Edgar Allan Poe
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| − | <iframe style='width: 600px; height: 600px' src='//voyant-tools.org/?view=Trends&query=death&query=love&bins=18&corpus=5c56bf494e2316349898c81f884dcb2c'></iframe> | + | <iframe style='width: 600px; height: 600px' src='//voyant-tools.org/?view=Trends&query=death&withDistributions=raw&bins=18&corpus=5c56bf494e2316349898c81f884dcb2c'></iframe> |
| + | <iframe style='width: 600px; height: 600px' src='//voyant-tools.org/?view=Trends&query=love&bins=18&corpus=5c56bf494e2316349898c81f884dcb2c'></iframe> | ||
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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. | 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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<iframe style='width: 600px; height: 600px' src='//voyant-tools.org/?query=dark*&query=gloom*&query=ghastly*&withDistributions=raw&bins=18&corpus=5c56bf494e2316349898c81f884dcb2c&view=Trends'></iframe> | <iframe style='width: 600px; height: 600px' src='//voyant-tools.org/?query=dark*&query=gloom*&query=ghastly*&withDistributions=raw&bins=18&corpus=5c56bf494e2316349898c81f884dcb2c&view=Trends'></iframe> | ||
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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). | + | 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. |
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