Tamerlane and Other Poems - Themes

Themes

The poems, many of which had a theme of youth, were inspired in part by the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The largest inspiration on Poe, however, came from the work of Lord Byron; the character of the title poem "Tamerlane" has a daughter named "Ada", named after Byron's own daughter Ada Lovelace. Poe admired Byron both for his poetry and for his rebellious personality. John Allan blamed Poe's interest in Byron for his licentiousness. Some biographers suggest that Poe's wandering to Boston and joining the Army represent a need to live like an outcast inspired by Byron.

The title poem, "Tamerlane", depicts a dying conqueror who regrets leaving his childhood sweetheart and his home to pursue his ambitions. In its original form, "Tamerlane", based on the historical Timur, was 406 lines. The choice of an eastern character was unusual for a westerner at the time, though Byron, François-René de Chateaubriand, Thomas Moore and others had written other Orientalist works. Autobiographical overtones suggest Poe based the poem on the loss of his own early love, Sarah Elmira Royster, or of his birth mother Eliza Poe. The poem may also mirror Poe's relationship with his foster father John Allan; similar to Poe, Tamerlane is of uncertain parentage, with a "feigned name".

The "other poems", which Poe admitted "perhaps savour too much of egotism; but they were written by one too young to have any knowledge of the world but from his own breast". These poems present the poet as solitary figure who was faced some unnamed transforming childhood event. Poe adopted some of the common themes of the day, including imagery of heavenly bliss and angelic beauty. He steps away from the typical use of didacticism of the time and instead focuses on psychological reverie and symbolist aesthetics, beginning his lifelong poetic refusal to write for the masses. Poe would continue to revisit themes of death, beauty, love, and pride in his later works. He would later rewrite one poem, "Imitation", as "A Dream Within a Dream" and use images from "Evening Star" in "Ulalume".