abilities and strong ambitions made for himself an unforgettable place in the annals of the American short story. This point of view presupposes in him, of course, an originally keen mind, avid for information and quick in apprehension of literary fashions, an accurate and active observation, a natural taste for and appreciation of the beauties of literature, an ambition to achieve success and consequent deference to the tastes of the time. It presupposes, too, that as a young man interested in an intellectual career he was reading widely in the novels, poetry, criticism, and magazine literature of his time. Every indication of a definite source of his work in a genuine contribution [page 4:] to a better understanding of the mind and art of Poe. But there has been an inclination, I think, to hail evidences of his indebtedness in his critical theories to Coleridge and Schlegel as a disparaging revelation, to regard a discovery that he perhaps purloined ideas from Disraeli and Bulwer as of grave significance, and to debate the question of his familiarity with German as if it were the yard-stick by which integrity of mind or his charlatanism. Unless he had lived in a world apart or had been a sort of exiled spirit on a star of his own, it would have been passing strange if a young writer beginning his literary career in 1830 had not shown evidences of familiarity and agreement with the literary ideas and forms current in his time.

Finally, a consideration of Poe as a normal, rather than as an abnormal, genius would presuppose that this alert, keen-minded, and informed youth was also ambitious and ebullient, at first uncertain as to the form his creative activity should take and equally uncertain as to his techniques, and driven at length to accept compromises with his ideals and hopes.

Naturally any study of Poe undertaken now must depend largely upon the careful and thoughtful research [page 5:] of those scholars who have spent years in disentangling the sometimes snarled and confused threads of Poe biography and bibliography. It must of necessity examine and borrow from the facts and theories that have been set forth about him. It can hope to present only occasionally a detail that may be new or a theory that may have about it something of valid novelty.

The present study will be devoted exclusively to a consideration of Poe as a tale-writer. It will purpose to catch a clearer view of the craftsman in the making by giving particular attention to him at the beginning of his career before he had acquired the veneer of a public rôle; by placing him in juxtaposition with the literary fashions of his time and attempting to ahoy wherein he followed or departed from these fashions; and by tracing the evidences in his own tales of his evolution as an artist.