Approaches to Teaching Poe’s Prose and Poetry
- Editors: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Tony Magistrale
- Pages: xix & 241 pp.
- Published: 2008
- ISBN: 9781603290111 (Hardcover)
- ISBN: 9781603290128 (Paperback)
“The essays provide practical activities that can be readily attempted by teachers who are open to a variety of pedagogical techniques—and who have been frustrated by students’ preconceptions concerning Poe.”
—Joseph Andriano, University of Louisiana, Lafayette
Edgar Allan Poe is a popular author, and students have often read his work by the time they reach the college or university classroom. His writings have inspired film, television, and musical adaptations—sources for much of students’ knowledge about Poe. Thus the challenge for teachers is to reacquaint students with Poe as a complex literary figure. This volume equips teachers with the tools necessary to meet that challenge.
Part 1 identifies the most frequently taught Poe texts, reviews useful editions of his work, and suggests secondary sources on Poe as well as television, film, music, and Web materials for use in the classroom. Essays in part 2 explore the relation between Poe’s writing and his biography, including his attitudes toward racial difference and plagiarism and his wide publication in the literary magazines of his time. Contributors consider the range of Poe’s writings, from his horror stories to his analytic essays and tales of ratiocination; his work is also compared with that of Stephen King, Alfred Hitchcock, and graphic novelists. Other essays assess the usefulness of theoretical approaches to Poe, especially psychoanalytic ones, and discuss the controversies concerning the literary merit of his work. Together, these essays bring to life the political, philosophical, and religious context in which Poe wrote.
James R. Britton
Leonard Cassuto
Marcy J. Dinius
William Etter
Duncan Faherty
Benjamin F. Fisher
Derek Furr
Lesley Ginsberg
Desirée Henderson
Diane Long Hoeveler
M. Thomas Inge
Rebecca Jaroff
Paul Christian Jones
Alison M. Kelly
A. Samuel Kimball
Scott Peeples
Dennis R. Perry
Philip Edward Phillips
Stephen Rachman
Erik Redling
Donelle Ruwe
Domenick Scudera
Lois Davis Vines
Edward Wesp
Brian Yothers
Preface to the Series (ix)
Preface to the Volume (1)
PART ONE: MATERIALS
Courses and Texts (7)
Readings for Students (8)
Readings for Teachers (9)
Reference Works (9)
Background Studies (10)
Biography (11)
Criticism (12)
Aids to Teaching (14)
TV and Cinema (14)
Music and Spoken Word (15)
Web Sites (15)
Images (16)
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction (19)
Literary, Cultural, and Historical Contexts
Teaching Poe the Magazinist (26)
Poe the Crime Writer: Historicizing “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (33)
“Legitimate Sources” and “Legitimate Results”: Surveying the Social Terror of “Usher” and “Ligeia” (39)
“Some Words with a Mummy”: Teaching Satire and the Democratic Threat in Poe’s Fiction (48)
Teaching the Mechanics of Deception: “Hans Pfaall,” Science Fiction, and Hoaxing in Antebellum Print Culture (55)
What Difference Does It Make? Pym, Plagiarism, and Pop Culture (61)
Understanding the Fear and Love of Death in Three Premature-Burial Stories: “The Premature Burial,” “Morella,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” (69)
Teaching Poe’s “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee” as Elegies (76)
Mourning and Eve(ning): Teaching Poe’s Poetry (81)
Rectangular Obscenities: Poe, Taste, and Entertainment (88)
Theoretical Contexts
A New-Historicist Approach to Teaching “The Black Cat” (97)
Reader Response and the Interpretation of “Hop-Frog,” “How to Write a Blackwood Article,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (104)
Teaching “The Purloined Letter” and Lacan’s Seminar: Introducing Students to Psychoanalysis through Poe (109)
The Linguistic Turn, First-Person Experience, and the Terror of Relativism: “The Purloined Letter” and the Affective Limits of Ratiocination (115)
The “Visionary” Project: Poe and the Textual Condition (125)
Teaching Poe’s Ironic Approach to German Learners of English: The Didactic Complexities of “The Cask of Amontillado” (132)
Classroom Contexts
The Red Death’s Sway: Teaching Poe and Stephen King in the American Literature Classroom (139)
Teaching Pym in a Survey of American Literature (146)
Trust Thyself? Teaching Poe’s Murder Tales in the Context of Transcendental Self-Reliance (154)
Loving with a Love That Is More Than Love: Poe, the American Dream, and the Secondary School Classroom (161)
Poe, Literary Theory, and the English Education Course (170)
Teaching Poe in the Disability Studies Classroom: “The Man That Was Used Up” (177)
Rediscovering Poe through the Eyes of World Authors: What Do They See in Him? (186)
Teaching Poe’s Influence on Hitchcock: The Example of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and Psycho (192)
Poe in the Comics (198)
From Page to Stage: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching “The Philosophy of Composition” through Performing “The Raven.” (204)
Notes on Contributors (211)
Survey Participants (215)
Works Cited (217)
Index of Names (235)
Index of Works by Poe (241)
