"Tawdry physical affrightments": the performance of normalizing visions of the body in Edgar Allan Poe's "Loss of Breath".
| Publisher | University of Rhode Island |
| Publication | ATQ (The American Transcendental Quarterly) |
| Subject | Literature/writing |
| Format | Magazine/Journal |
| ISSN | 0149-9017 |
| Issues per Year | 4 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Published | 2003-03-01 |
| Role | Type | Name |
| Author | n/a | William Etter |
| Person | Criticism and interpretation | Edgar Allan Poe |
In response to a gift copy he received from the illustrator of a new Poe volume, William Butler Yeats complained, "Analyse the Pit and the Pendulum and you find an appeal to the nerves by tawdry physical affrightments, at least so it seems to me who am yet puzzled at the fame of such things" (77). Yet while the popularity of physical sensationalism in antebellum American literature, professional medical journals, magazines, and theater undoubtedly influenced the composition of Poe's fiction, this fiction opposed the mass cultural entertainment of Poe's day, entertainment in which...
[This journal article is 7838 words long]
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