The Oval Portrait

The story “The Oval Portrait” is a short story by American author Edgar Allen Poe.  Edgar Allen Poe is the most notable American author of the Romantic style.  Romanticism was a movement in art and literature in the latter half of the 1700’s and continued through until around the 1850’s. The style is defined by its deviation from dogmas that were considered the end all be all of creative arts.  Topics of romantic literature include emotion before logic, focus on the individual over the masses, the beauty of nature, and the corruption of the human condition, the latter of which Poe is most known.