Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism | Death in American Literature (Vol. 89) - J. Gerald Kennedy (essay date 1993)

J. Gerald Kennedy (essay date 1993)

SOURCE: “Poe, ‘Ligeia,’ and the Problem of Dying Women” in New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, edited by Kenneth Silverman, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 113-29.

[In the excerpt below, Kennedy examines Poe's attitude toward women in his fiction, focusing on “Ligeia.” Kennedy asserts that Poe must have resented women, like the male narrators in his stories, who recognize their unwitting emotional dependence on women.]

In “The Philosophy of Composition,” that notorious essay which proclaims the death of a beautiful woman “the most poetical topic in the world,” Poe devised a self-congratulatory rationale for the form and content of his popular poem, “The Raven.” At the same time, however, the author also advanced a theory of aesthetics that makes pure poetry contingent on the eradication of female beauty. Through the argument that supports this judgment, Poe exposes a...

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