Edgar Allen Poe's "The Philosophy of Composition"

At this meet we'll discussed Edgar Allen Poe's 1846 essay "The Philosophy of Composition." In the essay, Poe, using the process by which he composed his poem "The Raven" for illustration, lays out what he believes to be the proper approach to composing works of literature.

While our discussion may touch on any aspect of the essay that we find interesting, a question that I am especially interested in discussing is that of whether Poe's philosophy of composition is correct.

On Poe's view, the writer should begin by deciding upon a central situation for the work and the emotional effect this situation is to produce in the reader. The writer should then design the rest of the work in a way that serves the central situation and its effect; that is, all aspects of the work that remain open after the central situation is decided upon should be chosen on the basis of what enhances the central situation and its chosen effect. Nothing should be written until the complete design of the work is known.

Poe's view seems logical, but is it always possible to compose good literature in such an orderly way? A criticism (or praise?) of Poe is that he conceives art along the lines of engineering, where the aim is to produce a device that has a certain emotional effect on people. Is this a dubious conception of art or an insight into what effective artists in fact generally do?

An alternative to Poe's view, one that is the professed approach of many writers, is simply to begin writing with a certain intriguing character or situation in mind and see where it leads. This "trial and error" approach may lead one down a lot of "false" paths, but perhaps it is on such false paths that things are learned that give a work of literature depth. This might lead to the question: Is effect on the reader or something else, such as insight, the proper focus of the writer?

A PDF of Poe's essay is in the files section of this site (under 'more' in the navigation bar); the essay may also be found here:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/poe/composition.html

And, for anyone interested, here's an online text of "The Raven":

http://www.heise.de/ix/raven/Literature/Lore/TheRaven.html

I look forward to the discussion.

Cheers,

Paul