Quite Possibly the Most Wonderful Thing I Have Ever Seen in my Life

This.

I thought you might get a kick out of this.

These are some mods of computers to look like they are Victorian. Be sure to check out the typewriter keyboards.

Poe handicraft

I kind of had the feeling that the explanation why we prepared the handicraft was a bit lost. So here it is again: in order to get this construction, you have to use your "analytic power" as well as your imagination since there was no model how the figure could/ should look like. This is comparable to Dupin's situation and behavior: he also has to find out how the different pieces fit together, and he also did not have a model as this crime was something that occured never before.
Here is the picture how the Poe figure should look in the end, I didn't imagine that it would be so complicated to construct it without the model...

New Murders in the Rue Morgue

WHEN APES ATTACK

Why haven't we learned that apes don't make good pets? They're dangerous...Especially when you give them Xanax (or razor blades).

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,494067,00.html

...Also, New Murders in the Rue Morgue is a short horror story by Clive Barker. I wish that I could find my copy of it, but I read in it middle school so who knows where it is. Here is what Wikipedia says about it:

New Murders in the Rue Morgue

Lewis is a seventy-three-year-old man who goes to Paris after his friend, Phillipe, is arrested for butchering a young woman. Phillipe eventually commits suicide in his cell after babbling about an orangutan who committed the murder he had been arrested for. Lewis does not believe it until he sees the primate - dressed like a human, completely shaved, and wielding a razor - for himself. The beast had been raised by Philippe, a notorious eccentric, as a strange experiment on Edgar Allan Poe's classic story.

Thanks Wikipedia for remembering story summaries when I cannot! Though, the story is scarier than Wikipedia makes it sound.

optional discussion questions

I'm sorry, this is late (the indicated time isn't correct), but something didn't work when I first tried it... The following questions are just some thought-provoking impulses...

Though Murder in the Rue Morgue is arguably the first detective story and thus something new, try to think of how this story could fit to the texts we read so far. Are there any connections, concerning ideas 'behind' the story? Also, think of the development of Man we discussed. Poe highlights mental power, which is often seen as the one aspect that seperates man from animals. Consider what this could mean, especially when you think of the fact that the "bestial" crime is comitted by an oran-utan, the most man-like animal.

A last point, which probably fits better when we discuss The Purloined Letter: how do science and art (literature) work together? Imagination and reality? How does Dupin represent/combine this (if at all)?

This Silent Movie

is over 100 years old, and it made me happy.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809 to two traveling actors. He was orphaned at a young age and taken into the home of John Allan, a successful merchant living in Richmond, VA.

Poe’s early education took place in England from 1815 to 1820; he continued his studies in Richmond afterward. In 1826, Poe began attending the University of Virginia. John Allan did not give Poe enough money to pay for books and classes, and at some point during his short year at the university, Poe took up drinking and gambling to deal with his debts. It was around this time that he became engaged to his childhood sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royester. Her father, likely due to Poe’s poor financial status, ended the engagement. Over time, Poe’s gambling debts became great, and after several quarrels with his foster father, Poe left both the university and his family behind.

Poe enlisted in the army in 1827, publishing his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, out of pocket shortly afterward. This book sold poorly, and with only 50 copies made it is one of the rarest first editions in American literature. He got out of his enlistment early, and attended the Military Academy at West Point for a short time, and after another quarrel with John Allan, Poe was disowned.

For a time, he lived in Baltimore with his widowed aunt Maria Clemm and her children; her daughter Virginia Clemm eventually became his wife. In 1835, he married Virginia in a secret ceremony; they followed this with a public marriage a year later. Poe became editor of various journals and magazines, and through these, he published some of his works and criticism. He even tried to start his own journal, The Stylus, which never took off.

Virginia began to show signs of consumption in 1842, and her slow death took its toll on Poe. He published a few works during the period of her illness—notably “The Raven,” which gave him a good deal of success and fame despite his having received only $9 for its publication—but he stayed close to his wife’s side, especially as her condition began to worsen. Her death in 1847 affected him strongly, and he began to drink heavily once more after having abstained for a long period of time. Although he courted a few women following her death, he never remarried.

On October 3, 1849, Poe was found in a delirium on the streets of Baltimore wearing clothes that weren’t his own. His condition never improved enough for him to explain what had happened, and he died in a hospital on the 7th of October. Interestingly enough, all of his medical records including his death certificate have been lost. Speculations as to the cause of death continue to this day, ranging from things like cooping (a corrupt voting practice in which people are forced to vote for a certain candidate), suicide, murder, cholera, rabies, syphilis, heart disease, and the list goes on.