Poe’s Difference argues that Edgar Allan Poe has much more in common with early American, medieval, and ancient writers than with the modern and post-modern ones with whom the writer is so often associated. This book emphasizes Poe’s anachronisms to make a number of theoretical, pedagogical, literary historical, and political claims about the backwardness of antebellum U.S. culture. Some time ago Michael Colacurcio issued the challenge that “the full case for the Puritan character of Poe’s ‘horror’ remains to be made.” Although going back a good deal further than just to the “Puritans,” Poe’s Difference aspires fully to make precisely this case.

Poe’s Difference argues that Edgar Allan Poe has much more in common with early American, medieval, and ancient writers than with the modern and post-modern ones with whom the writer is so often associated. This book emphasizes Poe’s anachronisms to make a number of theoretical, pedagogical, literary historical, and political claims about the backwardness of antebellum U.S. culture. Some time ago Michael Colacurcio issued the challenge that “the full case for the Puritan character of Poe’s ‘horror’ remains to be made.” Although going back a good deal further than just to the “Puritans,” Poe’s Difference aspires fully to make precisely this case.