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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 5 page research paper examines the themes of love and the female in Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic short-story lament, 'Ligeia.' Specifically considered are how Poe's tragic personal life contributed to his perceptions of women. Bibliography lists 5 sources.
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5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Ligeia.RTF
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
Works of Edgar Allan Poe" 551). Interestingly, this astute observation about the literary legacy of Edgar Allan Poe was made over 100 years ago. He wholeheartedly embraced the
Gothic allure initiated by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelleys 1818 novel, Frankenstein, threw in some poetic John Milton touches, and always lurking in the background was romance tainted by tragedy, a popular
nineteenth-century theme. As with all creative artists, despite sketchy details, it is believed that Poes personal life which set the somber tone for his poetry and short stories.
In 1836, he married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, a vivacious 13-year-old girl of fragile health, suffering throughout her life with tuberculosis. There can be little doubt that Poe was
deeply in love with his wife, as her illness frequently plunged him into bouts of depression and encouraged his alcoholism. Two years after his marriage, Poe immortalized his thoughts about
love and women in his 1838 short story, "Ligeia," described by Poe himself as, "The loftiest kind is that of the highest imagination--and for this reason only Ligeia may be
called my best tale" (Quinn 430). Poe apparently borrowed its title from his literary inspiration, Milton, but definitively "shaped his own portrait of a powerful, mysterious siren who
precipitates her husbands horrific discovery and subsequent madness" (Frushell 18). That Ligeia represents everlasting love not only to her fictional husband and narrator of the story, but Poe himself,
cannot be denied. Never has Poes writing been more impassioned: "Let me say only, that in Ligeias more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas, all unmerited, all unworthily
bestowed; I at length recognized the principle for her longing, with so wildly earnest a desire for the life which was now, fleeing so rapidly away" (1503). It is
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