Poe's Difference

R. C. De Prospo

Poe’s Difference

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: De Prospo, R. C., author.

Title: Poe’s difference / R. C. De Prospo.

Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019017264 | ISBN 978-1-4331-6932-8 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4331-6933-5 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4331-6934-2 (epub)
ISBN 978-1-4331-6935-9 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–1849—Criticism and interpretation.

Classification: LCC PS2638 .D394 2019 | DDC 818/.309—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017264
DOI 10.3726/b15628

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

Cover art: Carstian Luyckx, Vanitas Still Life with Terrestrial Globe
©Szépművészeti Múzeum—Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, 2019

© 2019 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
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www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
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About the author

R. C. De Prospo is Chair of American Studies at Washington College, where he is also Professor of English and American Studies. De Prospo has published two books on early American literature, co-edited a book on Harriet Beecher Stowe, and published numerous articles on American literature and literary theory.

About the book

Poe’s Difference argues that Edgar Allan Poe has much more in common with early American, medieval, and ancient writers than with the modern and post-modern ones with whom the writer is so often associated. This book emphasizes Poe’s anachronisms to make a number of theoretical, pedagogical, literary historical, and political claims about the backwardness of antebellum U.S. culture. Some time ago Michael Colacurcio issued the challenge that “the full case for the Puritan character of Poe’s ‘horror’ remains to be made.” Although going back a good deal further than just to the “Puritans,” Poe’s Difference aspires fully to make precisely this case.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Contents

Chapter 0.Foreword: Poe’s Difference

Chapter 0.Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. “An Anomaly on the Face of the Earth”: Poe’s Reviews

Chapter 2. Poe’s Pym/Stevenson’s Jim

Chapter 3. Pym, Prometheus, and the Marinere

Chapter 0.Afterword: Poe’s Parelcon

Chapter 0.Index←vii | viii→ ←viii | ix→

Foreword

Poe’s Difference

Quand on écrit l’histoire, il faut n’être d’aucune pays

— Voltaire

Staat heißt das kälteste aller kalten Ungeheuer. Kalt lügt es auch;

und diese Lüge kriecht aus seinem Munde: “Ich, der Staat, bin das Volk.”