This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ... artificial narratives is very marked. In Poe's critical essays his style takes on an altogether different tone and movement, and becomes analytical, rapid, incisive, almost acrid in its severity and intellectuality. The ornateness and the beauty of cadence and colour that are characteristic of his decorative ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ... artificial narratives is very marked. In Poe's critical essays his style takes on an altogether different tone and movement, and becomes analytical, rapid, incisive, almost acrid in its severity and intellectuality. The ornateness and the beauty of cadence and colour that are characteristic of his decorative prose disappear entirely. Significantly enough, Macaulay was his favourite literary critic. "The style and general conduct of Macaulay's critical papers," Poe assures his readers, "could scarcely be improved." A strange article of faith to find in the literary creed of a dreamer, an amateur of moods, an artistic epicure. Yet that Poe was sincere in this opinion is proved by the characteristics of his own literary essays. He emulates Macaulay in his briskness, in the downrightness of his assertions, in his challengingly demonstrative tone, and in his unsensitiveness to the artistic shade. Of course, he is far inferior to Macaulay in knowledge and in thoroughness of literary training, while he surpasses him in acuteness of analysis and in insight into technical problems. Poe's admiration for Macaulay and his emulation of him in his critical writings are merely further illustrations of the peculiar intellectual aridity that has already been noted as characteristic of him. Demonic intellectual ingenuity is almost the last word for Poe's genius as far as regards his real personality, the quintessential vital energy of the man. His intellect was real; everything else about him was exquisite feigning. His passion, his human sympathy, his love of nature, all the emotions that go into his fiction, have a counterfeit unreality about them. Not that they are actually hypocritical, but that they seem unsubstantial, mimetic, not the...
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Seller's Description:
Good/No Jacket. No Jacket Ex-lib hardcover, good condition, w. the usual stamps, marks, labels, pockets. Ltlly compressed spine, ltly bumped corners. Tanned, somewhat dusty p. tops, tanned p. edges, ltly tanned eps. Still tight.
