LITR 4328 American Renaissance / Model Assignments

Sample Student Research Project 2015: Essay

Tanner McLean

May 2, 2015

Poe as the Perpetual American Byronic Hero

          Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most iconic writers of his era.  His works constantly left readers feeling submerged in the gothic and sublime and all wrapped up in almost every aspect that defines the Romantic movement of the American Renaissance.  The Byronic hero, taken directly from the life of the icon of the English Romantic movement, Lord Byron, found a residence in Poe’s soul; where the character of the moody, introspective loner seemed to find a niche.  The purpose here is to examine Edgar Allan Poe as the perpetual American Byronic hero both in his life, and his works. 

The Byronic hero is often not like the ideal hero of today.  In fact, one might likely be inclined to term the Byronic hero as the anti-hero.  Our course site defines the Byronic hero as a “modern culture hero: appeals to society by standing apart from society, superior yet wounded or unrewarded,” (http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/terms/B/ByronicHero.htm).  Some of the common characteristics or traits of the Byronic hero are as follows:

·        Arrogant

·        Cynical

·        No respect for authority

·        Bipolar/moody

·        Troubled past

·        Self-destructive/Self-critical

·        Outcast/outlaw

·        Intelligent/cunning

·        Anti-societal norm

The intriguing aspect of Poe is that he could quite easily be casted as a character of his own work.  In his life he was characterized very much as the dark, gloomy picture of the tragic anti-hero.  Considering his life, it is not so far-fetched that Poe could very easily be put into the center of the same fictions that he himself created.  Were Poe himself a literary character, there is no denial of the fact that he would be of the Byronic hero nature.  Rev Bras Psiquiatr describes Poe as, “known for his troubled mind, beset by alcoholism and bipolar affective disorder… This suffering  always influenced   his   work   and   is   present   throughout   his masterpieces,  as  he  wrote  in The  Fall  of  the  House  of Usher: ‘‘It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy,” (Psiquiatr p 84).  His life was filled with tragic events (troubled past), as his whole family (wife included) all died of Tuberculosis.  This stranded Poe as a lonely alcoholic.  To farther extend on his troubled history, Jennifer Latson writes:

“But it could also be argued that he wrote what he knew. As TIME’s 1934 review of two Poe biographies noted, “Tragedy visited him early and often, [and] did nothing to thicken an already abnormally thin skin.” He loved and lost an endless string of women, beginning with his mother, who died when he was 2. The love of his adolescent life — an older woman, the mother of a schoolmate — “died insane” when he was 15, according to TIME. An unsurprisingly macabre teen, Poe spent much of his time at her grave.  Unlike the narrator of “The Raven,” Poe managed to move on from this early tragedy, and was engaged to be married by the time he left home to attend the University of Virginia. When he returned, his fiancée was engaged to someone else. Finally, when he was 27, he married his 13-year-old cousin. By the time “The Raven” was published, his child bride was dying of tuberculosis” (Latson).

He wasn’t nearly as respected in his own time as he is now.  He was often characterized as being quite arrogant, cynical, and disrespectful.  He was well renowned as disrespectful in the way he spoke to people.  Although many sources would refute that, including the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, which states, “Poe was a complex person, tormented and alcoholic yet also considerate and humorous, a good friend, and an affectionate husband”; however, the same source continues to back Poe with Byronic evidence providing, “his painful life, his neurotic attraction to intense beauty, violent horror, and death, and his sense of the world of dreams contributed to his greatness as a writer” (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia).  As previously stated, the Byronic hero is often times the opposite of what many would consider heroic.  They are not the championship athletes, or the pretty boy fairy tale characters.  To put faces to the description, some modern examples would be those of Clint Eastwood, James Dean, Jax Teller of Sons of Anarchy, and multiple rock stars of today.  It is not only in his own life, however, that Poe provides us with a brilliant example of said Byronic hero, but also in many of his literary works.

          I often times find it quite nice to see a change from the modernized view of heroics to the flawed, dark, troubled, seemingly very un-heroic character stepping into the role of the protagonist.  Byronic heroes thrive most strongly in dark tales, as they in turn are dark themselves.  Poe being both a Byronic hero himself, as well as being the writer of such Byronic heroes is what makes him possibly the greatest example of the ideal.  His gothic style that intertwines with the sublime create this fantastically and romantically dark aura in every Poe piece that I, personally, have ever examined.  Often times in his works, one could argue that Poe is projecting himself or his own life situations or trials onto a grander scale.  Many of his writings are of love and loss, and it is undeniably safe to say that is something Poe endured with almost every love he ever had, whether it be from death or whatever it may be. Carrie Zlotnick-Woldenberg writes:

“It is reasonable to assume that the narrator's splitting behavior, which involves ‘separating loving and hating facets of oneself from loving and hating facets of the object... [so that] the individual [can] safely love the object, in a state of uncontaminated security, and safely hate without the fear of damaging the loved object’, might have been projected onto him by Poe. Its most likely origin was the early loss of the author's mother. Such a loss might be perceived…as due to his destructiveness and/or needy love… defended against by splitting… because of the death of his mother at an early age, Poe himself never had the opportunity to make reparation, which is crucial for a child if he is to relinquish his attachments to internal part objects and move on to more mature and healthy relationships with whole others” (Zlotnick-Woldenberg p 404).

This point exactly can be seen throughout many of Poe’s writings.  One of my personal favorites from class was that of the poem Annabel Lee.  In Annabel Lee the narrator of the poem is remembering his late love, Annabel Lee. The narrator knew Annabel Lee once, many years before, when she was a girl.  It was “true love” (please note the parenthesis as true love is subject to belief).  They were actually so in love that, “…the winged seraphs of Heaven / Coveted her and me [the narrator]” (Annabel Lee handout 2.5-2.6).  Maybe that was a bad thing, because our speaker blames the angels for killing his girlfriend. Apparently a wind came, which made Annabel Lee sick and then eventually killed her. When this happened, her relatives came and took her away from the speaker, and shut her up in a tomb.  Now that is just a brief synopsis of the story; but Poe can’t just let that happen, Lord knows a Byronic hero wouldn’t just let it be that simple.  Poe writes of the narrator’s mourning of Annabel Lee’s death.  He writes of how long he held on to her memory, and how he still visits her all these years later.  Poe writes, “And neither the angels in Heaven above / Nor the demons down under the sea / Can ever dissever my soul from the soul / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee,” and continues on, “And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side / Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride / In her sepulcher there by the sea -- / In her tomb by the side of the sea,” (Annabel Lee handout 5.4-6.9).  How heroic is the idea that one could love so strong at such a young age that he would be troubled so much and left in such strong mourning that he still visits her in her tomb every night?  Creepy, maybe, but still heroic in the Byronic sense of the term.  Poe’s Ligeia is extremely similar to Annabel Lee.  Another story of love and loss, of mourning and remembrance, and still finds the narrator eerily looking upon her soulless corpse (to put it less romantically).  Ligeia, however, is much more “out there”, so to speak.  We as the reader see the narrator flip back and forth between whether or not she is alive as her color would return to color and fade into an even worse state than before.  The story ultimately ends with the narrator realizing that he is looking into the eyes of Ligeia, and not seeing Rowena risen from the dead (http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/RomFiction/Poe/PoeLigeia.htm).  Somebody pass me the opium.  While the story in itself isn’t as endorsing to the Byronic hero ideal, the narrator still shares many of the same traits.  Zlotnick writes:

 “It is not necessary, however, to impose Poe's history onto the narrator in order to build the case for the narrator's undescribed but obviously poor developmental history. His pathological attachments to internal objects, which he projects onto the external world, are in and of themselves evidence that he never successfully negotiated the schizoid position” (Zlotnick 405).

Ligeia also provides us with another reoccurring aspect to the Byronic ideal.  That is the “fair-lady/dark-lady” aspect in which often times a darker character is paired with a much more presentable character.  In this case that is Rowena and Ligeia.  Another example of this would be Alice and Cora in Last of the Mohicans (http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/terms/B/ByronicHero.htm).

          As previously stated, the purpose here was to examine Edgar Allan Poe as the perpetual American Byronic hero both in his life, and his works.  His given history and personal characteristics make him a virtual prototype for what the Byronic hero would be, and his putting that to light in his literature and his narrators is what makes him the perfect example of the Byronic ideal.  The fact that his own history and his works could be separated and still show aspects of this are an even greater testament to this. 

Works Cited

de Oliveira, João R., and Matheus F. Oliveira. "Edgar Allan Poe's Psychic Daguerreotype." Revista Brasileira De Psiquiatria 37.1 (2015): 84-85. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 May 2015.

"Edgar Allan Poe." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6Th Edition (2013): 1. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 May 2015.

Latson, Jennifer. "A Creepy, Tragic Formula For Commercial Success." Time.Com  (2015): N.PAG. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 May 2015.

Zlotnick-Woldenberg, Carrie. "Edgar Allan Poe's `Ligeia': An Object-Relational  Interpretation." American Journal Of Psychotherapy 53.3 (1999): 403-412. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 May 2015.

Annabel Lee course handout (couldn’t find link)

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/RomFiction/Poe/PoeLigeia.htm

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/terms/B/ByronicHero.htm

"Great Star" flag of pre-Civil War USA