Edgar A. Poe: The Rationale of Verse, a Preliminary edition (1968), title page and table of contents

Notes:

J. Arthur Greenwood was Joseph Arthur Greenwood, born in 1926 or 1927. He attended Stuyvesant High School (in New York, NY) where he was on the Mathematics Team and graduated in 1943. He was a Research Associate in Mathematics at Princeton, U. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1946 (and in that year was a Putnam Fellow), and obtained a Ph. D from Harvard’s Department of Statistics (noted as the first awarded by that department), in 1959. He worked at Manhattan Life Insurance Company in New York, in 1950 as a statistician. He was later associated with the New York University. He co-founded Oceanweather Inc in 1977 and lived in White Plains, NY. In 1982, about July, he wrote to columnist William Safire asking if there was a word for an ex-wife-with-whom-one-is-having-an-affair, suggesting that he still had a special side-interest in language. It should be admitted, however, that the name “J. Arthur Greenwood” is a surprisingly common one, and this may not be the correct person responsible for the present work. (His mother may have been Kathryn Claire Greenwood, nee Bookbinder, who was born in 1897, died in 1985 and is buried in the McClellan Street Cemetery, Newark, NJ, in a lot belonging to her parents. Her obituary lists at least three grandchildren: Daniel, James and Julie. If there are yet descendands out there, and we would be happy to hear from them to confirm or reject our tentative identification of J. A. Greenwood.)

It may be noted that while Greenwood is rather critical of Poe's theories about verse, as have been many others, a notable disagreement with the criticism is offered by Christopher Aruffo (“Reconsidering Poe's ‘Rationale of Verse’,” Poe Studies: History, Theory, Interpretation, vol. 44, 2011, pp. 69-86). Aruffo's article is a modern defense of Poe's theory (further applied by Christopher Aruffo in A Rational Guide to Verse: Scansion made Simple, Gainsville, FL: Acoustic Learning, Inc., 2012, second edition, revised, 2013). Aruffo claims that Poe's “Rationale of Verse” is misunderstood, somewhat ironically, because the essay asserts a radical theory and was poorly written. In obscuring his own essential thesis, Poe appears to present an overly complicated, nonsensical, rigidly prescriptive system of scansion. As a result, scholars have consistently rejected “The Rationale of Verse.” Following in this line of misunderstanding, Greenwood has criticized what he thought were the “rules” of Poe's scansion, rather than engaging with the principles of linguistic rhythm which Aruffo claims are the intended message of “Rationale.”

The text for this electronic version of this book was taken from an original printed form, revised for XHTML/CSS and to follow our own formatting preferences. Pagination of the original edition has been included. Although considerable effort has been made to be true to the original printed edition, some modifications have been made in formatting for this electronic presentation. Greenwood's study of “The Rationale of Verse” and related essays by Poe is highly idiosyncratic, in both content and presentation. Notes are generally presented as footnotes, even when they appear on pages other than those where the original reference appeared. In many cases, footnotes are stacked together such that they occupy a full page. (See, for example, page 47 of the printed version.) Consequently, the text often skips a full page. In some parts, it is virtually impossible to distinguish the text from the footnotes that are intended to clarify and illuminate that text (at least without a copy of that original text to follow). The use of underscoring in the original edition is problematic in HTML, as it generally indicates a link, but every attempt has been made to honor Greenwood's idiosyncratic markings.

Copyright © 1968 by J. Arthur Greenwood

All material in this edition is technically protected by copyright, exclusively held by J. Arthur Greenwood. Efforts to contact J. Arthur Greenwood, or locate descendates, have not proven production. No trace has been found of Wolfhart Book Co, which may have produced the book as a physical object without really having served as a publisher. Consequently, permission has not been obtained by the Poe Society of Baltimore to provide this electronic edition for academic and research purposes only. This text, then, is presented under a broad assumption of fair use, and with the idea that the author would have been pleased to have his work widely available for use, for educational purposes and without any charge for access. If a reasonable claim for copyright can be documented, please contact the Poe Society of Baltimore to arrange for permission, or to request that we remove the material.