Poe, Edgar Allan | Robert von Hallberg (essay date 1985)
Robert von Hallberg (essay date 1985)
SOURCE: "Edgar Allan Poe, Poet-Critic," in Nineteenth-Century American Poetry, edited by A. Robert Lee, Barnes & Noble, 1985, pp. 80-98.
[In the following essay, Von Hallberg argues that Poe should be studied as a poet-critic instead of an academic critic. As a poet-critic Poe's focus is on constructing principles of literary criticism that can carve out a unique place for American literature, rather than on tracing the general development of literary history in the larger European context.]
We are lamentably deficient not only in invention proper, but in that which is, more strictly, Art. What American, for instance, in penning a criticism, ever supposes himself called upon to present his readers with more than the exact stipulation of his title—to present them with a criticism and something beyond? Who thinks of making his critique a work of art in itself—independently...
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