Romancing the shadow
Subtitle: Poe and race
By: edited by J. Gerald Kennedy & Liliane Weissberg.
Contributors: Kennedy, J. Gerald.; Weissberg, Liliane.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 292
Subjects: Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 -- Political and social views; Race in literature; Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century; African Americans in literature; Slavery in literature
Description: Edgar Allen Poe's strength as a writer lay in fabricating fantisies in settings far removed from his own place and time. This dislocation renders the attitudes embedded in his fiction open to interpretation, and over the years some readers have found Poe to be virulently racist, while others found him morally conflicted, and still others detected a subversion of racism in his works' subtle sympathies for non-white characters. As a nineteenth-century Southerner, Poe was a deeply ambiguous figure, evading race issues while living among them, and traversing the North-South border with little sensitivity to its political implications. In this tightly organized volume, a handful of leading Americanists revisit the Poe issue, re-examining what it means to speak of an author and his work as racist, and where the critic's responsibility lies.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-275) and index.