10 WRITERS INFLUENCED BY EDGAR ALLAN POE - LITERATURE

Among the writers influenced by Edgar Allan Poe are Julio Cortázar, Chales Baudelaire, Franz Kafja, Julio Verne and Jorge Luis Borges. It is important to mention that the work and life of this writer have inspired and influenced different generations of authors around the world, of different nationalities, languages and literary genres.

Naturally, given that this American author is known as the creator of the narrative of horror stories and detectives or police, the greatest influence has been exerted in this literary subgenre.

Edgar Allan Poe has been the influence of many generations of writers. Source: WS Hartshorn (1848 daguerreotype) CT Tatman (1904 photo of a c. 1848-1860 photo of daguerreotype missing since 1860)

However, Poe was also a prolific writer of poetry and literary stories of different kinds, which is why many contemporary authors consider him a teacher from whom they have learned how to tell their stories.

In addition to this, Poe became the director of one of the most important newspapers in the southern United States, where he became a literary critic. These criticisms - not widely accepted in their time - are still relevant to learning to write.

Top 10 Authors Most Influenced by Edgar Allan Poe

George Figgs

This author has dedicated his life to the research and work of Edgar Allan Poe. As a young man, he read El Cuervo and became obsessed with Poe to the point that at the age of 40 he quit his job and devoted himself exclusively to tracking down all the events that occurred around the death of the author.

The circumstances of Poe's death are very strange and there are different theories about it. One of these was postulated by Figgs, and describes that the murder was perpetrated by one of his rivals. Figgs claims to have proof in this regard.

Julio Cortazar

On numerous occasions, this Argentine author has made mention of his great admiration for Poe. As a child he read several stories about it and confessed to being fascinated, to the point of becoming his admirer and student.

Now a writer, he translated much of Poe's work. These are considered to be one of the best Spanish translations available, because it was not limited to his command of the English language, but he had extensive knowledge about the way in which Poe transmitted his ideas and he knew how to translate these into Spanish, adding notes and prologue.

Said by himself, Cortázar studied the narrative technique used by Poe in his stories, learned from it, and used it for his own works, as a student and not as an imitator.

Jorge Luis Borges

This is another Argentine writer who has dedicated articles, lectures, and interviews to Poe. From an English family, Borges spent his whole life in contact with English literature, of which he later became an expert and teacher; from this it follows that he was influenced by different English authors.

Borges was among the first to emphasize the importance of Poe's stories instead of his poetry, and he recognizes him as the "inventor of the detective story."

Precisely in relation to police stories, Borges has several works and has criticized many others of this type for moving away from the technique created by Poe, which in his opinion is the correct one.

Charles Baudelaire

In the branch of poetry, Baudelaire is one of the authors most influenced by Poe. He dedicated 15 years of his life to translating Poe's works into French, making him known to many European writers.

The admiration of this French writer for Poe, evidenced in the prologues of his translations, reaches the point of justifying the alcoholism that Poe is said to suffer from.

The arguments to justify this behavior have to do with the amount of misfortunes that Poe suffered throughout his life; Baudelaire identified with this. The themes addressed by Poe and their symbolism were the greatest influence on Baudelaire's work.

Howard Phillipps Lovecraft

Within the horror genre, Lovecraft is one of Poe's main admirers and defenders. She understood how the latter used psychological elements to generate terror, although she used external agents to generate the same result in her own work.

In the words of Lovecraft himself, Poe's contributions to literary horror were based on the fact that he did not impose a moralistic sense on his work nor did he seek a happy ending. On the contrary, he behaved as an impartial storyteller, just as he himself did, since he felt that this was the way it should be done.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Borges already said that Poe is the inventor of the detective story and, being Doyle one of the greatest exponents of this genre thanks to the creation of the adventures of the detective Sherlock Holmes, the reference to Poe in his work is almost obvious.

In this sense, Doyle expressly confessed that his character is inspired by Monsieur Dupin de Poe, the protagonist of several of his works.

The analytical-deductive method that Poe uses in his only novel called The Murders of Morgue Street is the same one used and improved by Doyle throughout his work. His influence is such that Sherlock talks about Poe and his character, always with a tone of admiration.

Julio Verne

Photograph of Jules Verne, by Félix Nadar (1878)

Poe is the only author that Verne wrote an entire essay about. This fact alone serves to demonstrate the importance it had on this writer.

The same analytical method of solving puzzles or obstacles that Poe applies to his characters and, in turn, to the reader can be observed in Verne's work.

Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

Poe's fantastic literature was an influence on Bécquer's legends in terms of its structure, the types of narrator, the madness of its characters, the treatment of the fantastic and the setting. Bécquer used all this in his songs of popular Spanish tradition.

Franz kafka

Among the references of Poe that can be obtained in Kafka's work is mainly the perception of the reality they had, probably related to their own lives.

Both had a negative and even fatalistic view of life, although the reasons for this feeling were different for both writers.

Stephen King

He is one of the main authors of current horror literature. King has manifested himself as an admirer of Poe to the point that, when a “battle” between these authors was created on social networks, King expressed that without a doubt Poe would be the winner.

The suspense that he uses to write, the rhythm of the story, death as an essential element, the mental disorders of his characters and his feeling of guilt, are some of the characteristics of Poe's writing adopted by King.

References

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