Transatlantic Poe

285 Pages·2016·1.17 MB·English

by  Filippakopoulou M.

TRANSATLANTIC POE
Was Edgar Allan Poe's work vulgar or a "new specimen of beauty"? Did he ET
LIOR
represent a critical puzzle for his influential readers or a basis for redefining A
T
American literature? This book offers a new understanding of Poe's literary , WN
ILS
significance by considering the transatlantic reception of the author in French LIAA
M
translation. T
S ALA
N
The translation of Poe into French by Charles Baudelaire ennobled Poe DN
HT
aesthetically and catalysed a wave of critical responses to his work across UI
XC
L
the Atlantic in the early twentieth century. Readings by T.S. Eliot, William Carlos E
YP
Williams and Aldous Huxley here become the focus of transatlantic analysis. , RO
E
A
E
D

E
Contrastive close readings of key essays in which these Anglophone writers R
S
engaged with the French Poe set out to achieve two things: first, they shed O
F
new light on the constitution of Poe's commanding critical reputation; secondly, T
H
E
they test comparative methodology as the primary tool of transatlantic enquiry. F
R
Situated within an expanding body of Poe scholarship but atypical in design, E
N
C
this book promises to bring about unexpected insights by systematically relating
H
and comparing French and Anglophone discourses. P
O
E
Maria Filippakopoulou is Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Critical
Studies, University of Glasgow, where she is pursuing a project on quantitative
research in the humanities. She has previously taught comparative literature and
M
theory at the Universities of Edinburgh, East Anglia and Leeds. An experienced
A
translator from French and English, she has published widely on the theory and R
IA
practice of translation and reception studies.
F
IL
IP
P
A
K
O
P
O
U ELIOT, WILLIAMS AND HUXLEY,
L
O
READERS OF THE FRENCH POE
U
ISBN 978-3-0343-1966-9
G
N
A
L
MARIA FILIPPAKOPOULOU R
E
www.peterlang.com T
E
P
TRANSATLANTIC POE
Was Edgar Allan Poe's work vulgar or a "new specimen of beauty"? Did he ET
LIOR
represent a critical puzzle for his influential readers or a basis for redefining A
T
American literature? This book offers a new understanding of Poe's literary , WN
ILS
significance by considering the transatlantic reception of the author in French LIAA
M
translation. T
S ALA
N
The translation of Poe into French by Charles Baudelaire ennobled Poe DN
HT
aesthetically and catalysed a wave of critical responses to his work across UI
XC
L
the Atlantic in the early twentieth century. Readings by T.S. Eliot, William Carlos E
YP
Williams and Aldous Huxley here become the focus of transatlantic analysis. , RO
E
A
E
D

E
Contrastive close readings of key essays in which these Anglophone writers R
S
engaged with the French Poe set out to achieve two things: first, they shed O
F
new light on the constitution of Poe's commanding critical reputation; secondly, T
H
E
they test comparative methodology as the primary tool of transatlantic enquiry. F
R
Situated within an expanding body of Poe scholarship but atypical in design, E
N
C
this book promises to bring about unexpected insights by systematically relating
H
and comparing French and Anglophone discourses. P
O
E
Maria Filippakopoulou is Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Critical
Studies, University of Glasgow, where she is pursuing a project on quantitative
research in the humanities. She has previously taught comparative literature and
M
theory at the Universities of Edinburgh, East Anglia and Leeds. An experienced
A
translator from French and English, she has published widely on the theory and R
IA
practice of translation and reception studies.
F
IL
IP
P
A
K
O
P
O
U ELIOT, WILLIAMS AND HUXLEY,
L
O
READERS OF THE FRENCH POE
U
ISBN 978-3-0343-1966-9
G
N
A
L
MARIA FILIPPAKOPOULOU R
E
www.peterlang.com T
E
P
TRANSATLANTIC POE

TRANSATLANTIC POE
ELIOT, WILLIAMS AND HUXLEY, READERS OF THE FRENCH POE
MARIA FILIPPAKOPOULOU
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the
Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015950693
Cover image: Created by Aris Panagopoulos, October 2015.

ISBN 978-3-0343-1966-9 (print)
ISBN 978-3-0353-0772-6 (eBook)
© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2015
Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
[email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net
All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
Dedicated to my mentor Professor Susan Manning

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
PART I Baudelaire’s project: A refracted Poe 31
Chapter 1
Hardwiring Poe in global memory 33
Chapter 2
Poe, Baudelaire’s spectral original 59
Chapter 3
Papery Poe 85
PART II The French Poe 125
Chapter 4
Williams’s defence of Poe 131
Chapter 5
Eliot’s fantasy of Poe 161
Chapter 6
Huxley on Poe: Defining vulgarity, prescribing disruption 193
viii
Conclusion 227
Bibliography 247
Index 267