19 pages • 38 minutes read
Edgar Allan PoeThe Haunted Palace
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1839A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Haunted House” by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1921)
Edwin Arlington Robinson was an early 20th-century American poet. His book, Collected Poems (1921), won the first Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Like Poe, Robinson is known for poems that explore themes such as loss, grief, and death. This poem is an Italian sonnet, a 14-line poem divided into two stanzas. The poem explores a similar image as Poe’s poem, but the place is not a fantastical palace haunted with terrible demons, but a real home that is haunted by a violent past.
“Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson (1890)
Emily Dickinson was an American poet of the late 19th century. Like Poe, she wrote in the Romantic tradition, and they were both dark Romantics, primarily oriented toward bleak subject matter in their works. One of Emily Dickinson’s most famous poems, “Because I could not stop for Death,” also known as (poem) 479, is a lyric poem that uses personification in a comparable manner as Poe does in “A Haunted Palace.” In this poem, Dickinson explores the abstract concept of death through a ride in a carriage.
“Alone” by Edgar Allan Poe (1829)
An earlier poem written by Poe when he was 20 years old and never published during his lifetime, “Alone” explores the theme of loneliness and the sense of alienation that Poe suffered from for much of his difficult life. The poem shares the same atmosphere of dread, sorrow, and fear that is depicted in the last two stanzas of “The Haunted Palace,” showing Poe’s budding poetic style.
Further Literary Resources
“Lord Byron, Poe, and Poetry: Buried Alive” from PBS Media, “American Masters” series
This clip discusses the connections between the poetry of Lord Byron and Edgar Allan Poe, the biographical similarities between them, and the influence of Lord Byron’s on Poe’s creative method. It also discusses additional inspirations for Poe’s famous poems, “Alone” and “To Helen,” and the high mortality rate in early 19th-century America which likely influenced Poe’s fascination with loss, grief, and death.
“Edgar Allan Poe” from American Literature
This website presents more in-depth biographical information on Edgar Allan Poe. It also offers links to many of his most famous short stories and poems, accompanied by illustrations that provide visualizations of many of Poe’s fantastical visions. The website includes photos and artworks inspired by his writings.
“Usher’s Fear and the Flaw in Poe’s Theories of the Metamorphosis of the Senses” by Wendy Stallard Flory (Poe Studies, 1974)
This essay by Wendy Stallard Flory published in Poe Studies, a scholarly journal from Washington State University Press, provides a different interpretation of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and, by its close association, “The Haunted Palace,” suggesting that the loss of reason that Roderick Usher experiences is not a loss of sense but instead a hyper-sensitivity. Flory argues that “The Haunted Palace” is about fear, rather than mental instability.
Listen to Poem
John Burlinson, voice actor, reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Haunted Palace” amongst many others reading Poe poems. “The Haunted Palace” starts at 20:29.
Related Titles
By Edgar Allan Poe
