'The Philosophy of Limerick' is an 1846 essay by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49). Although he wrote the essay in order to explain how he came to write his hugely successful poem 'The Raven', information technology has become a key not-fiction work – probably the cardinal work – produced by Poe, and an important document in helping us to understand his approach to writing.

You tin read Poe's 'The Philosophy of Composition' here before proceeding to our summary and assay of his argument below.

'The Philosophy of Composition': summary

Poe begins his essay past acknowledging the importance of having the cease-bespeak in sight when writing something: he refers to a alphabetic character he received from Charles Dickens, in which Dickens noted that William Godwin wrote his novel Caleb Williams backwards. Although Poe is not sure that Godwin did exactly this, he must, Poe maintains, accept written his novel with some idea of what the denouement or end of the novel would be.

Poe tells us that he begins any new piece of writing by searching for an upshot which he wishes to create in the reader'due south mind and heart. He then searches for the right tone or sequence of events (in a story) to help him to create that consequence.

He wishes that more focus was given to the methods past which writers compose their works. He thinks that most writers, through 'autorial [sic] vanity', adopt to hide their methods from their readers, concealing their processes and giving the impression that they create in a 'fine frenzy' of inspiration. Poe also acknowledges, though, that many writers may only be partially conscious of these processes equally they take place, so wouldn't exist able to recall them afterwards.

Poe, by dissimilarity, can readily call back the processes undertaken to write his works, and says he has called 'The Raven', his 1845 verse form, as his example. He argues that a work of literature should not be too long if it is to create an effect: a poem or story should exist capable of being read in ane sitting, otherwise the real earth interrupts the reader and the effect is lost. Long poems are really a series of cursory poetical furnishings joined together. Novels are unlike in that they aren't aiming for this unity of 'effect' in the aforementioned way. He decided, when sitting downwardly to write 'The Raven', that information technology should exist about 100 lines.

Adjacent, he chose the effect that he wished 'The Raven' to convey. He wanted the poem to convey 'Beauty' first and foremost: this is more important than 'truth' or 'passion', and, if they appear in a verse form, should always exist subordinate to the chief effect, which is Beauty.

The side by side question was what tone he wanted the verse form to convey, and he decided that the tone would be one of sadness. With these three things – length, issue, and tone – all decided, Poe could sit downward and compose his verse form. He decided to use a refrain to construction his poem: a repeated line at the end of each stanza. He chose a unmarried word, which would remain the same throughout the poem, but with the thoughts expressed in the rest of the stanza varying throughout the poem, in dissimilarity to the consistency of this repeated refrain.

Having come upwardly with the idea of the single-word refrain 'Nevermore', Poe tells us that he decided it would be good to have a non-human speaker repeat this line. At first he considered a parrot, merely realised a raven would be more in keeping with the desired tone of his poem. Poe wanted expiry to be a part of the poem and, in keeping with his intended focus on Dazzler, realised that the decease of a beautiful woman (that recurring trope in Poe's writing) would be suitable.

This brings us to one of the most interesting parts of Poe'southward argument in 'The Philosophy of Limerick': he maintains that originality, in a author, is less nearly 'impulse or intuition' than it is virtually rejection: information technology is 'less of invention than negation'. An original author reads deep and broad and so rejects whatever ideas do not fit his arroyo, and past such a procedure he arrives at a new style of approaching his piece of work. In the case of 'The Raven', Poe acknowledges that the individual details of the poem's rhythm and metre are non in themselves new, but he has put them together in a new fashion.

The rest of 'The Philosophy of Composition' is devoted to showing how Poe then brings these elements together so that they appear natural but too possess a rich symbolism. The end-point is that the raven comes to signify or emblematise the young man'south remembrance of his deceased lover, Lenore.

'The Philosophy of Limerick': assay

1 of the about of import aspects of 'The Philosophy of Composition' is Poe'due south rejection of the Romantic myth that the poet is an original genius who relies on 'Eureka' moments of inspiration to create his works. Although he was a Romantic in many respects, Poe denies that such flashes of inspiration are the chief mode by which works of literature are produced. Instead, he emphasises the 'painful erasures and interpolations' which go into the creative procedure: the various drafts and redrafts, the deletions and rewritings.

Indeed, in some respects Poe's argument nearly literary 'originality' and composition prefigures what twentieth-century poets and critics, such as T. S. Eliot, would say about this topic. Eliot, in his famous 1919 essay 'Tradition and the Individual Talent', would argue that every poet forges his ain 'originality' off the back of what poets have achieved before: in what almost strikes usa every bit a paradox, at that place can exist no originality without drawing on what other writers accept done. It is by making pocket-size modifications to what past poets have accomplished that the new poet shows his 'originality', in however slight a way.

Another attribute of Poe's argument in 'The Philosophy of Composition' which foreshadows Eliot's own later influential thesis is his view on the topic of 'consequence'. In some other essay from 1919, 'Hamlet and his Problems', Eliot would put frontward his theory of the 'objective correlative', which is the formula (i.e., a set of objects or, in a play or a narrative work, a concatenation of events) which enables the writer to create the desired effect he wants to reach with his work. As with Poe, the accent is on the end goal: the author must create with a articulate end in view (e.g., the decease of the master character, the union of the ii dear interests, and so on). Once more, Poe's 'philosophy' in his essay pre-empts some of what Eliot would later contend.

Some critics have suggested that Poe – who was elsewhere known for perpetrating hoaxes and for pulling his readers' legs – may have had his tongue in his cheek when writing 'The Philosophy of Limerick': that it is less a serious work of philosophical literary criticism than information technology is a chip of a joke.

Certainly, one wonders whether Poe e'er seriously contemplating having a parrot announced in his poem about tragic lost love, when, as he acknowledges, such a bird would have been at odds with the poem's tone. But Poe is clearly advancing some very sensible points about poetic composition in this essay, and every fan and pupil of his piece of work should be familiar with his argument hither and the light it can shed on his writing as a whole.