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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym

LESLIE FIEDLER (ESSAY DATE 1960)

SOURCE: Fiedler, Leslie. "The Blackness of Darkness: E. A. Poe and the Development of the Gothic." In Love and Death in the American Novel. 1960. Reprint, pp. 370-82. New York: Anchor Books, 1992.

In the following essay, Fiedler offers a biographical interpretation of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

In his harried career as a journalist, book-reviewer, short-story writer, poet, and critic, Edgar Allan Poe tried twice to write a full-length novel, reworking each time chronicles of American exploration on sea and land. Both The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym (1837–38) and The Journal of Julius Rodman (1840) strike us as improbable books for Poe to have attempted, concerned as they are with the American scene and the great outdoors. The former is based upon accounts of pioneering expeditions to the...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Edgar Allan Poe (Story Date 1836)
   2. Edgar Allan Poe (Story Date 1842)
4. General Commentary
   1. Maurice LéVy (Essay Date 1968)
   2. Clark Griffith (Essay Date 1972)
5. Title Commentary
   1. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
   2. "The Fall of the House of Usher"
6. Further Reading

1. Edgar Allan Poe