Poe and Edvard Munch

In his later paintings Munch showed more interest in nature, and his work became more colorful and less pessimistic. Munch died in Ekely, near Oslo, on Jan. 23, 1944. He left many of his works to the city of Oslo, which built a museum in his honor.
             Edgar Allan Poe has always been a paradox in American literary history. Although he is probably the most widely read of all American writers, he is commonly believed to have been no more than an alcoholic and a drug addict who wrote weird horror stories. Moreover, although Poe has probably influenced more artists then any other writer in American literature, academic critics and university professors have never been comfortable with him, often convinced that he was at best an entertainer of adolescents and at worst a third-rate hack (Thompson 48). The recent studies by phenomenological and poststructuralist critics have begun to justify what loyal Poe readers have always intuitively felt that he was a genius who perhaps more then any other writer of fiction in 19th century America understood the nature of narrative. His stories, once dismissed as kind of gothic thrillers are now being analyzed for their self-conscious manipulation of narrative devices and their darkly view of reality, and Poe is beginning to be recognized as a master of fictional technique and a precursor of the modernist vision (Bloom 67). Although Poe is best known for his creation of gothic horror stories, one of the largest single groupings of his short prose is the category of satire, parody, burlesque, and play. Nevertheless, the timelessness of and attractions to Poe's work is evident in the fact that many people can still recite portions of Poe's famous poem "The Raven" and vividly remember such tales as "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Cask of Amontillado.".
             Edvard Munch was born on December 12, 1863 in Loton, Norway. He was the son of an Army Medical Corps doctor, Christian Munch.