The Air of Analysis
The Air of Analysis
Resolution and Composition in Poe’s Sublime and Confessional Tales
The third chapter argues that the analytical method on display in Poe’s detective fiction is drawn from and influential in structuring the dynamics of terror in his confessional and sublime tales. My chapter returns to the poststructuralist readings of Poe’s detective fiction, and recovers in response Poe’s own definition of analysis as a bipartite system of resolution and composition. By ascertaining the shape of analysis responsible, ultimately, for the recursive and uncanny shape of the poststructuralist debate, my chapter shows the continuity between Poe’s seemingly calculated tales of reason’s mastery over nature and his seemingly irrational tales of madness and peril. The second part of the chapter finds and analyzes the same reciprocal dynamic of resolution and composition within his sublime and confessional tales.
Keywords: Poe, detective fiction, sublime, poststructuralism, “The Man of the Crowd,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “A Descent into the Maelström,” “The Black Cat,” “The Imp of the Perverse,” “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Stanford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
