Edgar Allan Poe gave American writers permission to plumb the subterranean depths of human depravity and transform it into art. This may sound obvious, but it’s worth remembering—on his 204th birthday—that Poe composed his pioneering gothic stories for a Yankee audience. Europeans already indulged in the profane poetry of Charles Baudelaire (Poe’s French translator) and attended the bloody spectacle of Grand Guignol theater so it’s no wonder they embraced the graveyard poet before America, whose prudish shores had never read anything like him.
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