Edgar Allan Poe, creator of American literature!
I believe that Edgar Allan Poe was a great genius who first created American literature!
llustration by Daniel Vierge of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", 1870
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been described as the first modern detective story;[1][2] Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination".[1]
C. Auguste Dupin is a man in Paris who solves the mystery of the brutal murder of two women. Numerous witnesses heard a suspect, though no one agrees on what language was spoken. At the murder scene, Dupin finds a hair that does not appear to be human.
As the first fictional detective, Poe's Dupin displays many traits which became literary conventions in subsequent fictional detectives, including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Many later characters, for example, follow Poe's model of the brilliant detective, his personal friend who serves as narrator, and the final revelation being presented before the reasoning that leads up to it. Dupin himself reappears in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" and "The Purloined Letter".
I believe that "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a masterpiece that best depicts the essence and differences between American and European civilizations.
My esteemed predecessors Steve and 
I wonder what Steve and
It is surprising that while Alan Poe's literature has gained enthusiastic popularity in Europe, Japan, and Korea, it has been relatively neglected in the United States! 😯
I guessed that the reason was the situation in America in the early 19th century!
Washington Irving
After the American Revolution, and increasingly after the War of 1812, American writers were exhorted to produce a literature that was truly native. As if in response, four authors of very respectable stature appeared. William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe initiated a great half century of literary development.
Bryant, a New Englander by birth, attracted attention in his 23rd year when the first version of his poem “Thanatopsis” (1817) appeared. This, as well as some later poems, was written under the influence of English 18th-century poets. Still later, however, under the influence of Wordsworth and other Romantics, he wrote nature lyrics that vividly represented the New England scene. Turning to journalism, he had a long career as a fighting liberal editor of The Evening Post. He himself was overshadowed, in renown at least, by a native-born New Yorker, Washington Irving.
Irving, the youngest member of a prosperous merchant family, joined with ebullient young men of the town in producing the Salmagundi papers (1807–08), which satirized the foibles of Manhattan’s citizenry. This was followed by A History of New York (1809), by “Diedrich Knickerbocker,” a burlesque history that mocked pedantic scholarship and sniped at the old Dutch families. Irving’s models in these works were obviously Neoclassical English satirists, from whom he had learned to write in a polished, bright style. Later, having met Sir Walter Scott and having become acquainted with imaginative German literature, he introduced a new Romantic note in The Sketch Book (1819–20), Bracebridge Hall (1822), and other works. He was the first American writer to win the ungrudging (if somewhat surprised) respect of British critics.
James Fenimore Cooper won even wider fame. Following the pattern of Sir Walter Scott’s “Waverley” novels, he did his best work in the “Leatherstocking” tales (1823–41), a five-volume series celebrating the career of a great frontiersman named Natty Bumppo. His skill in weaving history into inventive plots and in characterizing his compatriots brought him acclaim not only in America and England but on the continent of Europe as well.
Perhaps Steve and
I thought that after America gained independence from Britain, it began to imitate European literature to create its own national identity!
Washington Irving created the first American journalism by imitating British literature.
He was probably the first American writer to achieve fame in British literary circles.
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper, (born September 15, 1789, Burlington, New Jersey, U.S.—died September 14, 1851, Cooperstown, New York), first major American novelist, author of the novels of frontier adventure known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring the wilderness scout called Natty Bumppo, or Hawkeye. They include The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841).
James Fenimore Cooper achieved greater fame in Europe than Washington Irving.
He created the first pioneer, explorer, and adventure novels, a literary genre that Europeans did not have.
James Fenimore Cooper wanted to make the case that Americans were great pioneers, revolutionaries, and adventurers, different from Europeans.
He wanted to express in literature the fact that America is the world's greatest utopia!
I assumed that Steve and Joseph were enthusiastic supporters of the works and ideas of James Fenimore Cooper!😄
Early 19th century Americans, like Steve and Joseph, may have fervently believed that America was God's heaven on earth!
However, Edgar Allan Poe expressed in his works the fact that Americans still envy and imitate European civilization!
3. Why Japanese Fear America forever?
Japanese overlords read Poe's works and assumed that US civilians
So they believed that they could earn the respect of
They speculated that the fact that Americans admired French civilization was reflected in the murder case at the Morgue!
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe, reared in the South, lived and worked as an author and editor in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Richmond, and New York City. His work was shaped largely by analytical skill that showed clearly in his role as an editor: time after time he gauged the taste of readers so accurately that circulation figures of magazines under his direction soared impressively. It showed itself in his critical essays, wherein he lucidly explained and logically applied his criteria. His gothic tales of terror were written in accordance with his findings when he studied the most popular magazines of the day. His masterpieces of terror—“The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846), and others—were written according to a carefully worked out psychological method. So were his detective stories, such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), which historians credited as the first of the genre. As a poet, he achieved fame with “The Raven” (1845). His work, especially his critical writings and carefully crafted poems, had perhaps a greater influence in France, where they were translated by Charles Baudelaire, than in his own country.
Two Southern novelists were also outstanding in the earlier part of the century: John Pendleton Kennedy and William Gilmore Simms. In Swallow Barn (1832), Kennedy wrote delightfully of life on the plantations. Simms’s forte was the writing of historical novels like those of Scott and Cooper, which treated the history of the frontier and his native South Carolina. The Yemassee (1835) and Revolutionary romances show him at his best.
Japanese people enthusiastically enjoyed Poe's works, especially mystery novels featuring the Frenchman Dupin as the main character!
Japanese people found it very interesting that Poe, an American, created the world's first mystery literature set in France!
Above all, the Japanese paid attention to the fact that among Poe's works, mystery novels were wildly popular in France!
Personally, I enjoyed The Murders at the Morgue most impressively!
I felt that Poe exposed the fact that European civilization despised and discriminated against Asians like me!
French sailors secretly brought orangutans to France to sell them to zoos.
However, the orangutan escaped and was being shaved with a razor used by the Frenchman.
The orangutan had previously seen the Frenchman shaving through the keyhole of the door.
The Frenchman was horrified to see the orangutan using a dangerous razor so skillfully.
So, he whipped his whip and tried to take the razor away.
The orangutan runs away, accidentally enters a Parisian apartment, and commits murder.
The orangutan murder scene depicted by the French is truly terrifying and realistic!😨
The young woman faints and lies on the ground, and the orangutan becomes enraged, grabbing the old woman by the hair.
The sight of a French man trembling in fear beyond the window gives the audience a sense of immersion!
I thought the orangutan symbolized non-Western Asians like me.
Did Poe create his work in the way that Asians, who were colonized by European empires, came to Europe, experienced all kinds of insults and hardships, and eventually committed murder?
I thought the razor used by the orangutan as a murder weapon symbolized the progress of European civilization!
This is because Asians like me imitate the shaving customs of Europeans.🙂
It is a shocking irony that the razor, an invention of European civilization, became a murder weapon that decapitated a French woman.
More than anything, I am shocked by the fact that the orangutan who committed murder became famous by gaining popularity among the French!
Rather than sympathy and condolences for the two French women who were tragically killed by orangutans, the sight of French people being more attracted to the murderous orangutan shocked and angered me!
Does this mean that Europeans, who are said to be the most advanced in the world, have no love and compassion for their fellow countrymen?
I assumed that through Poe's works, the Japanese discovered and became enthusiastic about the barbarism and cruelty hidden in the background of American and European civilization!
I concluded that Poe was shunned by Americans because he exposed the darkness and barbarism of the occult and shamanism hidden within Americans and society!
It's a pity that I can't write political, diplomatic, and gentlemanly English sentences like Steve and
I hope they understand my awkward, rude and barbaric English!😂🙏