Pictures of Ascent in the Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe

DOUGLAS ANDERSON  is Sterling-Goodman Professor of English at the University of Georgia.

• Introduction: Cosmos Problems of Disposal A Pneumatics of Mind The Gravity of Things The Kingdom of Inorganization The Infected World at Large Conclusion: Pictures of Ascent

"This thorough examination of most of Poe's writing provides an important new perspective on Poe's creative techniques." - Choice"In prose that is as graceful as Poe's is typically tangled, Anderson explores Poe's lifelong quest to transcend the realm of the material, whether that realm is encountered as the human body, the scene of American culture, the workings of nature or the very language out of which literature is made. Pictures of Ascent in the Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe is the work of a first-rate critical intelligence communing with one of the most fascinating minds in the American canon. Among the many things it exalts is the act of critical attention itself." - Stephen Railton, Professor of English, University of Virginia