Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. He was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Poe is famous for his tales of mystery and the macabre. He was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. In this sentence, Edgar Allan Poe mentions Silliman’s Journal which is an American scientific journal at the time, which he will highlight when referring to science. When he begins the sentence “After the very minute” it shows the urgency of the topic of this paper. Poe’s use of discovery adds on to how Von Kempelen’s hoax was taken as scientific. At the end of the point, Poe is explaining how he isn’t taking a scientific perspective in his paper. When Poe uses “a few hurried remarks” the image of him writing this in a hasty fashion comes to my mind, along with the idea of him abruptly trying to get this out to society. This quote shows that Poe’s tone is sceptical to what was quickly assumed to be a fact. A theme shown in this quote is the legitimacy of science, he claims to take a different stance than the one science takes even though science is often taken as solid truth. Enjoy free online English audiobook “Von Kempelen and His Discovery”, a novel by Edgar Allan Poe.
