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In this seminar we will study Poe and his writings in relation to the nineteenth-century American literature, yet we will also occasionally look beyond Poe for comparative and contextualizing purposes. We will begin with “On the Prose Tale” (1842) to study Poe’s theory of short story. Then we will read core texts such as “The Purloined Letter” (1844) from Poe’s Dupin mysteries to discuss his contribution to detective fiction; “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) and horror genre; “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842) and excerpts from Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor (1978) and Priscilla Wald’s Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative (2008), to discuss storytelling and disease and illness; “The Murders in Rue Morgue” (1841) and excerpts from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, to discuss the representation of animal. Other than Poe’s short stories, we will also read his letters, for instance “To John Allan, March 19, 1827” and excerpts from Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark (1992) and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1884) to study the representation of race. Poe’s legacy in contemporary popular culture will also be addressed: for instance, we will look at the legacy of Poe in the present moment in a global context, e.g. via Walter Hill’s 2016 action crime thriller film The Assignment to discuss how it uses of Poe’s “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846) to theorize gender reassignment.
This seminar will also include guest lectures, among others by Dylan Furcall, a poet and academic from UC Berkeley, with a focus on Poe and poetry. |
