Introduction: Echo Poe

This essay, an introduction to a special feature titled "Poe and Feeling," describes the affective turn in literary studies of the last twenty-five years, and in Poe criticism in particular. A brief and selective summary of the feature's five contributions considers them in light of the following concerns: affect transmission, affect and biographical criticism, trauma theory, the movement of affect across micro- and macro-scales, and the critical interaction between the affects and aesthetics. The introduction concludes by suggesting that Poe's tales and poems can be thought of as echo chambers that set up mutually amplifying relations between feeling and thinking.