Approaches to Teaching Poe's Prose and Poetry

Edgar Allan Poe is a popular author, and students have often read his work by the time they reach the college or university classroom. His writings have inspired film, television, and musical adaptations--sources for much of students' knowledge about Poe. Thus the challenge for teachers is to reacquaint students with Poe as a complex literary figure. This volume equips teachers with the tools necessary to meet that challenge.

Part 1 identifies the most frequently taught Poe texts, reviews useful editions of his work, and suggests secondary sources on Poe as well as television, film, music, and Web materials for use in the classroom. Essays in part 2 explore the relation between Poe's writing and his biography, including his attitudes toward racial difference and plagiarism and his wide publication in the literary magazines of his time. Contributors consider the range of Poe's writings, from his horror stories to his analytic essays and tales of ratiocination; his work is also compared with that of Stephen King, Alfred Hitchcock, and graphic novelists. Other essays assess the usefulness of theoretical approaches to Poe, especially psychoanalytic ones, and discuss the controversies concerning the literary merit of his work. Together, these essays bring to life the political, philosophical, and religious context in which Poe wrote.