• The Mississippi Quarterly

Browse all Journals & Periodicals

Poe, "simplicity," and 'Blackwood's Magazine.' (Edgar Allen Poe)

Publisher	Mississippi State University
Publication	The Mississippi Quarterly
Subject	Literature/writing
Format	Magazine/Journal
ISSN	0026-637X
Issues per Year	4
Volume	v51
Issue	n2
Published	1998-03-22

Role	Type	Name
Author	n/a	J. Lasley Dameron
Person	Criticism and interpretation	Edgar Allan Poe

Almost everyone has heard or used the hackneyed phrase that something is "elegant in its simplicity." We often use the word simplicity in a variety of contexts, but we make little effort to explain it, assuming that the concept is so very elementary it needs no further amplification. Yet in one synonym finder, Rodale's The Synonym Finder (1986), the editors list sixty-six separate definitions for "Simplicity."

Paradoxically, the subject of Simplicity is very complex, and in order to keep it as concrete as possible, I will offer a generic definition of the term as Edgar Allan...

[This journal article is 3806 words long]