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Essays and Reviews
Gathers Poe's essays on the theory of poetry, the art of fiction, the role of the critic, leading nineteenth-century writers, and the New York literary world.
A Dark Night's Dreaming
A Dark Night's Dreaming opens by defining the shape of horror fiction today, illuminating the genre's narrative themes, psychological and social contexts, and historical development. The core of the volume focuses on the lives and major works of the six who have dramatically shaped the genre: William Peter Blatty, Thomas Harris, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Peter Straub, and Whitley Strieber. A final chapter analyzes the complex relationship between horror fiction and its adaptation to film. Looking beyond the tormented maidens, madmen, monsters, and other archetypes of the genre, these critics differentiate contemporary Gothic fiction from that of earlier generations while demonstrating that horror remains one of the most important and consistent strains connecting the diverse elements of the American literary tradition. They comment on the genre's enormous popularity and undeniable influence in American society and scrutinize its changing representations of women, monsters, and gore. The volume concludes with an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary works.
Reading the American Novel 1865 - 1914
An indispensable tool for teachers and students of American literature, Reading the American Novel 1865-1914 provides a comprehensive introduction to the American novel in the post-civil war period. Locates American novels and stories within a specific historical and literary context Offers fresh analyses of key selected literary works Addresses a wide audience of academics and non-academics in clear, accessible prose Demonstrates the changing mentality of 19th-century America entering the 20th century Explores the relationship between the intellectual and artistic output of the time and the turbulent socio-political context
The Art of Authorial Presence
The critical literary world has spent a wealth of thought and words on the question of Hawthorne himself: Where does he stand in his works? In history? In literary tradition? In this major new study, G. R. Thompson recasts the "Hawthorne question" to show how authorial presence in the writer's works is as much a matter of art as the writing itself. The Hawthorne who emerges from this masterful analysis is not, as has been supposed, identical to the provincial narrator of his early tales; instead he is revealed to be the skillful manipulator of that narrative voice, an author at an ironic distance from the tales he tells. By focusing on the provincial tales as they were originally conceived--...
Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe
The classic poems and spine-tingling stories of a Gothic American master collected in one volume. Of all the American masters, Edgar Allan Poe staked out perhaps the most unique and vivid reputation, as a master of the macabre. Even today, in the age of horror movies and high-tech haunted houses, Poe is the first choice of entertainment for many who want a spine-chilling thrill. Born in Boston in 1809, and dead at the age of 40, Poe wrote across several fields during his life, noted for his poetry and short stories as well as his criticism. The best of each of these is collected here, including the classic poem The Raven, and timeless stories like The Tell-Tale Heart. In his introduction to this volume, G. R. Thompson argues that Poe was a great satirist and comedic craftsman, as well as a formidable Gothic writer. "All of Poe's fiction," Thompson writes, "and the poems as well, can be seen as one coherent piece—as the work of one of the greatest ironists of world literature."
Rethinking Nathaniel Hawthorne and Nature
A friend and associate of the Transcendentalists in Concord, Nathaniel Hawthorne has rarely been taken seriously as a writer interested in the natural world. This book seeks to redress this omission by elucidating the sense of environmentality that emanates from Hawthorne’s romances and other writings. Hawthorne’s sense of kinship with the natural world runs deep in his work, particularly when his fiction is examined alongside his voluminous notebooks. Rethinking Nathaniel Hawthorne and Nature also contributes to the growing scholarly work aiming to illuminate Hawthorne as a writer deeply engaged in the issues of his day, particularly involving the environment, rather than an author simply interested in reinterpreting colonial history. Today’s readers stand to gain a rich new understanding of Hawthorne by reassessing Hawthorne’s attitude toward the natural world.
Ruined Eden of the Present
A recurrent idea in Darrel Abel's criticism of the works of Hawthorne gives this volume its title. The idea of a fallen world and its potential for partial redemption through art and the art of criticism is a theme that weaves in and out of the sixteen essays. The volume as a whole displays an explicit and implicit concern with critical approaches and reflects an awareness of the fictiveness of critical resolutions in a world in which boundaries are constantly under challenge, for example, those which divide "textuality" from "contextuality." This collection of essays explores the problems the practical critic and teacher has had to face in the shifts in taste, assumptions, and methodology in the moves from moral and historical criticism to the "New Criticism," and to the newer linguistic and semiotic criticism.
