2.1 Foreign research status Allan Poe is an influential and controversial writer in the history of American literature. For 170 years, the Western literary critics have never given up on his research for three reasons: First, he is a controversial writer. People have mixed opinions on him. Many great writers from different periods gave different evaluations, for instance, Bernard Shaw said that, "There are two great writers in the United States -- Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain". Tennyson said that Poe is "the most original American genius." Whitman also said that, " among the electric lights of imaginative literature, brilliant and dazzling, but without heat." Poe and his works also influenced literature around the world, as well as specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre. Foreign scholars' research on Allan Poe for more than 170 years is roughly divided into three stages (Li, 2007: 13): from the pre-life to the end of the 19th century, the first stage, except for a few poems, Poe's works and his own in the United States are generally accused and rejected. On the contrary, in France and the United Kingdom, he was strongly affirmed. In the United States, with strong moral consciousness, only Poe's poetry creation was recognized by the critics, and Poe's debauched life and his weird and perverted novel theme were widely rejected and accused by the literary world. In the experience of industrial repression, Britain and France, which were full of decadent feelings at the end of the century, Poe and his works became a symbol of resistance to modernization and received widespread attention from the literary world; in the second stage from the early 20th century to the 1960s, Poe's novels gradually became the focus of research; the third stage was from the 1970s to the present, and multi-polarization trend has gradually appeared in the evaluation. After the impact of various post-modernism and post-structuralist theories, the interdisciplinary nature of Allan Poe's research is also increasingly evident in political science, economics, sociology, art, anthropology, criminology and even medicine. The participation formed a vivid situation. The acceleration of the globalization process has further expanded the influence of Poe on the literature and culture of countries around the world (Zhu Yang, 2006: 50-57). 2.2 Domestic research status Allan Poe's novels, poems and literary theories have had an impact on China's literary world. Especially before and after the "May 4th" New Culture Movement in the last century, Poe#8217;s works played an active role in the anti-feudal struggle that was carried out at that time. Lu Xun greatly appreciated the description of the atmosphere of Allan Poe. He said: "Allan Poe's Black Cat is indeed a bit horrible." (Lu, 1973: 365) After the liberation, people classified Poe#8217;s works as decadent and basically stopped studying his works. After the reform and opening up, China's research on Poe has been greatly developed, and many scholars and experts have also studied him and his works. The domestic research of Poe's works mainly began after the 1990s. There were only sporadic studies before this. After the 1990s, there was a boom in the study of horror novels in China, and a large number of outstanding original horror writers emerged during this period. The study of Poe covers a wide range of topics, including literary theory, novel theme exploration, content structure language analysis, and his life background. Many researchers have classified Poe's works into Gothic novels and explored the Gothic elements or horror styles in the novels. Other researchers used Poe's most famous literary theory, unity of effect, which Poe believed that all good literature must create a unity of effect on the reader and this effect must reveal the truth or evoke emotions, to interpret the overall artistic effects of his novels and conduct specific text analysis. As far as the research content is concerned, domestic scholars pay more attention to the theme of "death", as well as to the study of language style and artistic characteristics. In the early period, most domestic scholars focused on the theme of death in Allan Poe's novels, especially the theme of "the death of a beautiful woman". The phenomenon of repeated research was more serious. In recent years, thematic research has also shown a trend of diversification. For example, when focusing on the theme of death, it is no longer limited to the connotation of the theme of death, but extends to the exploration of the relationship between the theme and the manifestation of the works. In addition, scholars have begun to pay attention to the theme of personality splitting, modernism, human nature, love, password and so on in Allan Poe's novels.