Author Description
No American author of the early 19th century enjoys a larger international audience than Edgar Allan Poe. Widely translated, read, and studied, he occupies an iconic place in global culture. Such acclaim would have gratified Poe, who deliberately wrote for the world at large and mocked the provincialism of strictly nationalistic themes. Partly for this reason, early literary historians cast Poe as an outsider, regarding his dark fantasies as extraneous to American life and experience. Only in the 20th century did Poe finally gain a prominent place in the national canon. Changing critical approaches have deepened our understanding of Poe's complexity and revealed an author who defies easy classification. New models of interpretation have excited fresh debates about his essential genius, his subversive imagination, his cultural insight, and his ultimate impact, urging an expansive reconsideration of his literary achievement. Edited by leading experts J. Gerald Kennedy and Scott Peeples, this volume presents a sweeping reexamination of Poe's work. Forty-five distinguished scholars address Poe's troubled life and checkered career as a magazinist, his poetry and prose, and his reviews, essays, opinions, and marginalia. The chapters provide fresh insights into Poe's lasting impact on subsequent literature, music, art, comics, and film and illuminate his radical conception of the universe, science, and the human mind. Wide-ranging and thought-provoking, this handbook reveals a thoroughly modern Poe, whose timeless fables of peril and loss will continue to attract new generations of readers and scholars.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
How does Edgar Allan Poe’s work transcend 19th-century provincialism to maintain a central, evolving position in global literary and cultural studies? Editors J. Gerald Kennedy and Scott Peeples compile contributions from forty-five distinguished scholars to reexamine Poe’s career, life, and creative output. The volume moves beyond traditional biographical readings to analyze Poe as a professional magazinist, a theorist of the human mind, and a foundational figure whose influence permeates modern art, film, and literature. By integrating diverse critical frameworks, the text argues for a multifaceted understanding of Poe that accounts for his subversion of nationalistic themes and his radical engagement with science and philosophy.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Comprehensive analysis of Poe’s poetry, prose, essays, and marginalia.
- Examination of Poe’s career as a professional magazinist and literary critic.
- Investigations into Poe’s influence on global media, including comics, music, and film.
- Discussions on Poe’s engagement with 19th-century science and cosmology.
Scope Limits
- The text does not provide a singular, definitive biographical narrative but rather a collection of specialized critical perspectives.
- It does not focus on primary source archival discovery but instead synthesizes existing and new critical interpretations.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Experts identify this volume as a comprehensive resource for scholars and advanced students of American literature. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose and the breadth of the interdisciplinary research presented by the contributors.
Page Count:
776
Publication Date:
2018-01-01
ISBN-10:
0190641886
ISBN-13:
9780190641887
Biography
Literary Criticism
19th Century
American