Poe's Difference

Poe's Difference argues that Edgar Allan Poe has much more in common with early American, medieval, and ancient writers than with the modern and post-modern ones with whom the writer is so often associated. This book emphasizes Poe's anachronisms to make a number of theoretical, pedagogical, literary historical, and political claims about the backwardness of antebellum U.S. culture. Some time ago Michael Colacurcio issued the challenge that "e;the full case for the Puritan character of Poe's 'horror' remains to be made."e; Although going back a good deal further than just to the "e;Puritans,"e; Poe's Difference aspires fully to make precisely this case.