I've always been a fan of that expert creator of gloomy atmsophere, Edgar Allan Poe. What I didn't know as a young student mesmerized by his hypnotic use of repetition to create suspense was that he was a literary master of the American Renaissance who wrote extensively in nearly every genre of literature.
When I get to the chapter on Poe, I instantly have the attention of my students. I've found that most secondary students have a morbid fascination for the macabre. So, I capitalize on their interest to re-educate them about this master of literature by looking at the many faces of Edgar Allan Poe. I informally interview the students by asking them: "What do you think of when you think of Edgar Allan Poe?" I list their responses on the board and ask them to copy the list in their notes. Then we read a love poem or two. Then I ask them to scratch off the items on their list of perceptions that the poems fit. Most have none [or one] scratched off their lists. Then I have them copy down my own invention: The Poe Diagram. We proceed to read Poe's works in various other genres, saving the horror story for last.
Yes, Poe did write some horrific stories and poems in reaction to the works of the "Transcendentalists," who proponed that mankind is not flawed, only society is. Poe, though not a Christain writer, saw man as fallen and flawed. His works therefore, often represent the dark side of human nature.
However, his works were not limited to gloom and doom; he also wrote sonnets, love poems, short stories, humorous essays, literary critiques, and detective stories that earned him the title, "Father of the Modern Detective Story." While nearly everyone is familiar with Sherlock Holmes and his faithful friend Dr. Watson, few know their predessors William Legrand and the narrator of "The Gold Bug." Students ususally enjoy trying to "crack the code" in the story "The Gold Bug" and see many parallels between Poe's characters and the duo of Holmes and Watson.
Poe's insightful literary critiques helped to establish basic fundamentals of literature that helped American literature to gain world recognition at a time when it was only just emerging. Poe outlined in a famous critique that American literature shouldn't just be about American concerns set in Amercian settings, it should have a high literary value in order to gain acceptance abroad. In the same essay, he outlined two other criteria for the American short story, saying that it should be short enough to read in one sitting and focus on one single strong emotion. Poe felt that the strongest emotion was sorrow. To him, the most sorrowful thing was the death of something beautiful [see: "Annabelle Lee" or "To Helen". Students have no trouble picking out the central emotion in works like "Annabelle Lee," "The Raven," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and others.
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