A collection of essays examining the short stories and life of the 19th century American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Presenting some of the best of a broad range of critical perspectives from the psychoanalytical to the postcolonial, it offers an introduction to Poe's tales and the critical conversation surrounding them.
The original essays in this set illuminate the influences that shaped Poe, contextualize his work, and assess his enduring impact on American and European poetry and fiction. A sketch of the historical and cultural forces surrounding Poe illuminates their influence on his aesthetic; a reception history examines Poe's enduring contributions to the short-story genre, the French Symbolist movement, and modernist aesthetics; a comparison of Poe's and Baudelaire's works reveals how the two authors exploited the duplicitous possibilities within the writer-reader relationship.
