The Poet Edgar Allan Poe : Alien Angel / Jerome McGann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McGann, Jerome, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849--Poetic works.

Poe, Edgar Allan.

Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849--Criticism and interpretation.

American poetry--History and criticism.

American poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (256 p.)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The poetry of Edgar Allan Poe has had a rough ride in America, as Emerson's sneering quip about "The Jingle Man" testifies. That these poems have never lacked a popular audience has been a persistent annoyance in academic and literary circles; that they attracted the admiration of innovative poetic masters in Europe and especially France-notably Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Valéry-has been further cause for embarrassment. Jerome McGann offers a bold reassessment of Poe's achievement, arguing that he belongs with Whitman and Dickinson as a foundational American poet and cultural presence. Not all American commentators have agreed with Emerson's dim view of Poe's verse. For McGann, a notable exception is William Carlos Williams, who said that the American poetic imagination made its first appearance in Poe's work. The Poet Edgar Allan Poe explains what Williams and European admirers saw in Poe, how they understood his poetics, and why his poetry had such a decisive influence on Modern and Post-Modern art and writing. McGann contends that Poe was the first poet to demonstrate how the creative imagination could escape its inheritance of Romantic attitudes and conventions, and why an escape was desirable. The ethical and political significance of Poe's work follows from what the poet takes as his great subject: the reader. The Poet Edgar Allan Poe takes its own readers on a spirited tour through a wide range of Poe's verse as well as the critical and theoretical writings in which he laid out his arresting ideas about poetry and poetics.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Poe In Propria Persona

2. Poetics and Echopoetics

3. Poetry: or Masks for a Read Death

4. The Politics of a Poetry without Politics

Coda

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9780674745230

067474523X

9780674735972

0674735978

OCLC:

892430124