[简答题]Essay Questions(40 marks)Choose TWO topics from below and write an essay of 300 words each.Discuss Edgar Allen Poe" s contribution to the genre of short fiction.

参考答案:正确答案：Poe" s theories for the short story are remarkable in their clarity. His principles for the short story are best illustrated in his review of Hawthorne" s Twice-Told Tales. The short story, he says, must be of such length as to be read at one sitting, so as to ensure the totality of impression. The very first sentence ought to help to bring out the " single effect" of the story. No word should be used which does not contribute to the "pre-established" design of the work. A tale should reveal some logical truth with " the fullest satisfaction," and should end with the last sentence, leaving a sense of finally with the reader. As a short-story writer, Poe was a fascinating man of imagination. He places the subconscious condition of the mind under investigation and probes beneath the surface of normal existence. What interests him most is the deep abyss of the unconscious and subconscious mental activity of the people, the subterranean recesses of the mind at work. This area of human experience Poe reveals sometimes with alarming accuracy. His assumption seems to be that every mind is half mad or capable of slipping into insanity. As a result of all these, his fictional characters are mostly neurotics. He was the first author in American literature to make the neurotic the heroic figure, the protagonist, in his stories. Poe" s most enduring tales are those of horror, the horror coming from the working of an irrational or criminal mind, driven to evil or insanity by a perverse, irrational force which, to Poe, is an elementary impulse in man. A number of Poe" s tales treat a number of different people who, going mad, are all along aware that they are going mad, thus exhibiting the believable stages of mental disintegration. Poe" s best known fiction works are Gothic, a genre he followed to appease the public taste. His early detective fiction tales starring the fictitious C. Auguste Dupin laid the groundwork for future detectives in literature. Poe" s work also influenced science fiction.
答案解析:解析：(本题考查爱伦·坡对短篇小说这种文学体裁的贡献，可从理论和创作两方面进行阐述。)