Peirce, Poe, and Protoplasm

This article interprets a series of aborted transcriptions of "The Raven" undertaken by Charles Sanders Peirce and named by him "Art Chirography" as a species of re-mediation of Poe's poem. Attending to Peirce's knowledge of Poe's works (real and faked), the relation between sound and inscription, the power of handwriting as media phenomenon in the nineteenth century, and Peirce's evolutionary metaphysics, the essay concludes that Peirce's "art chirography" is an attempt to image the play of chance and habit-taking that lies at the heart of both Poe's poem and Peirce's metaphysics.