The Critical History of Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym: A Dialogue with Unreason

by Harvey,Ronald C.

• ISBN13: 9780815333036
• ISBN10: 081533303X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-12-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Critical History of Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym: A Dialogue with Unreasontraces the complex, scattered criticism of Poe's most anomalous work, as it has steadily grown in prominence to a central position in the study of Poe and American literature. The winding route the criticism ofPymhas charted, as convoluted as the narrative itself, has been a history of disagreement at almost every level at which critics and scholars read texts--including the nature and genre of the work, the seriousness or levity of the author's intent, and its stature as a work of genius, hackwork, or something in between. The unique set of thematic and narrative problems the work poses has eluded every hermeneutic structure brought against it so far, consistently undermining the very reading strategies it seems to invite. The only comprehensive critical history and bibliography ofPym,this study fills a large hole Poe scholars have long felt, as it analyzes the ways in whichcritics and critical camps have attempted to confront, rationalize, contain, or evade its novel and disturbing features. In the process, the criticism is correlated with the popular reception and the international response. Because literary history has entangled no author with his work more than Poe, ultimately this book is as much a study of Poe as ofPym.At every point, therefore, this study embeds the critical response toPymin the history of Poe studies in general, as well as in the larger context of American literary theory and history. Includes bibliography and index.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Series Editor's Preface	xi
``An Impudent and Ingenious Fiction'': Introduction	3	(26)
``We Do Not See Any Good End in Such Descriptions'': Moral Censure and the First Hundred Years	29	(34)
``A Language from the Depths'': Psychology, Poe, and Pym	63	(32)
``I Once Wrote a Very Silly Book'': The Problem of Form	95	(28)
``A Correspondent Coloring'': The Historical Orientation	123	(34)
``All the Outward Signs of Intelligibility'': Poe and Pym in the Dialogue of Modernism	157	(54)
Afterword	181	(10)
Bibliography
Pym Criticism, 1838--1993	191	(6)
General List	197	(14)
Index	211