Poe and the Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 1849) has long occupied the position of literary outsider. Dismissed as unrepresentative of the main currents of antebellum culture, Poe commented incisively in fiction and nonfiction on nationalism, science, materialism, popular taste, and the cultural ideology of his time. Opposing the pressure to write nationalistic American tales or from a restricted New England perspective, he produced a body of work whose capacious national character has long been registered by an international fame that far outstripped any of his U.S. contemporaries. In Remapping Antebellum Print Culture scholars explore Poe s antinationalistic Americanism as they redefine the outlines of antebellum print culture and challenge ideas that situate Poe at the margins of national thought and cultural activity. The contributors offer fresh perspectives on an often-maligned author, including essays on Poe s preoccupation with the culture of celebrity, his fascination with metropolitan crime and mystery, his impact as a cultural observer of racial fear, his role as an eccentric cultural icon, and his fluctuating reputation in our own era. They argue for new digital approaches that facilitate this broader view and the ongoing remapping that will make it possible. Contributors: Anna Brickhouse, Betsy Erkkila, Jennifer Greeson, Leon Jackson, J. Gerald Kennedy, Maurice Lee, Jerome McGann, Scott Peeples, Leland S. Person, Eliza Richards.

Jerome McGann is the John Stewart Bryan University Professor at the University of Virginia and Visiting Research Scholar at the University of London and the University of California, Berkeley. He has authored and edited numerous books, including Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web and The Scholar's Art: Literary Studies in a Managed World.