Poe and the Subversion of American Literature

Robert T. Tally Jr. is Associate Professor of English at Texas State University, USA, where he teaches American and world literature.

• Acknowledgements Introduction: A Poetics of Descent 1. Subterranean Noises Undercurrents of American Thought The Man of the Street The Diddler’s Grin 2. A Nomad in a Land of Settlers The Early Poe: Nomadic Peripety The Mature Poe: Unsettling Movement The Late Poe: Extravagant Trajectories 3. Points of No Return The Return of Personal Narrative “Of my country and of my family I have little to say” Irreversible Descent Uncharted Territories 4. The Nightmare of the Unknowable The Legitimate Sources of Terror Terror as Anti-Epistemic Unfathomability 5. Captivating the Reader Perverse Designs “To be appreciated you must be read” The Apparatus of Capture 6. The Perverse Originality of Literature Proper True Originality Generic Ambiguities 7. The Cosmopolitan’s Uncanny Duplicity At Sea in the City The Doppelgänger’s Mirror Image 8. Extra Mœnia Flammantia Mundi: Satire, Fantasy, and the Critic’s Laughter Phantasy Pieces The Laugh of Edgar Allan Poe Conclusion: Premature Burials BibliographyIndex

Tally (Texas State Univ.) follows up his Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel with a tightly argued treatment of Edgar Allan Poe as a subversive counter voice to the traditional American story of progress, expansion, and upwardly moving achievement. Most earlier discussion of Poe as a satirist focused on his fiction; Tally includes Poe's poetry, essays, and reviews. An Americanist at heart, Tally contrasts Poe's voice with the voices of Melville, Emerson, and Thoreau. The result is a brilliant rethinking of Poe's work that will influence study of mid-19th century American literature for some time. Primarily of interest to specialists, but ambitious undergraduates could handle it. The bibliography and index are thorough. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.