Scott Peeples here examines the many controversies surrounding the work and life of Poe, shedding light on such issues as the relevance of literary criticism to teaching, the role of biography in literary study, and the importance of integrating various interpretations into one's own reading of literature.
Edgar Allan Poe has had a busy afterlife. The author of "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" might have died back in 1849, but some claim that did not stop him from composing poetry for another four decades. Others say he still makes appearances in no fewer than five cities, and that his ghost is a regular at a couple of different taverns, one of which saves a seat for him. Like a character from one of his short stories, Poe refuses to stay buried. Author Christopher Semtner explores the ghost stories and hauntings associated with his life--from the supernatural legends that inspired his writing to the alleged paranormal activity inspired by those terror tales.
Winner of the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical! Follow the footsteps of the father of American horror fiction. Edgar Allan Poe was an oddity: his life, literature, and legacy are all, well, odd. In Poe-Land, J. W. Ocker explores the physical aspects of Poe’s legacy across the East Coast and beyond, touring Poe’s homes, examining artifacts from his life—locks of his hair, pieces of his coffin, original manuscripts, his boyhood bed—and visiting the many memorials dedicated to him. Along the way, Ocker meets people from a range of backgrounds and professions—actors, museum managers, collectors, historians—who have dedicated some part of their lives to Poe and his legacy. Poe-Land is a unique travelogue of the afterlife of the poet who invented detective fiction, advanced the emerging genre of science fiction, and elevated the horror genre with a mastery over the macabre that is arguably still unrivaled today.
Meet Edgar and Allan Poe -- twelve-year-old identical twins, the great-great-great-great-grandnephews of Edgar Allan Poe. They look and act so much alike that they're almost one mischievous, prank-playing boy in two bodies. When their beloved black cat, Roderick Usher, is kidnapped and transported to the Midwest, Edgar and Allan convince their guardians that it's time for a road trip. Along the way, mayhem and mystery ensue, as well as deeper questions: What is the boys' telepathic connection? Is Edgar Allan Poe himself reaching out to them from the Great Beyond? And why has a mad scientist been spying on the Poe family for years? With a mix of literary humor, mystery, a little quantum physics, and fun extras like fortune cookie messages, letters in code, license plate clues -- and playful illustrations thoughout -- this series opener is a perfect choice for smart, funny tweens who love the Time Warp Trio, Roald Dahl, and Lemony Snicket.
This collection of specially-commissioned essays by experts in the field explores key dimensions of Edgar Allan Poe's work and life. Contributions provide a series of alternative perspectives on one of the most enigmatic and controversial American writers. The essays, specially tailored to the needs of undergraduates, examine all of Poe's major writings, his poetry, short stories and criticism, and place his work in a variety of literary, cultural and political contexts. They situate his imaginative writings in relation to different modes of writing: humor, Gothicism, anti-slavery tracts, science fiction, the detective story, and sentimental fiction. Three chapters examine specific works: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Raven', and 'Ulalume'. The volume features a detailed chronology and a comprehensive guide to further reading, and will be of interest to students and scholars alike.
"We tend to think of Edgar Allan Poe as a loner, living in a world of his own imagination and detached from his physical environment. Poe might seem like a Nowhere Man, but of course he was always somewhere - just not at the same address for very long. The Man of the Crowd chronicles Poe's rootless life, focusing on the American cities where he lived the longest: Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. The Poe who emerges in The Man of the Crowd is a man whose outlook and career were shaped by his physical environments - mostly urban and almost entirely American. His career was tied closely to the rise of American magazines, so he lived in the cities that produced them and wrote not just stories and poems but journalism and editorials with an urban magazine-reading public in mind. For years he witnessed urban slavery up close, living and working within a few blocks of slave jails and auction houses in Richmond. In Philadelphia, he saw an orderly, expanding city struggling to contain its own violent propensities. And at a time when suburbs were just beginning to offer an alternative to crowded city dwellings, Poe tried living cheaply on the then-rural Upper West Side of Manhattan and, later, in what is now the Bronx. Though Poe rarely provided "local color" in his fiction, his urban mysteries and claustrophobic tales of troubled minds and abused bodies reflect his experience living among soldiers, slaves, and immigrants"--
Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe is the exploration by a distinguished American poet and critic of his own lifelong fascination with the work of Edgar Allan Poe. Examining Poe’s achievement as poet, as aesthetician, as inventor of the modern detective and science fiction genres, and as master of the psychological tale of terror, Hoffman revels in his subject. The result is a comprehensive, arresting interpretation of the oeuvre and a compassionate, personal portrait of its creator.
Few, if any, U.S. writers are as important to the history of world literature as Edgar Allan Poe, and few, if any, U.S. authors owe so much of their current reputations to the process of translation. Translated Poe brings together 31 essays from 19 different national/literary traditions to demonstrate Poe’s extensive influence on world literature and thought while revealing the importance of the vehicle that delivers Poe to the world—translation. Translated Poe is not preoccupied with judging the “quality” of any given Poe translation nor with assessing what a specific translation of Poe must or should have done. Rather, the volume demonstrates how Poe’s translations constitute multiple contextual interpretations, testifying to how this prolific author continues to help us read ourselves and the world(s) we live in. The examples of how Poe’s works were spread abroad remind us that literature depends as much on authorial creation and timely readership as on the languages and worlds through which a piece of literature circulates after its initial publication in its first language. This recasting of signs and symbols that intervene in other cultures when a text is translated is one of the principal subjects of the humanistic discipline of Translation Studies, dealing with the the products, functions, and processes of translation as both a cognitive and socially regulated activity. Both literary history and the history of translation benefit from this book’s focus on Poe, whose translated fortune has helped to shape literary modernity, in many cases importantly redefining the target literary systems. Furthermore, we envision this book as a fountain of resources for future Poe scholars from various global sites, including the United States, since the cases of Poe’s translations—both exceptional and paradigmatic—prove that they are also levers that force the reassessment of the source text in its native literature.
In "The Assignation", Edgar Allan Poe tells the tragic story of an illicit love affair in Venice between a young man and the Marchesa Aphrodite. A heroic rescue leads to revelations of passion and despair, culminating in death and suicide under a veil of mystery and decadent beauty.