Putting Context to New Use in Literary Studies: A Conceptual-Historicist Interpretation of Poe's "Man of the Crowd"
TL;DR: The authors examines critical practices at work in the interpretation of Poe's canonical piece "The Man of the Crowd" in light of the recent debates in literary studies around the problem of context and contextualization in general and the "hegemony" of new historicism in particular.
Abstract: Poe's adherence to a strict aesthetic formalism used to be problematic for studies of the relationship between his work and its American context; the methodology of New Historicism has helped to surmount this problem but sometimes with excessive emphasis on socio-historical contexts. This essay examines critical practices at work in the interpretation of Poe's canonical piece "The Man of the Crowd" in light of the recent debates in literary studies around the problem of context and contextualization in general and the "hegemony" of new historicism in particular. It then suggests an alternative method of reading literary texts and their contexts — one based on Reinhart Koselleck's history of concepts. It offers an analysis of "The Man of the Crowd" as an illustration of this method.
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: Poe's "The Man of the Crowd" as mentioned in this paper is considered a counterpart to "The Purloined Letter" in cultural theory and has been particularly valued as a kind of sociological document which reveals and critiques aspects of the scopic and material conditions of the modern city.
Abstract: Poe’s ‘The Man of the Crowd’, as Patricia Merivale has observed, be justifiably be considered a counterpart to ‘The Purloined Letter’ in its significance in cultural theory. It has been particularly valued as a kind of sociological document which reveals and critiques aspects of the scopic and material conditions of the modern city.Yet despite an almost universal acknowledgement that the tale is about ‘reading’, most critics have worked with a rather impoverished model of reading. Following the example of Tom Gunning, who has argued that the tale provides premonitions of a range of spectator positions in cinema, this essay argues that the story dramatizes typical responses to the literary text which are more complex than the flan flanerie. To place the text in a more explicitly literary context opens it up to an analysis which takes account of how complex its structure is, and the fact that the narrator has typically-Poe-esque ‘delusional’ credentials, and acknowledge how this might compromise or complicate some of the arguments about urban reading. As such it demands to be considered in terms of the capacity of Poe’s fiction to seduce readers into what Joseph Kronick has called, ‘identifying the intepretation with the text’, particularly in relation to the particular self-reflexive effect Garrett Stewart has termed the ‘gothic of reading’.
2 citations
TL;DR: In this article , Cananau et al. examined the reading process of the reader in "The Man of the Crowd" and found that it exhibits emptiness in subjectivity, one of the heated topics of Lacanian theory.
Abstract: Edgar Allan Poe says in the first sentence that “it does not permit itself to be read,” to build a myth in “The Man of the Crowd,” which refuses to be decoded. Compared with the plot, the story is more structurally attractive to readers. Accordingly, much formalistic efforts have been made in examining the narrative strategies of the story, such as “‘ambiguity’, ‘irony’, ‘doubleness,’ and ‘unreliability’” (Cananau 242). As Iulian Cananau observes, “[a] more recent formalist inquiry, inspired by poststructuralism and genre criticism, reads ‘The Man of the Crowd’ not against the socio-cultural context, but against a ‘literary’ one that consists of the broader framework of Gothic fiction and a representative selection of Poe’s other canonical short stories” (242). This inquiry, applied in analyzing the reading process of the reader, can be extended to the “reading process” of the narrator who follows the old man for a long time and yet fails to figure out the old man’s secret, which might lead to the conclusion that Poe, by exhibiting the futility of pursuing meaning, turns the short story into a symbol of empty subjectivity. However, it will be a more enlightening effort when we pay attention to the narrator’s keen interest in following the old man, which structurally shapes the short story into a double-layered pursuit. It exhibits Poe’s textual endeavor to portray the theme of the story: emptiness in subjectivity, one of the heated topics of Lacanian theory, which, in probing the relationship between language and identity, exhibits diversified textual features among different literary works. For example, in the interpretation of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Pyeaam Abbasi argues that Prufrock’s failure to become a “speaking subject” in the symbolic order of language leads to a “neurotic” Prufrock (118). To some extent, Lacanian theory is so deconstructive that the gap between the symbolic order and imaginative order cannot be bridged even for a speaking subject. Accordingly, when we take the narrator as a speaking subject in “The Man of the Crowd,” the short https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2022.2080519
TL;DR: This article introduced a new approach to the history of pro-test literature, and to literary history writing in general, by investigating three antebellum American works by women that ex ect.
Abstract: This essay introduces a new approach to the history of pro‐ test literature, and to literary history writing in general. My case studies investigate three antebellum American works by women that ex ...
References
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Book•
04 Jan 2001
TL;DR: Poe in Our Time as discussed by the authors is a brief biography of Edgar Allan Poe and the American publishing industry with a brief Biography of the American Publishing Industry and its role in the development of the Internet.
Abstract: Introduction: Poe in Our Time J Gerald Kennedy Edgar Allan Poe: A brief Biography J Gerald Kennedy Poe and the American Publishing Industry Terence Whalen Spanking the Master: Mind-Body Crossings in POe's Sensationalism David Leverenz Poe and Nineteenth-Century Gender Constructions Leland S Person Poe and the Issue of American Privacy Louis A Renza Bibliographic Essay Scott Peeples Illustrated Chronology Bibliography Index
38 citations
Book•
28 Apr 2013
TL;DR: Cohen as mentioned in this paper studied the materiality of Shakespearean form and its relationship to the work of genre on the early modern stage, including the use of historical formalism in the production of Hamlet.
Abstract: Contents: Introduction, Stephen Cohen. Part 1 Historicizing Form: The materiality of Shakespearean form, Douglas Bruster Shakespeare, geography, and the work of genre on the early modern stage, Jean E. Howard 'I would I were at home': representations of dwelling places and havens in Cymbeline, Heather Dubrow Storm versus story: form and affective power in Shakespeare's romances, Christopher Cobb. Part 2 Re-Forming History: Crossing from scaffold to stage: execution processions and generic conventions in The Comedy of Errors and Measure for Measure, Marissa Greenberg Partial views: literary allusion, teleological form, and contingent readings in Hamlet, Nicholas Moschovakis Formalism and the problem of history: sonnets, sequence, and the relativity of linear time, R.L. Kesler Teaching Shakespeare and the uses of historical formalism, Mary Janell Metzger Further reading Bibliography Index.
20 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: In this article, 20 scholars apply new theoretical approaches to the fiction and poetry of southern writers ranging from Poe to Dickey, from Faulkner to Hurston, to explore the literature and culture of the South.
Abstract: In this collection of essays, 20 scholars apply new theoretical approaches to the fiction and poetry of southern writers ranging from Poe to Dickey, from Faulkner to Hurston. Departing from earlier traditions of southern literary scholarship, this book seeks not to create a new orthodoxy but to suggest the diversity of critical tools that can now be used to explore the literature and culture of the South. Instead of simply taking ""the South"" for granted, the contributors to this volume see it as a text and an idea - as something whose ideological underpinnings, complexities, and contradictions must be subjected to close reading and questioning. ""Southern Literature and Literary Theory"" represents a major effort to redefine the relationship of Southern writing and the South itself to the larger world.
16 citations
Book•
14 Jun 2014
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the value in being public and the importance of being public in the context of privacy events in the media and the public sphere, and discuss the need to care for what is public.
Abstract: Contents: Aristotle, borders and the coming of the social - Liberalism, consent and the problem of seclusion - Utilitarianism, radical transparency and moral truffles - Pragmatism: Jettisoning normativity - Heidegger (Part 1): Concerning a-historical being and events - Heidegger (Part 2): On moods and empathic media - Latour: Raising the profile of immaterial actants - Phenomenology: The rise of intentional machines - The subject: Caring for what is public - Alienation: The value in being public - Spinoza: Politics of affect - Whitehead: Privacy events - Community facts.
15 citations