Romancing the shadow : Poe and race

Resource Information

The work Romancing the shadow : Poe and race represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Liverpool. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Romancing the shadow : Poe and race

Title remainder

Poe and race

Statement of responsibility

edited by J. Gerald Kennedy & Liliane Weissberg

Contributor

• Kennedy, J. Gerald
• Weissberg, Liliane

Subject

• African Americans in literature
• Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century
• Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 -- Criticism and interpretation
• Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 -- Et la race
• Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 -- Pensée politique et sociale
• Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 -- Political and social views
• Race in literature
• Slavery in literature

Language

eng

Summary

Edgar Allan 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

Cataloging source

DLC

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography