The Oval Portrait Exercise : Summary and Question Answers

The Oval Portrait  Summary ‘The Oval Portrait’ (1842) is one of the shortest tales Edgar Allan Poe ever wrote. In just a few pages, he offers a powerful story about the relationship between art and life, through the narrator’s encounter with the oval portrait of a young woman in a chateau in the Apennines. The story repays close analysis because of the way Poe offers his story as a subtle commentary on link between life and art. First, a brief summary of this briefest of stories. The narrator, wounded and delirious, has sought shelter in an old mansion with his valet or manservant, Pedro. He holes up in one of the rooms, and contemplates the strange paintings adorning the walls of the room, and reads a small book he had found on the pillow of the bed, which contains information about the paintings. At around midnight, he adjusts the candelabrum in the room and his eye catches a portrait he hadn’t previously noticed, in an oval-shaped frame, depicting a young girl on the threshold of woma…