Fables of Mind: An Inquiry into Poe's Fiction

2018

Poe remains one of the most misread A merican writers. The slanders of his first biographer created a black legend that critics and poets have been trying to dispel for more than a century since. Although widely read, his popularity turned against him and many critics concurred with T.S. Eliot that he was merely a litterateur for teenagers, whose intellect was that "of a h ighly g ifted young person before puberty" (35). In his t ime, Poe was considered iconoclastic, yet he was just another High Ro mantic who assumed the role of an A merican Coleridge. Emerson called h im "the jingle man," Russell considered his work to be "two-fifths sheer fudge" (141-42) and Henry James condescended that "enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflect ion" (280). In the twentieth century, Matthiessen omitted Poe in his monu mental American Renaissance (1941) while Yvor Winters censured his incoherence and obscurantism. Nevertheless, it should be said that the crit ics who fell under the influence of the New Critics produced one of the fines t interpretations of his texts. In many ways , Poe is the twin brother with a dark face, the "dejected cousin" (Tate 38-50) of the ontologically optimistic "party of hope," the new American Adams-Emerson, Whit man, Thoreau-, who believed in progress, man ifest destiny, and man's god-like greatness. Writing at a time when Emerson postulated that evil was non-substantive, Poe philosophized on the power of darkness and the dangers of the hubris of man's indo mitable will. Together with Hawthorne and Melv ille, he warned against the dangers of self-reliance and of the self-made man (Lewis, Patea). Haro ld Bloo m concluded as late as 1987 that "Emerson fathered pragmatis m; Poe fathered nothing" (5). However, as a poet and critic Poe is the founding father of Sy mbolism, Aestheticism and Decadentism. He is responsible for the birth o f the short story as a literary fo rm, wh ich is arguably America's characteristic literary genre (May 69). As a short story writer he invented the short story and the detective, mystery and horror

Poe Studies, 2004

Gothic Studies, 2015

2010

Poe remains one of the most misread A merican writers. The slanders of his first biographer created a black legend that critics and poets have been trying to dispel for more than a century since. Although widely read, his popularity turned against him and many critics concurred with T.S. Eliot that he was merely a litterateur for teenagers, whose intellect was that "of a h ighly g ifted young person before puberty" (35). In his t ime, Poe was considered iconoclastic, yet he was just another High Ro mantic who assumed the role of an A merican Coleridge. Emerson called h im "the jingle man," Russell considered his work to be "two-fifths sheer fudge" (141-42) and Henry James condescended that "enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflect ion" (280). In the twentieth century, Matthiessen omitted Poe in his monu mental American Renaissance (1941) while Yvor Winters censured his incoherence and obscurantism. Nevertheless, it should be said that the crit ics who fell under the influence of the New Critics produced one of the fines t interpretations of his texts. In many ways , Poe is the twin brother with a dark face, the "dejected cousin" (Tate 38-50) of the ontologically optimistic "party of hope," the new American Adams-Emerson, Whit man, Thoreau-, who believed in progress, man ifest destiny, and man's god-like greatness. Writing at a time when Emerson postulated that evil was non-substantive, Poe philosophized on the power of darkness and the dangers of the hubris of man's indo mitable will. Together with Hawthorne and Melv ille, he warned against the dangers of self-reliance and of the self-made man (Lewis, Patea). Haro ld Bloo m concluded as late as 1987 that "Emerson fathered pragmatis m; Poe fathered nothing" (5). However, as a poet and critic Poe is the founding father of Sy mbolism, Aestheticism and Decadentism. He is responsible for the birth o f the short story as a literary fo rm, wh ich is arguably America's characteristic literary genre (May 69). As a short story writer he invented the short story and the detective, mystery and horror

is one great writer in the world of literature. He has done various forms of writings whether in short stories, poems, and rational write ups that somehow influenced the history of literature around the world. In fact, he is recognized as a major progenitor of the many modern literary art works having inimitable, complex, self conscious forms that dominantly influenced the twentieth century manner of writing. To consider Poe as a writer and have his works analyzed is like discovering indubitable treasures that in all aspects deserves merit.

Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism, 2000

Poe in the century of anxiety, 2010