[page 47, column 2, continued:]

Current Poe Activities

Organizations

The Poe Studies Association held its third annual meeting at the New-York Historical Society on the afternoon of 28 December 1974. Benjamin F. Fisher IV was elected Vice-President and Program Chairman to succeed J. Lasley Dameron, whose term had expired. Professor Jay B. Hubbell, Mrs. Thomas Ollive Mabbott, and Professor Floyd Stovall were designated the first Honorary Members of the Association. Following the business session, Robert D. Jacobs read a paper, “Poe’s Critical Vocabulary,” and Burton R. Pollin presented a slide lecture, “The Illustrators on Poe.”

The next meeting of the Poe Studies Association will be held on 28 December 1975 in conjunction with the Modern Language Association Convention in San Francisco. The meeting is scheduled for the San Miguel Room of the Hyatt on Union Square from 4:00 to 6:oo p.m. A business session will precede papers on The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Alexander Hammond (Washington State University) and Joseph M. DeFalco (Marquette University) and on the relationship of Poe to Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Donald Barlow Stauffer (State University of New York at Albany).

 

Papers and Lectures

The Poe Foundation in Richmond joined with the Poe Society of Virginia in sponsoring a lecture by Eric W. Carlson on 18 January 1975. Professor Carlson spoke on “The Power of Poe’s Poetic Vision.” Daniel Hoffman delivered the Isota Tucker Epes Lecture, entitled “The Poe Perplex,” at the Shipley School in Philadelphia on 24 September. On 5 October John E. Reilly gave the FiftyThird Annual Poe Lecture co-sponsored by the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore and the Enoch Pratt Free Library. The lecture, entitled “The Image of Poe in American Poetry,” will be published by the sponsor.

 

Forthcoming Publications

American Transcendental Quarterly has accepted “Poe’s Raven and Bryant’s Mythology” by Kent Ljungquist (Duke). Professor Ljungquist also has an essay entitled “Poe’s ‘The Island of the Fay’: The Passing of Fairyland” coming out in Studies in Short Fiction. In January 1976 Bobbs-Merrill will release The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition edited by Stuart and Susan Levine. [page 48:]

 

Work in Progress

Dirk W. Mosig (Department of Psychology Georgia Southwestern College) is preparing a “critical-analytical’ study of H. P. Lovecraft for Twayne’s United States Authors Series which will include a detailed examination of Poe’s influence upon Lovecraft. Another item in the Twayne Series will be George E. Hatvary’s (Sr. John’s University) critical study of Horace Binney Wallace. One chapter of the book will be entitled “Poe, Griswold, and Wallace.” Linda Patterson Miller (University of Delaware) and Randall M. Miller (St. Joseph’s College, Philadelphia) are at work on a study of Poe and the American city. J. Gerald Kennedy (Louisiana State University) is finishing an essay-length study of a bibliographical nature to be entitled “Poe and Magazine Writing on Premature Burial.” John Carl Miller (Old Dominion University) will publish the correspondence between Sarah Helen Whitman and John Ingram as volumes Two and Three of his Building Poe Biography, the first volume of which is to be issued by Louisiana State University Press by spring of 1976. Kent Ljungquist and Buford Jones (Duke) are preparing an essay on “Monsieur Dupin: Further Details on the Reality Behind the Legend.” Professor Ljungquist is also working with Andre Angyal on an article on Poe and Robert Frost. Burton R. Pollin (Bronx Community College) is updating his paper ‘More Music to Poe” for inclusion in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, a German encyclopedia of music which is publishing a supplement in the near future. And Dominick Argento (University of Minnesota) has been commissioned to write an opera on the last days of Poe. Jointly sponsored by the University Foundation and the forty-nine Banco banks in Minnesota, the opera will be given its premiere by the Minnesota Opera Company on 24 April 1976 in O’Shaughnessy Auditorium at the College of St. Catherine.

 

Dissertations

James J. Reilly has completed a doctoral dissertation on Poe under the direction of Professor Merton M. Sealts at the University of Wisconsin. Entitled “The Social Vision of Edgar Allan Poe,” Reilly’s study argues for a reading of Poe’s works from a social perspective. The thematic problems of isolation, solipsism, doubleness, and persecution all have relevance to man’s social condition. Moreover, the narrators of many of the tales often reveal social attitudes which have ironic connotations when compared to those Poe expressed in his non-fictional writings. Viewed from a social perspective, Poe can be seen as a chronicler of elemental tensions that affect the social interactions of us all.

Jack E. Surrency is preparing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Tennessee under the direction of Professor Richard Beale Davis. Surrency’s topic, the influence of the Kentucky Tragedy in American literature, will include a consideration of Poe’s Politian.

Arbolina L. Jennings is working on a doctoral dissertation in Comparative Literature at New York University on “The Poeesque Short Story in Latin America.”

 

Performance

Jerry Rockwood offers a solo performance entitled “A Condition of Shadow.” Promotional literature describes the performance as “not simply a ‘reading’ of random selections . . . from Poe’s writings’ but “an in-depth characterization of the poet revealing the agonizing conflicts of his personality, his egomania, frustrations, his sublime as well as his tortured visions, and his little known humor.” Further information can be obtained from Arthur Shafman Int’l, Ltd., 521 Fifth Avenue, New York 10017.

 

Announcement

There will be a section with three papers on “Poe and the Visionary Experience” at the meeting of the Northeast Modern Language Association to be held at the University of Vermont (Burlington) on 8-10 April 1976. Section officers are Eric W. Carlson (University of Connecticut) and John E. Reilly (College of the Holy Cross) .

John E. Reilly, College of the Holy Cross