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Current Poe Activities

Papers and Lectures

Benjamin Lease read a paper entitled “John Neal, Edgar Allan Poe and the American Literary Revolution” at the annual meeting of the Midwest Modern Language Association in Chicago on 3 November 1973. Poe Studies is publishing a revised version of the paper. On 14 July of this year, Elinore Partridge gave a paper on “The Voyage to Discovery in Edgar Allan Poe” in the section on Science Fiction and Romanticism at the annual conference of the Science Fiction Research Association which was sponsored by the Center for Twentieth Century Studies of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. And on 20 October, Thomas F. Marshall delivered the fifty-second annual Edgar Allan Poe Lecture in Baltimore. Co-sponsored by the Poe Society of Baltimore and the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Professor Marshall’s lecture was on ‘The Many Lives of Edgar Poe: Poe as Seen by His Biographers and Critics.”

 

Forthcoming Publications

The New England Quarterly will publish “The Authorship of Symzonia: The Case for Nathaniel Ames,” an essay written by Hans-Joachim Lang and Benjamin Lease. Best known as an important source for Melville, Ames is identified by Lang and Lease as the author of a probable source for Pym. Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV is preparing an essay on the revisions in “Morella” for publication in the Huntington Library Quarterly. Professor Fisher will also be guest editor of a special issue of the University of Pennsylvania Library Chronicle to be entitled “Poe the Craftsman: The Changing Fiction.” Contributions to the issue will include essays on “Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Joel Asarch, on “The Mystery of Marie Roget” by Richard Fusco, on the 1833 Folio Club collection by Alexander Hammond, on “Silence” by Professor Fisher, and others.

 

Work in Progress

David K. Jackson of Durham, North Carolina, has been working for some time on a “Poe log,” which he describes as similar to Jay Leyda’s Melville Log.

Peter Page is preparing a doctoral dissertation on Poe under the direction of Professor Terence J. Martin at Indiana University. Entitled “Eureka: Poe’s Ironic Universe,” Page’s study will explore Eureka as a complex satire of Romantic epistemology which covertly ridicules believers in final truths (Transcendentalists, mystics, Romantic hacks, and fatuous scientists) and which both anticipates existential absurdity and affirms the primary value of art.

 

Performances

The New York Touring Company presented a dramatization entitled Poe: From His Life and Works on the lawn of the Poe Cottage in Fordham on G October of this year. The two-hour performance was sponsored jointly by the Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences and the Cultural Affairs Division of the Parks Department of the City of New York to mark the 125th anniversary of Poe’s death.

The actor Robert Minford has been presenting his Journey to Eldorado throughout the country for the past six or seven years. It has also been presented on television over PBS channels. A “one-man show” in two acts, Journey to Eldorado draws heavily upon the text of Poe’s writings to create the image of what Minford describes as “a tragic literary figure who rightfully belongs on the list of greats, having left behind a lasting legacy of inspired writings, out of a sad and troubled forty years on earth.” [page 56:]

 

Poe Cottage

The Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences has recently been reinstated under the Non-Profit Corporation Law of New York State. Long a friend to Poe, the Society recently made the pages of the New York Times (3 April 1974) in its stand on the problem of looting and vandalism at the Poe Cottage at Fordham. In an effort to forestall further damage to the property, the Society called upon the Parks Department of New York “to bar the public from visiting” the site until arrangements can be made for greater security. Through the efforts of Frank Wuttge, currently Secretary to the Society, the books and memorabilia in the Cottage that managed to survive have been moved to the Local History Division of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street. The Society now seeks to have the Parks Department handle rehabilitation and care of the Cottage.

John E. Reilly, College of the Holy Cross