The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Subtitle: and Related Tales
By: Edgar Allan Poe ; edited with an introduction by J. Gerald Kennedy.
Contributors: Kennedy, J. Gerald.
Edition: printing (1)
Series: The World's Classics
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Oxford [England]; New York
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 301
ISBN-13: 9780192828446
Copyright date: 1994
Subjects: Young men -- Massachusetts -- Nantucket Island -- Fiction; Horror tales, American; Nantucket Island (Mass.) -- Fiction
Description: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is an archetypal American story of escape from home and family which traces a young man's rite of passage through a series of terrible brushes with death during a fateful sea voyage. But the plot also goes much deeper, as Pym encounters various interpretative dilemmas, and then leaves the reader with a broken-off ending that defies solution.

Apart from its violence and mystery, the tale calls attention to the act of writing and to the problem of representing truth. Layer upon layer of elaborate hoaxes include its author's own role or posing as ghost-writer of early portions or the narrative; Pym—his only novel—has become the key text for our understanding of Poe.

This edition offers eight short tales which are linked to Pym by their treatment of persistent themes—fantastic voyages, gigantic whirlpools, and premature burials—or by their ironic commentary on Poe's mystification of his readers. --back cover
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket; title: MS found in a bottle; title: Loss of breath; title: Mystification; title: How to write a Blackwood article; title: A descent into the maelström; title: The pit and the pendulum; title: The balloon hoax; title: Th premature burial.