Poe and the Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture

by Jerome McGann, J. Gerald Kennedy (Editor), Scott Peeples (Contribution by), Jennifer Rae Greeson (Contribution by), Eliza Richards (Contribution by)

Overview

Edgar Allan Poe (1809--1849) has long occupied the position of literary outsider. Dismissed as unrepresentative of the main currents of antebellum culture, Poe commented incisively -- in fiction and nonfiction -- on nationalism, science, materialism, popular taste, and cultural ideology. Opposing the pressure to write nationalistic "American" tales or from a restricted New England perspective, he produced a body of work held in greater international esteem than that of any of his U.S. contemporaries.
In Poe and the Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture, scholars explore Poe's anti-nationalistic Americanism as they redefine the outlines of antebellum print culture and challenge ideas that situate Poe at the margins of national thought and cultural activity.
The contributors offer fresh perspectives on an often-maligned author, including essays on Poe's preoccupation with celebrity, his fascination with metropolitan crime and mystery, his impact as an observer of racial fear, his role as an eccentric cultural icon, and his fluctuating reputation in our own era. They also argue for new digital approaches that facilitate remapping of print culture.
Contributors: Anna Brickhouse, Betsy Erkkila, Jennifer Rae Greeson, Leon Jackson, J. Gerald Kennedy, Maurice S. Lee, Jerome McGann, Scott Peeples, Leland S. Person, and Eliza Richards

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807150283
Publisher:	Louisiana State University Press
Publication date:	12/19/2012
Series:	Media & Public Affairs
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Jerome McGann is the John Stewart Bryan University Professor at the University of Virginia and Visiting Research Scholar at the University of London and the University of California, Berkeley. He has authored and edited numerous books, including Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web and The Scholar's Art: Literary Studies in a Managed World.

J. Gerald Kennedy is Boyd Professor of English at Louisiana State University. His other books include A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe, The Portable Edgar Allan Poe, and Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing, and American Identity.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction J. Gerald Kennedy 1

I Locating the Republic of Letters

Inventing the Literati: Poe's Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture J. Gerald Kennedy 13

"The Rage for Lions": Edgar Allan Poe and the Culture of Celebrity Leon Jackson 37

II Surveying the National Scene

Perverting the American Renaissance: Poe, Democracy, Critical Theory Betsy Erkkila 65

"To Reproduce a City": New York Letters and the Urban American Renaissance Scott Peeples 101

Poe's 1848: Eureka, the Southern Margin, and the Expanding U[niverse] of S[tars] Jennifer Rae Greeson 123

III Plotting Poe's Influence

Cruising (Perversely) for Context: Poe and Murder, Women and Apes Leland S. Person 143

Robert Greenhow, Poe, and the Nineteenth-Century History of Transnational American Studies Anna Brickhouse 170

Poe s Lyrical Media: The Ravens Returns Eliza Richards 200

IV Repositioning Poe in Literary America Poe by the Numbers: Odd Man Out? Maurice S. Lee 227

Poe, Decentered Culture, and Critical Method Jerome McGann 245

Contributors 261

Index 263