How did Romanticism influence Edgar Allan Poe’s writing?

Edgar Allan Poe played a pivotal role in transforming European Romantic literary traditions into a distinctively American form of Romanticism and Gothic storytelling. His work was deeply influenced by the Romantic movement's fascination with the occult and the satanic, as well as an emphasis on intense emotions and the experience of the sublime.123

Poe’s writing often served as a deliberate subversion of the realistic, moralizing literary conventions favored by his contemporaries. Instead of focusing on social commentary or didacticism, he prioritized the creation of a unified mood or effect, often drawing on eerie thoughts, impulses, or fears to evoke feelings of dread and terror. His approach embodied the doctrine of l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake), asserting that literature requires no moral or political justification. By blending these Romantic sensibilities with his own analytical rigor and elaborate technique, Poe elevated the short story into a respected art form.23