No American author of the early 19th century enjoys a larger international audience than Edgar Allan Poe. Widely translated, read, and studied, he occupies an iconic place in global culture. Such acclaim would have gratified Poe, who deliberately wrote for "the world at large" and mocked the provincialism of strictly nationalistic themes. Partly for this reason, early literary historians cast Poe as an outsider, regarding his dark fantasies as extraneous to American life and experience. Only in the 20th century did Poe finally gain a prominent place in the national canon. Changing critical approaches have deepened our understanding of Poe's complexity and revealed an author who defies easy classification. New models of interpretation have excited fresh debates about his essential genius, his subversive imagination, his cultural insight, and his ultimate impact, urging an expansive reconsideration of his literary achievement.Edited by leading experts J. Gerald Kennedy and Scott Peeples, this volume presents a sweeping reexamination of Poe's work. Forty-five distinguished scholars address Poe's troubled life and checkered career as a "magazinist," his poetry and prose, and his reviews, essays, opinions, and marginalia. The chapters provide fresh insights into Poe's lasting impact on subsequent literature, music, art, comics, and film and illuminate his radical conception of the universe, science, and the human mind. Wide-ranging and thought-provoking, this Handbook reveals a thoroughly modern Poe, whose timeless fables of peril and loss will continue to attract new generations of readers and scholars.

Abbreviations of Poe's WorksList of ContributorsIntroduction: The Unfolding Investigation of Edgar Allan PoeJ. Gerald Kennedy and Scott Peeples1. An Orphan's Life: 1809-1831James M. Hutchisson2. A Life in Print: 1831-1849Scott Peeples3. Poe: A Life in LettersLesley Ginsberg4. Poe's LivesRichard Kopley5. Orientalism in Poe's Early PoetryJohn Carlos Rowe6. Echoes of the "Raven": Unoriginality in Poe's VerseMichael C. Cohen7. Poe's Common MeterVirginia Jackson8. Early Experiments in Genre: Imitations, Burlesques, SatiresAlexander Hammond9. The Perversity of Public Opinion in Poe's Later Satires and HoaxesStacey Margolis10. Undead Wives and Undone Husbands: Poe's Tales of MarriageEllen Weinauer11. Solving Mysteries in Poe, or Trying ToSusan Elizabeth Sweeney12. Deciphering Dupin: Poe's Ratiocinative PlotsKelly Ross13. The Calculus of Probabilities: Contingency in "The Mystery of Marie Rog?t"Valerie Rohy14. Counterparts: Poe's Doubles from "William Wilson" to "The Cask of Amontillado"Paul Christian Jones15. Outing the Perverse: Poe's False ConfessionalsLeland S. Person16. Poe's Survival Stories as Dying ColonialismsMatt Sandler17. Poe's Landscapes, Picturesque and IdealKent P. Ljungquist18. Undying Enigmas in "Ligeia"Alexandra Urakova19. "The Fall of the House of Usher" and the Architecture of UnreliabilityAgnieska Soltysik Monnet20. Genre, Science, and "Hans Pfaall"Maurice S. Lee21. Rude Representation: Orienting the American Frontier Through the Characters in Pym's ChasmJacob Berman22. Pym and UnreadabilityCindy Weinstein23. Poe's Novel ExplorationsLauren Coats24. Conversations on the Body and the Soul: Transcending Death in the Angelic Dialogues and "Mesmeric Revelation"Bruce Mills25. Making Sense of EurekaLaura Saltz26. Poe the Critic: The Aesthetics of the "Tomahawk" ReviewPaul Hurh27. The Marginal Center: "Pinakidia," "Marginalia," and "Fifty Suggestions"Stephen Rachman28. Poe the MagazinistPhilip Edward Phillips29. Poe's Cultural Inheritance: Literary Touchstones and the Cultivation of EruditionWilliam E. Engel30. Ancestral Piles: Poe's Gothic MaterialsSean Moreland31. Kindred Contemporaries: Lippard, Bird, Simms, Hawthorne, and IrvingCarl Ostrowski32. Edgar Allan Poe and His EnemiesSandra Tomc33. Bluestockings and BohemiansEdward Whitley34. Poe and His Global AdvocatesEmron Esplin35. Poe and Modern(ist) Poetry: An Impure LegacyMargarida Vale de Gato36. An Unrequited Obsession: Poe and Modern HorrorW. Scott Poole37. Dupin's Descendants in Print and on ScreenJohn Gruesser38. Poe's Visual LegacyBarbara Cantalupo39. Poe and the Avant-GardeJonathan Elmer40. Postmodern PoeJeffrey Andrew Weinstock41. Poe and Science FictionPaul Grimstad42. Poe and the Sciences of the BrainPaul Gilmore43. Temporal Effects: Trauma, Margaret Fuller, and "Graphicality" in PoeChristina Zwarg44. Unqualified Pleasure: Poe on Forms of LifeBranka Arsi?45. Poe's Terror AnalyticsJ. Gerald KennedyIndex