Alex's Annotated Bibliography

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Alex Barkett's Bibliography

  • Krutch, Joseph Wood, "The Philosophy of Composition", in Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967)

This essay by Joseph Krutch discusses Poe's career and reputation as a literary critic. Poe wrote more criticism than anything else, and his theories of composition can act as a window through which to view his more commonly discussed works. Krutch notes that Poe was regarded as a fierce critic who often drew strong conclusions from slight textual details. This resulted in his often being maligned by his contemporaries. Nevertheless, Poe was a highly regarded and in some ways a revolutionary critic. Krutch then moves on to a discussion of Poe's theory of composition, and namely, his hierarchical view of poetry. At the bottom of the hierarchy, Poe saw works that illustrated real situations, places, or events, realistic works. In the middle are works that achieve a specific tone or effect. And at the top are works that aim at pleasure, not truth. From this point of view, Poe denounces long poems for failing to captivate a reader and consequently, for forcing the reader to break the poem into parts. Krutch then moves on to assert that Poe’s beliefs about literature are a result of his own personal temperments and desires and not derived from facts. Thus, his criticism is marked by a strict logic in support of his predetermined taste and not of his free mind. Krutch is also quite critical of Poe's appropriation of Coleridge's theories on literature, and sees this stealing as a means to justify his literary desires. Krutch concludes by restating the importance of Poe's theoretical contributions to literature, and especially the way his theories govern and explain his creative work, thereby making it his supreme creation.

By understanding Poe's critical theories, we can better mimic or comment on them through our interpretive work.


The introductory chapter of this handbook provides a brief introduction to each of the topics of the whole book. It is designed to provide a basic overview of cryptological practices and direct the reader to more comprehensive studies of specifics in other chapters. As a technical definition for cryptography, the authors rely on the following: “Cryptography is the study of mathematical techniques related to aspects of information security such as confidentiality, data integrity, entity authentication, and data origin authentication.” The chapter explains that use of the internet calls for an increase in security measures beyond the ones already in practice by, for example, the postal service. Cryptology then comes in as a tool to protect national secrets and strategies. The chapter brings a number of issues into focus, one being, the various goals of cryptography from securing information to authenticating senders to maintaining the integrity of the information. The different goals of cryptology call for varying degrees of complexity in constructing and using cryptograms. The authors then go on to explain the differences between substitution ciphers, transposition ciphers, product ciphers, stream ciphers, and others. And lastly, they outline various ways in which cryptograms can be attacked. Much of the chapter is dedicated to defining terms and introducing basic mathematical concepts, primarily the one-way function, that provide the security basis for cryptography.

Little of this information is directly applicable to literary interpretation because the work's target audience are readers wishing to implement these security devices for real, practical purposes, not for intellectual and creative inquiry. Nevertheless, the chapter provides an interesting introduction to the practice of cryptology for hiding treasures of information rather than gold.


Edgar Allen Poe was born January 19, 1809 to David and Elizabeth Poe. His family was extremely poor. Both of his parents died while Edgar was still very young and he and two siblings were orphaned. Edgar was taken into the home of a prosperous merchant, John Allan. He excelled in school at an early age, but his relationship with John Allan worsened. Still, Poe attended the University of Virginia where he excelled academically. He also, however, began drinking and gambling. Poe accrued financial debts and had a tumultuous fallout with his then partner, Elmira, which resulted in his having to leave the University. Poe and Mr. Allan’s quarrelling escalated to violence and Poe set out on his own. Some obscurity marks the following years. Poe gradually rose in status due to his writing and military advancements and was consequently allowed by Mr. Allan to stay at one of his estates. This only led to further quarrels, which ultimately resulted in Mr. Allan’s disowning Poe and his being dismissed from West Point for disobedience. The following time is said to be marked by poverty and hardship for Poe, although not a great deal about it is known. Poe started working for The Southern Literary Messenger where he enjoyed some critical and creative success. In the next years, Poe published many of his most eminent stories, but maintained only marginal financial success. His wife at the time contracted tuberculosis and Poe is rumored to have increased his drinking and use of other drugs as well. While Poe attained some literary notoriety and success, his health diminishes as do his relationships, and general hardship still seems to reign. Poe died on October 7, 1849, from unknown causes. He was forty years old.

The following is a synopsis of Hervey's biography of Edgar Allen Poe, highlighting his literary and personal career while eliminating many details about his marital relationships and specific publications.


Poe’s tales often exhibit a kind of scientific rigor that prompt us to investigate his scientific theories alongside his literary ones. In "Mesmeric Revelation", “the mesmerized man discourses on ‘unparticled matter,’” and in "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaal", a story about a man traveling to the moon in a balloon, Poe attaches copious notes outlining the scientific fallacies of his story. These are paraphrases from early in the essay, which goes on to list at length the many other references to scientific inquiry in Poe’s works. The essay proceeds with analyses of Poe’s discussions of time and space, the atom, a geometrically ordered universe, infinity, gravity, electricity, magnetism, etc. It appears that by taking some of Poe’s general theories we can conclude that, in many respects, he was amazingly prophetic, although we must sometimes read his ideas rather generously and highlight some over others. Nonetheless, Poe’s fervor for scientific inquiry often shows through in his narrative style. Coupled with the conflict common in his work between logic and coincidence or reason and madness, we can posit a scientific, epistemological basis from which to view the psychological spiraling of many of his distinguished characters. The essay centers on "Eureka", but the mathematical aspects of cryptography and Legrand’s questionable sanity allow us to transfer elements of this analysis to our interpretations of The Gold-Bug.


  • Miall, David, S., and Dobson, Teresa, Reading Hypertext and the Experience of Literature, Journal of Digital Information, Volume 2 Issue 1, Article No. 46, 2001-08-13. [Link to Article]

Miall and Dobson's paper is a study of reading hypertext and concludes that "hypertext discourages the absorbed and reflective mode that characterizes literary reading." Hypertext empowers the reader in ways previously unavailable to traditional print text, but does this make it a better way to learn? One argument is as follows: "hypertext more naturally embraces graphic representations, such as a tree or network diagram, or an image map, and can make them available to interactive linking just like a passage of text." This view, thathypertexts inevitably create graphic illustrations, is of central concern for the authors who will go on to say that the topographical structure of hypertext should not be looked at as superior to traditional text, just different, and that the information within a hypertext is consequently understood differently by the reader. Miall and Dobson explore the nature of thinking in images as opposed to thinking in text and question the notion that the mind functions by associations akin to hypertext links. They then look at case studies of people reading works of literature as hypertexts, analyzing their reading comprehension, reading speed and general opinion of such a process. The authors of this paper attack the claim that traditional reading is more "restrictive and imprisoning" than hypertextual reading, but acknowledge that hypertext is something of a new frontier that demands further study with special regard to reading.

The many theories embedded in this paper should prove particularly useful in holding the attention of the reader with our project in the way that Poe would have wanted himself.

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