Full Description
Like other volumes in the Case Studies in Critical Controversy series, this edition is designed for 'teaching the conflicts'- in this case, the conflicts surrounding the work of Edgar Allan Poe, one of the most popular yet contested literary figures in all of American Literature.The text incorporates selections from Poe's fiction, poetry and nonfiction, along with critical essays representing three major critical and cultural controversies about Poe and his work: aesthetics and the literary marketplace; race; and gender and sexuality. The literature and critical essays are supported by distinctive editorial matter that introduces students to critical conflict in literary studies, to Poe's life and work, to each critical controversy, and to arguing about the controversies. The edition helps students grapple not only with the critical issues concerning Poe, but also with cultural debates about literature itself.
Contents
Contents.- Why Study Critical Controversies?.- PART ONEPoe: His Life and Work.- The Life of Edgar Allan Poe.- POETRY Tamerlane; The Sleeper; The City In The Sea; To Helen; Lenore; Israfel; The Raven; To Marie Louise; Annabel Lee; For Annie.- TALES Metzengerstein; Berenice; Ligeia; How To Write A Blackwood Article; The Man That Was Used Up; The Fall Of The House Of Usher; William Wilson; The Man Of The Crowd; The Murders In The Rue Morgue; The Oval Portrait; The Pit And The Pendulum; The Tell-Tale Heart; The Black Cat; The Purloined Letter; The Imp of the Perverse; The Cask of Amontillado; Hop-Frog.- ESSAYS Some Secrets of the Magazine Prison-House; The Philosophy Of Composition.- PART TWO: A Case Study in Critical Controversy THE CONTROVERSY OVER AESTHETICS AND THE LITERARY MARKETPLACE; OR, IS POE A LITERARY GENIUS OR A POP CULTURE HACK? James Russell Lowell, "Edgar Allan Poe" (1845); James Russell Lowell, from "A Fable for Critics" (1848); Rufus Griswold, "Death of Edgar A. Poe" (1849); Rufus Griswold, "Preface" (1850); Charles Baudelaire, "New Notes on Edgar Poe" (1857); Sarah Helen Whitman, "Edgar Poe and His Critics" (1860); Henry James, "Charles Baudelaire" (1876); George Bernard Shaw, "Edgar Allan Poe" (1909); Yvor Winters, "Edgar Allan Poe: A Crisis in the History of American Obscurantism" (1937); T. S. Eliot, "From Poe to Valery" (1949); Allen Tate "The Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe' (1968); E. L. Doctorow, "Our Edgar" (2006); J. Gerald Kennedy, "Poe in Our Time" (2001); Scott Peeples, "Lionizing; Poe as Cultural Signifier" (2004).- AMERICANS AND SLAVERY? Joan Dayan, "Amorous Bondage: Poe, Ladies, and Slaves" (1994); Lesley Ginsberg, "Slavery and the Gothic Horror of Poe's 'The Black Cat'" (1998); Terence Whalen, "Average Racism: Poe, Slavery, and the Wages of Literary Nationalism" (1999); Paul Gilmore, "'A Rara Avis in Terris'; Poe's 'Hop Frog' and Race in the Antebellum Freak Show" (2001); Maurice Lee, "Absolute Poe: His System of Transcendental Racism" (2003).- THE CONTROVERSY Ann Bassein, "Poe's Most Poetic Subject" (1982); J. Gerald Kennedy, "Horrors of Translation: The Death of a Beautiful Woman" (1987); Cynthia S. Jordan, "Poe's Re-Vision: The Recovery of the Second Story" (1987); Leland S. Person, "Poe's Poetics of Desire: 'Th'Expanding Eye to the Loved Object'" (1999); Eliza Richards, "Women's Place in Poe Studies" (2000); Joseph Church, "'To Make Venus Vanish': Misogyny as Motive in Poe's 'Murder's in the Rue Morgue'" (2006); Valerie Rohy, "Ahistorical" (2006).- Appendix: How to Write about Critical Controversy over the Work of Edgar Allan Poe.- About the Editors.
