Skip to Content

RGB Reader

 january 28 2025

​

 

​
Policy​
 

Tamerlane and Poe’s Baltimore

Preface


As we delve deeper into the world of “Tamerlane,” we will explore the poem’s complex themes, its intricate narrative structure, and its enduring appeal. We will examine the influence of Romantic and Gothic literature on Poe’s work, and we will consider the ways in which “Tamerlane” foreshadows the darker, more psychologically complex tales that would follow.

By examining the poem’s historical and literary context, we can gain a better understanding of its significance and its place in the canon of American literature. As we journey through the labyrinthine corridors of Poe’s imagination, we may uncover the hidden truths that lie beneath the surface of this enigmatic and captivating work.

Unraveling the Enigma

Delving into the historical and literary context of this enigmatic poem will allow us to unravel its hidden truths and gain a deeper understanding of its significance in American literature. By examining the societal, cultural, and literary influences that shaped Poe's work, we can begin to decode the symbolism and metaphors that permeate the poem.

Ultimately, our exploration of this enigmatic poem will illuminate the ways in which Poe's work continues to resonate with readers today, challenging us to confront our own mortality and grapple with the mysteries of the human experience.

A deeper understanding of this enigmatic poem's significance in American literature can be achieved by delving into its historical and literary context. An examination of the societal, cultural, and literary influences that shaped Poe's work will allow for the decoding of the symbolism and metaphors that permeate the poem.


.


Background to Poe


Discovery >

References


  1. Allen, Hervey. Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe. George H. Doran Company, 1926.
  2. Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. D. Appleton-Century Company, 1941.
  3. Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. HarperCollins, 1991.
  4. Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. Cooper Square Press, 1992.
  5. Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. Checkmark Books, 2001.
  6. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Modern Library, 1938.
  7. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbott, Harvard University Press, 1969-1978.
  8. Poe, Edgar Allan. Poetry and Tales. The Library of America, 1984.

II. Critical Studies of Poe's Poetry

  1. Wimsatt, William K., Jr. The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. University of Kentucky Press, 1954.
  2. Tate, Allen. The Forlorn Demon: Didactic and Critical Essays. Regnery Gateway, 1953.
  3. Thompson, G. R. Poe's Fiction: Romantic Irony in the Gothic Tales. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973.
  4. Dayan, Joan. Fables of Mind: An Inquiry into Poe's Fiction. Oxford University Press, 1987.
  5. Kennedy, J. Gerald. Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing. Yale University Press, 1987.
  6. Bloom, Harold, ed. Edgar Allan Poe. Chelsea House Publishers, 1985.
  7. Bloom, Harold, ed. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Other Stories. InfoBase Publishing, 2009.
  8. Gargano, James W. The Question of Poe's Narrators. Louisiana State University Press, 1984.
  9. Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Louisiana State University Press, 1972.

III. "Tamerlane" and Early Poems

  1. Campbell, Killis. The Mind of Poe and Other Studies. Harvard University Press, 1933.
  2. Haines, Charles. Edgar Allan Poe: His Writings and Influence. Watts & Co., 1974.
  3. Carlson, Eric W., ed. A Companion to Poe Studies. Greenwood Press, 1996.
  4. Stovall, Floyd. Edgar Poe the Poet: Essays New and Old on the Man and His Work. University Press of Virginia, 1969.
  5. Pollin, Burton R. Discoveries in Poe. University of Notre Dame Press, 1970.
  6. Hutchisson, James M. Poe. University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
  7. Irwin, John T. American Hieroglyphics: The Symbol of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics in the American Renaissance. Yale University Press, 1980.

IV. Romanticism and Literary Influences

  1. Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. Oxford University Press, 1953.
  2. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton University Press, 1957.
  3. Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Oxford University Press, 1973.
  4. McGann, Jerome J. The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation. University of Chicago Press, 1983.
  5. Butler, Marilyn. Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background 1760-1830. Oxford University Press, 1981.  
  6. MacAndrew, Elizabeth. The Gothic Tradition in Fiction. Columbia University Press, 1979.
  7. Varma, Devendra P. The Gothic Flame: Being a History of the Gothic Novel in England. Russell & Russell, 1957.
  8. Byron, George Gordon, Lord. The Complete Poetical Works. Edited by Jerome J. McGann, Oxford University Press, 1980-1993.
  9. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Complete Poetical Works. Edited by Thomas Hutchinson, Oxford University Press, 1904.
  10. Moore, Thomas. The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1840.

V. American Literature and Cultural Context

  1. Matthiessen, F. O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. Oxford University Press, 1941.
  2. Chase, Richard. The American Novel and Its Tradition. Doubleday, 1957.
  3. Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death in the American Novel. Criterion Books, 1960.
  4. Baym, Nina. The Shape of Hawthorne's Career. Cornell University Press, 1976.
  5. Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.  
  6. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Puritan Origins of the American Self. Yale University Press, 1975.
  7. Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860. Wesleyan University Press, 1973.  

VI. Psychology and the Grotesque

  1. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by A. A. Brill, Macmillan, 1913.
  2. Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Translated by C. J. M. Hubback, International Psycho-Analytical Press, 1922.
  3. Jung, Carl G. Psychology of the Unconscious. Translated by Beatrice M. Hinkle, Moffat, Yard and Company, 1916.
  4. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez, Columbia University Press, 1982.
  5. Kaye, Richard A. Lost in the Funhouse: Poe and the Gothic Uncanny. University Press of Kentucky, 2016.

VII. Philosophy and Aesthetics

  1. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar, Hackett Publishing Company, 1987.
  2. Hegel, G. W. F. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller, Oxford University Press, 1977.
  3. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, 1967.
  4. Benjamin, Walter. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Translated by John Osborne, Verso, 1998.
  5. Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor, University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

VIII. Gender and Sexuality

  1. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Yale University Press, 1979.  
  2. Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980. Virago Press, 1985.
  3. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Columbia University Press, 1985.
  4. Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke University Press, 1995.

IX. Race and Empire

  1. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Pantheon Books, 1978.
  2. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
  3. Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Harvard University Press, 1992.
  4. Sundquist, Eric J. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature. Harvard University Press, 1993.

X. Poe in Context

  1. Levine, Stuart, and Susan F. Levine, eds. The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition. University of Illinois Press, 1976.
  2. Peeples, Scott. Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. Twayne Publishers, 1998.
  3. Hayes, Kevin J., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  4. Gargano, James W. Critical Essays on Edgar Allan Poe. G. K. Hall & Co., 1987.
  5. Thompson, G. R. Essays and Reviews of Edgar Allan Poe. The Library of America, 1984.

XI. Journals and Articles

  1. "The Edgar Allan Poe Review" (peer-reviewed academic journal)
  2. "Poe Studies" (peer-reviewed academic journal)
  3. "American Literature" (scholarly journal)
  4. "The New England Quarterly" (scholarly journal)
  5. "PMLA" (Publications of the Modern Language Association of America)

XII. Online Resources

  1. The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore: [Insert Website Address]
  2. The Poe Museum: [Insert Website Address]

XIII. Additional Works for Broader Context:

  1. Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Harvard University Press, 1936.
  2. Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society 1780-1950. Chatto & Windus, 1958.
  3. Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard, Vintage Books, 1988.  
  4. Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass, University of Chicago Press, 1978.

XIV. Biographical and Historical Sources:

  1. Woodberry, George E. The Life of Edgar Allan Poe: Personal and Literary. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909.
  2. Krutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. Alfred A. Knopf, 1926.
  3. Moss, Sidney P. Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu. Southern Illinois University Press, 1963.  
  4. Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. The John C. Winston Company, 1926.

XV. Comparative Literature and Poe's Influence:

  1. Baudelaire, Charles. The Flowers of Evil. Translated by James McGowan, Oxford University Press, 1993.
  2. Valéry, Paul. The Art of Poetry. Translated by Denise Folliot, Routledge, 1958.
  3. Eliot, T. S. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. Methuen & Co., 1920.
  4. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. Translated by Bruce Fink, W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.

XVI. Further Explorations of "Tamerlane" and Related Poems:

  1. Davidson, Edward H. Poe: A Critical Study. Harvard University Press, 1957.
  2. Hough, Graham. The Dark Sun: A Study of D. H. Lawrence. Duckworth, 1956.
  3. Kaplan, Sidney. The Comic Sense of Henry James: A Study of the Early Novels. University of Illinois Press, 1960.
  4. Miller, J. Hillis. The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers. Harvard University Press, 1963.

XVII. Poe's Literary Theory and Practice:

  1. Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Philosophy of Composition." Graham's Magazine, April 1846.
  2. Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Poetic Principle." Sartain's Union Magazine, October 1850.
  3. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Literati: Some Honest Opinions about Autorial Merits and Demerits, with Occasional Words of Personality. J. S. Redfield, 1850.  

XVIII. Visual and Performing Arts:

  1. The Raven Society: [Insert Website Address] (Dedicated to the study of Edgar Allan Poe and his works)
  2. Various film adaptations of Poe's works: (e.g., Roger Corman's Poe cycle, "The Raven" (1963), etc.)
  3. Operatic adaptations of Poe's stories: (e.g., Debussy's "La chute de la maison Usher," etc.)

XIX. Contemporary Interpretations:

  1. Ljungquist, Kent. Poe: A Life Cut Short. Bloomsbury, 2019.
  2. Semtner, Christopher P. Edgar Allan Poe's Richmond: The Raven in the River City. The History Press, 2014.