[page 32, column 1:]

CURRENT POE STUDIES

The Harvard Poe

Mark Carroll, Director of Harvard University Press, has announced that Volume I of the Harvard edition of Poe’s Complete Works will be published in June of 1969. This volume comprises the complete poems as edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbott (the only volume which Professor Mabbott saw to its full completion before his death). Other volumes in the edition, however, were well along: see the statement by Professor Mabbott on the progress of the edition in Poe Newsletter, I (April 1968), 4. Further announcements will be made in Poe Newsletter as information becomes available.

Discoveries in Poe

Burton R. Pollin’s Discoveries in Poe, to be published in 1969 by University of Notre Dame Press, will reveal in Poe traces of Victor Hugo, Béranger, Mary Shelley, Byron, and other writers. It will focus attention upon neglected themes in Poe’s criticism of fiction and in his creative work. A large section will identify all of Poe’s writings in the Broadway Journal [cf. Mabbott, Poe Newsletter, I, 4], using internal evidences of allusion and style, according to Dr. Pollin’s method in his numerous Poe studies in the scholarly journals.

General Symposium on Poe and the Modern Temper

Richard P. Benton has announced a “Symposium on Edgar Allan Poe” for the December 1969 issue of American Transcendental Quarterly. Professor Benton especially invites papers which emphasize the modernity of Poe’s writing. He suggests that from the point of view of what Poe’s work means to the twentieth-century reader, one might consider how Poe’s work relates to modern symbolism, to surrealism, to the New Criticism, to existentialism, to modern psychological fiction, to black humor, to the modern Gothic romance, to the modern detective story, and to modern science fiction. Professor Benton further recommends such topics as the American Adam and the American Dream, and such modern themes as dissociation of personality, the problem of self-identity, the isolato in an absurd cosmos, the problem of what we know and whether we can control our own destiny and face death with courage. The symposium will consist of from twelve to eighteen papers, each to average between twelve and twenty double-spaced typewritten pages. MSS should conform to The MLA Style Sheet; deadline for submission is November 1969. Address Professor Benton in care of the English Department, Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. 06106.

Poe Newsletter Symposia

The large number of discrete items in humanistic studies is sometimes more of a burden than a help. We hope, therefore, to offer from time to time a theme on which we can present a symposium of articles. In fact, we should like at this time to invite studies of Poe’s early satiric technique (before 1841) for a symposium in the October 1969 issue and studies of the general topic of “Dark Romanticism,” of which we take Poe to be an emblematic figure, for April 1970. On the latter topic, essays need not be restricted solely to Poe; indeed, we invite essays which explore the concept as interesting in and for itself. We have in mind that “vortex” (as Poe called it in the Marginalia) of esthetic, psychological, and philosophical theory and of subjective, melancholic, ironic, and horripilated writing in Europe and the United States from about 1750 to 1850. More specifically, we have in mind the Romantic concepts of the Gothic, of the Grotesque, of the Nightside, and of Transcendental Irony associated with such writers as Wieland, Goethe, the Schlegels, Fichte, Tieck, Jean Paul, Hoffmann, Balzac, Hugo, Walpole, Beckford, Maturin, Radcliffe, Godwin, Mary Shelley, Byron, De Quincey, Brown, Irving — and Poe. Deadlines for submission of essays will be two months prior to the proposed publication of each symposium. [column 2:]

Bibliographical Issue of Poe Newsletter

So extensive are the bibliographical studies announced in the first number of Poe Newsletter that a special bibliographical issue will appear in January 1969, as Number 1 of Volume II. Richard P. Benton’s third “Current Bibliography on Edgar Allan Poe,” with each item annotated, at present includes nearly two hundred entries for the years 1966-68. Supplementing Professor Benton’s bibliography, Robert L. Marrs ’ “Fugitive Poe References” (also annotated) has well over one hundred entries for the years 1960-68. By the end of the year, significant additions will have been made to each of these bibliographies. Also in this issue, Claude Richard in a survey of current European studies of Poe will summarize and critique over two dozen French studies from the last few years. In addition, there may be one or two specialized bibliographies on a limited topic [cf. Lawson, PN, I, 9-10].