Berenice

Literary genre

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic. Best known by his dark and mystery tales, he was a short story writer and the inventor of detective fiction genre. He was an American romantic. Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century inEurope and it developed in the whole world due to the industrial revolution. In part, it was a movement or reaction against the scientist and the aristocratic social and political rules. It had a big influence in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education and natural history.
This movement put the emotions as the most important form of expressionplacing new emphasis in emotions as horror, sadness, darkness, terror… The romanticism is a reaction against the rational and critical spirit, the illustration and the classicism so it favours these points:

1. -The consciousness of ‘’I’’ as one person able to think by myself and have my own emotions and able to transmit them.
2. -The primacy of the poet, creator of all as Demiurgo.
3.-Valuation between different things and common ones that crates a feeling of nationalism.
4. -Liberalism against despotism.
5. -The originality against the tradition. Each man has to show why he is different.
6. -The creativity against the imitation.
7. -The imperfect work unfinished and open against the perfect one completed and closed.


It was so common in this movement toappreciate what you do, the individualism and the subjectivism so the romantic authors are examples of rebellion against the illustration. We can see the nationalism reflected in this movement as the study of languages as Galician, Asturian, Catalan, Basque, Valencian. The romanticism spreaded in the whole world and renewed the language and the neoclassic style. He diffused the use of the weird andexotic searching new metric forms. Represented the start of the desire of freedom in yourself and the passions that represents the ‘’I’’, it also represents the subjectivism and individualism and the supremacy of the feeling against the reason. Produced a praise of the middle age that has not been seen in all the past years. The lifestyle of the romantics was based in despising the materialism andpraising the love and the politic liberalism. The romanticism was not approved in that age and it represented a rebellion to the people so in so many cases the artist ended in suicide.

We can relate Poe with this movement and the detective and short stories too. The detective novel (whose inventor is Poe) represents the world of the dark, crimes, darkness and fear. This kind of novel representsthe agony of the society of the XIX century. It was red in cheap newspaper by poor workers so it hadn´t the success that it would have had so Poe wasn´t so famous in that age. The development is fast, moved and violent. The story takes part in that parts of the society that you could imagine that it happens so, in many times, it´s based in real facts. The style was not so hard so anyone could read(but not all of them could understand). The cause of the crimes is some kind of human debility as anger, envy, hatred, greed, lust.


Romanticism and Dark Romanticism
The historical context of Poe is the romanticism and he was the creator of the “dark romanticism”. Romanticism is a cultural and political movement originated in Germany and the United Kingdom (Great Britain and Northern Ireland)in the late eighteenth century as a revolutionary reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and Classicism, giving priority to feelings. Its main feature is the break with classical tradition based on a stereotyped set of rules. The real freedom is its constant search. Romanticism is a way of feeling and conceiving nature, so in different countries is presented differently. It...