Literary Theory and Criticism

Edgar Allan Poe, Leonard Cassuto

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486144672
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literarische Sammlungen

This essential anthology of Poe's critical works features items from the Southern Literary Messenger, Graham's Magazine, and other periodicals, reviewing works by Dickens, Hawthorne, Cooper, and many others. The Theory of Poetry — consisting of "The Philosophy of Composition, " "The Rationale of Verse, " and "The Poetic Principle" — appears as well. Introduction.

The Rationale of Verse⁶⁵

[Southern Literary Messenger, October-November 1848]

In “The Rationale of Verse” Poe works out at length his “mathematical” approach to poetic composition. This comprehensive statement of his formalist aesthetics is the longest and most detailed of his critical treatises. Poe’s elaborate treatment of prosody highlights his view of creativity as the intertwined application of reason and imagination to create harmonious unity.

The word “Verse” is here used not in its strict or primitive sense, but as the term most convenient for expressing generally and without pedantry all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, metre, and versification.

There is, perhaps, no topic in polite literature which has been more pertinaciously discussed, and there is certainly not one about which so much inaccuracy, confusion, misconception, misrepresentation, mystification, and downright ignorance on all sides, can be fairly said to exist. Were the topic really difficult, or did it lie, even, in the cloud-land of metaphysics, where the doubt-vapors may be made to assume any and every shape at the will or at the fancy of the gazer, we should have less reason to wonder at all this contradiction and perplexity; but in fact the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly, may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertain to the mathematics; and the whole is included within the limits of the commonest common sense.

“But, if this is the case, how,” it will be asked, “can so much misunderstanding have arisen? Is it conceivable that a thousand profound scholars, investigating so very simple a matter for centuries, have not been able to place it in the fullest light, at least, of which it is susceptible?” These queries, I confess, are not easily answered:—at all events a satisfactory reply to them might cost more trouble than would, if properly considered, the whole vexata quœstio to which they have reference. Nevertheless, there is little difficulty or danger in suggesting that the “thousand profound scholars” may have failed, first because they were scholars, secondly because they were profound, and thirdly because they were a thousand—the impotency of the scholarship and profundity having been thus multiplied a thousand fold. I am serious in these suggestions; for, first again, there is something in “scholarship” which seduces us into blind worship of Bacon’s Idol of the Theatre—into irrational deference to antiquity; secondly, the proper “profundity” is rarely profound—it is the nature of Truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial; thirdly, the clearest subject may be overclouded by mere superabundance of talk. In chemistry, the best way of separating two bodies is to add a third; in speculation, fact often agrees with fact and argument with argument, until an additional well-meaning fact or argument sets every thing by the ears. In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because excessively discussed. When a topic is thus circumstanced, the readiest mode of investigating it is to forget that any previous investigation has been attempted.

But, in fact, while much has been written on the Greek and Latin rhythms, and even on the Hebrew, little effort has been made at examining that of any of the modern tongues. As regards the English, comparatively nothing has been done. It may be said, indeed, that we are without a treatise on our own verse. In our ordinary grammars and in our works on rhetoric or prosody in general, may be found occasional chapters, it is true, which have the heading, “Versification,” but these are, in all instances, exceedingly meagre. They pretend to no analysis; they propose nothing like system; they make no attempt at even rule; every thing depends upon “authority.” They are confined, in fact, to mere exemplification of the supposed varieties of English feet and English lines;—although in no work with which I am acquainted are these feet correctly given or these lines detailed in anything like their full extent. Yet what has been mentioned is all—if we except the occasional introduction of some pedagogue-ism, such as this, borrowed from the Greek Prosodies:—“When a syllable is wanting, the verse is said to be catalectic; when the measure is exact, the line is acatalectic; when there is a redundant syllable it forms hypermeter.”⁶⁶ Now whether a line be termed catalectic or acatalectic is, perhaps, a point of no v...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Beyond Originality: Edgar Allan Poe the Critic
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on the Text
• Table of Contents
• Review - [Southern Literary Messenger, December 1835]
• Review - [Southern Literary Messenger, April 1836]
• Review - [Southern Literary Messenger, April 1836]
• Review - [Graham’s Magazine, May 1841]
• Review - [Graham’s Magazine, August 1841]
• Exordium to Critical Notices - [Graham’s Magazine, January 1842]
• Review - [Graham’s Magazine, May 1842]
• Review - [Boston Miscellany, November 1842]
• Prospectus of The Stylus - [Philadelphia Saturday Museum, March 1843]
• Review - [Graham’s Magazine, November 1843]
• Excerpt from “The Little Longfellow War” - Omnibus review of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [Aristidean, April 1845]
• The Philosophy of Composition - [Graham’s Magazine, April 1846]
• Excerpts from “The Literati of New York City” - [Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1846]
• The Rationale of Verse - [Southern Literary Messenger, October-November 1848]
• Review - [Southern Literary Messenger, March 1849]
• Marginalia - [Southern Literary Messenger, April 1849]
• The Poetic Principle - [Sartain’s Union Magazine, October 1850]
• A CATALOG OF SELECTED DOVER BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS OF INTEREST