Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe is an American author, poet, editor and literary critic. He is best known for his mysterious and macabre tales. Poe is one of the earliest American practitioners of short stories and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. His whole life is full of poverty, frustration, criticism and tragedy. The thesis first displays three of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic horror stories, and then it concentrates on the analysis of the factors, which include his uneven and tragic personal life experiences, the unique genre of literature of Gothic fiction and his queer personality and bad habits, leading to Edgar Allan Poe’s partiality for creating horror fiction.

Key words: Edgar Allan Poe, literary creation, horror fiction, factors

摘 要

埃德加•爱伦•坡（Edgar Allan Poe），是美国著名的作家、诗人、编者与文学评论家，以悬疑、惊悚小说最负盛名。爱伦•坡是美国短篇小说创作的先锋之一，并被公认是推理小说的创造者。他一生贫困、坎坷又遭非议，充满了悲剧色彩。本论文首先介绍了埃德加•爱伦•坡三部恐怖小说代表作品，接着分析了爱伦•坡偏爱创作恐怖小说的因素，包括其个人不幸和悲惨的生活经历，受哥特式文学类型的影响，还有自身怪异的性格和不良的嗜好。

关键词：埃德加•爱伦•坡；文学创作；恐怖小说；因素

1. Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic. He was best known for his mysterious and macabre tales. Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the creation of short stories and was considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. His whole life was full of poverty, frustration, criticism and tragedy.
Because his stories were absurd and he married his 13-year-old cousin, ordinary people could not understand him. Even his works, his human dignity and his private life were slandered by common people and contemporary writers. Poe was regarded as a crazy man, a drunken man and a neurotic. Poe composed seventy poems, more than seventy short horrible detective stories and more than one thousand articles of literary criticism all his life. He was not only skilled in writing poetry and well versed in horror fiction, but also he specialized in literary criticism. Referring to literary criticism, Poe dared to tell the truth. All this have a profound impact on many later European and American writers.