View source for Edgar Allan Poe

==Introduction==

This part isn't finished yet - plan: give brief write-up on Poe's life & writing stlye

Go over main theme and questions to answer

While much of the word-cloud is dominated by "genercic" story words like "said", "saw", and "came", there are few standout words.<br>
Ligeia is found only in the work of the same name, yet features promintently in the word-cloud. This is due to the repetition of the word in the story.<br>
Also of interest are the words characteristic of Poe's settings, such as "chamber", "house", and more specific terms like "door", "hall", and "wall". This gives an idea of the kinds of settings Poe likes to use: enclosed, or claustrophic settings, rather than more expansive outdoor settings. Putting some of these words together can form "long dark corridor", a phrase with an ominous feel - characteristic of much of Poe's work. <br>
There are also a prominent words related to women, such as "wife" and "lady". This connects back to a common theme in much of Poe's work, dead women.
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Probably the most interesting of the graphs is the relative frequency of the word love vs death. This graph shows the trend of the term death as it appears over time in our selected stories compared to love. Death shows a dramatic drop over the course of his writing, starting from a very high point in our first story, Ligeia, and dropping to no direct mention in The Raven. This is because many of those close to Poe in his early life had passed away. Although Poe used that for much of his inspiration throughout his works, the decline in the word death is seems to lead to an increase in the word love as his works progress overtime. This is not to say his future stories didn't include death, in fact the opposite is often true, but he instead lessened his direct use of the word, opting for more complex metaphors. This graph also goes to illustrate how Poe shifted his focus from from death, which was his defining factor in the beginning, to his wife which is why we may see a spike in the word love later on. While for the majority of his work it is very small, Annabell Lee has a tremendous spike. This poem was written after the death of his wife, which probably contributes heavily to the sharp change in style.
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This graph shows another interesting style trend, this time in his environmental descriptions. The first few stories, in particular Fall of the House of Usher, make strong use of dark imagery, such as ghastly, gloom, and, of course, dark (and their related derivates e.g. gloomy, darkness). It's interesting to see that while later stories are not necessarily less dark, the wording used constantly changes. Throughout each story the words fluxuate in a similar fashion to each other. Each word is somewhat prominent in the beginning and slowly drops to zero by the end. This is very similar to the behavior of the graph of death.
This is a short poem about the death of the narrator’s lover, Annabel Lee.

This poem tells of how much the narrator loved Annabel Lee wth lines such as: “But we loved with a love that was more than love-.“ Early in the poem it is revealed that Annabel Lee dies with the lines: “So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me.” The narrator believe that the angels in heaven were jealous of their love and took Annabel Lee away so the couple would not be happier than the angels. The narrator refutes this by saying that he and Annabel Lee will always love each other and ends with him lying down by her tomb. This poem was written shortly after the death of Poe’s wife and is clearly a tribute to her. His wife was his 13-year-old cousin which is reflected in the poem’s line: “I was a child and she was a child.” Despite the fact that she was Poe’s husband, it is clear that Poe still loved her dearly as his wife.