Please explain and give an example of the "blurring" of literary genres in Edgar Allan Poe's stories.

Though I cannot find a definition specifically for
"blurring literary genres," I can imagine how this would apply to some of the short
stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

First it is helpful to
understand what a literary genre is, which you probably already
know.

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A literary genre is
a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by literary
technique,  tone, content...

The most general genres in
literature are...epic, tragedy, comedy, novel, short story, and creative
nonfiction. They can all be in the genres prose or poetry, which shows best how loosely
genres are defined.

With this
in mind, Poe's work represents several genres. Poe wrote not only short stories of
horror, but also of detective stories, as well as poetry (such as "The Raven" and
"Annabel Lee"). In terms of the "blurring " of genres, I would expect that this means
that the distinction of genres as listed above are blended to include the
characteristics of more than one genre.

As an example, in
Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart," we have a story of horror. The main character kills the old
man he lives with and hides his body beneath the floorboards. However, this is not just
a story of horror or a thriller, but rather a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_thriller">psychological
thriller, a blend of "thriller" and "horror" genres. There are several themes
in these kinds of stories. Two deal specifically with reality and perception, which Poe
"plays" with in this story. The narrator's sense of reality and perception are skewed,
which heightens the suspense and the reader's sense of terror: the narrator is "haunted"
by the open and clouded blue eye of the old man, and believes he
must kill the older man. His perception is that the eye drives him
to commit murder. Poe also uses an altered reality when the old man's "dead" heart
begins to beat so loudly that the narrator's fragile grip on reality is destroyed: in
this case, his perception and his sense of reality drive him over the edge, and he
admits what he has done to the police.

This is, I believe,
an example of "blurring" literary genres. Poe learned how to do so exceedingly well,
providing dark entertainment for the reader that is the cornerstone of modern horror
stories and thrillers; stories that are not easily forgotten.