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The Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume IX, Number 1, Spnng, 1978 Poe and American Society Stuart Levine His works bear no conceivable relation, either external or internal. to the life of any people, and it is impossible to account for them onthe basis of any social or intellectual tendencies or as the expression ofthe spirit of any age. -Joseph Wood Krutch, Edgar Allan Poe: A Studr m Gemui We have for so long taken Edgar Allan Poe as a prime example of the alienated genius or the sensitive artist suffering in a materialistic environment, or-a favorite French literary fantasy-as a writer who should have lived in France. that I feel the need for a very general statement which points out a number of important ways in which the man and his work are unmistakably, unambiguously of his time and place, which is to say, American, of the 1830'sand '4O's. Poe is the American author of greatest influence on world literature;h1\ stories are immensely popular, and his poetry, whether or not we feelthatiti) important (Poe did not-he said that this poems were experiments, andthat he had never had the leisure to make himself a better poet), has served severa 1 generations of youngsters well as introduction to the possibilities of sound and rhythm. He is, in short, in every way a big figure, and we should learn to be more comfortable with him by understanding his connections tohii American environment. Lest I be accused of assaulting straw men, incidentally, let me beginb) showing that the incredible assertion by Krutch above is not an inexplicable lapse of judgement by a smart critic. Other major students of America1 1 literature and culture have said pretty much the same thing. Perry Millersa1Q that he knew of no way to place Poe in a history of American literature, unle 11 it was by "postulating a Dark Tradition, running from Charles Brockden Brown through Poe to Ambrose Bierce and Williarp Faulkner." 1 Vernor Parrington felt that Poe was not in the main current; F. 0. Matthiessen Poeand American Society 17 drummedhim out of the American Renaissance. 2 Even Alfred Kazin, who complainedabout Parrington's blindness to Poe, failed to do much to root Poeon native grounds, and, though Poe knew a lot about and wrote on the relationship between inspiration and the landscape, and published large portionsof an uncompleted novel about the American frontier, Henry Nash Smithnever thought to mention him in Virgin Land. 3 Thisis no scandal: probably when writers think of Poe in connection with nationalissues, various peculiarities of his best-known work, his contentious literarycareer and his biography make him seem an exception to whatever rulethey have in mind. The process rather reminds one of the manner in which historiansand social scientists used to shunt aside black Americans: "They're veryimportant; they've been treated abominably; the injustice must be rectified-but we can't discuss them here; these terms and definitions were developedfor white Americans." "Poe as the nigger of American literature" mightserve as an appropriately loaded ironic phrase, given his racist feelings onthe one hand and the slights he has received on the other. But that racism is in itself a clue: who will argue that racism was not an important part of American life in the age of Poe? Poe played at being southernaristocrat; he wrote sympathetic reviews of books defending slavery, andevenargued that slavery was morally uplifting for the slaveholder. 4 There isno need, in short, to fabricate a "dark tradition" in order to tie Poe to his nationand his time; one already exists. Fortunately, there are other and more positive connections as well. For convenience,I will list some categories which might be fruitful, admitting at thestart that the categories overlap and are arbitrary. Poe's work reflects his agein America in the following ways: 1) His work and the work of other romanticsis in large part a reaction to modernization. 2) His philosophic stanceis not only very characteristic of his period, it is also in part a response tothethreat to the artist's role posed by modernization. 3) He is fascinated by contemporary technology. 4) He shares in national self...

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