Though critical opinion of the literary merit of Edgar Allan Poe's writing has varied widely since his death in 1849, his tales have remained popular for their gothic sensibilities and evocative explorations of human vice and desire. Poe's influence on subsequent generations of science fiction and horror writers cannot be understated. This new collection of full-length critical essays explores the enduring works of this esteemed writer and the often-shadowy worlds he brings to life.
American Flaneur investigates the connections between Edgar A. Poe and the nineteenth-century flaneur - or strolling urban observer - suggested in Walter Benjamin's discussion of Baudelaire. This study illustrates the centrality of the flaneur to Poe's literary aims, and uses the flaneur to illuminate Poe's intimate yet ambivalent relationship to his surrounding culture.
Added by: huelgas | Karma: 1208.98 | Fiction literature | 30 January 2009
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Edgar Allan Poe is today considered one of the greatest masters and most fascinating figures of the American literary world. However, an examination of Poe's essays and criticism throughout his prose publishing career (1831-1849) reveals that the author himself played a vital role in the creation and manipulation of his own reputation. Teachers and studentsalike will enjoy this single-volume treatment of Poe's self-promotional tales and criticism.
Added by: huelgas | Karma: 1208.98 | Fiction literature | 30 January 2009
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Edgar Allan Poe has long been viewed as an artist who was hopelessly out of step with his time. But as Terence Whalen shows, America's most celebrated romantic outcast was in many ways the nation's most representative commercial writer. Whalen explores the antebellum literary environment in which Poe worked, an environment marked by economic conflict, political strife, and widespread foreboding over the rise of a mass audience. The book shows that the publishing industry, far from being a passive backdrop to writing, threatened to dominate all aspects of literary creation. Faced with financial hardship, Poe desperately sought to escape what he called "the magazine prison-house" and "the horrid laws of political economy."
A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe (Historical Guides to American Authors)
Added by: huelgas | Karma: 1208.98 | Fiction literature | 30 January 2009
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Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), son of itinerant actors, holds a secure place in the firmament of history as America's first master of suspense. Displaying scant interest in native scenes or materials, Edgar Allan Poe seems the most un-American of American writers during the era of literary nationalism; yet he was at the same time a pragmatic magazinist, fully engaged in popular culture and intensely concerned with the "republic of letters" in the United States. This Historical Guide contains an introduction that considers the tensions between Poe's "otherworldly" settings and his historically marked representations of violence, as well as a capsule biography situating Poe in his historical context.
