(RE)CONSIDERATIONS ON THE AMERICANNESS OF POE-TIC CITYSCAPES
(RE)CONSIDERATIONS ON THE AMERICANNESS OF POE-TIC CITYSCAPES

Summary/Abstract: The present study attempts to examine Edgar Allan Poe’s controversialAmericanness, as revealed by his poetical and narrative treatment of cityscapes inapparent contrast with a Romantic focus on nature. As such, it addresses the challengeof portraying an author of so many ‘faces’ (American, French, German, etc.) againstan ever-shifting background, which one can stabilize in a snapshot of the city. Hisconvincing urban imagery not only surpasses a purely descriptive function, but provesconsistent with a concern with self-definition, while departing from realisticrepresentations in more elusive explorations of American spaces of the mind and inreflections of American temperament. The texts meant to support the hypothesis areThe City in the Sea and The Man of the Crowd, capturing the urban scene from distinctangles, one as a barren and desolate place reigned by death, the other as a swarmingcollectivity. The devices used in grasping a ‘spirit of the place’ include elementalexplorations, the interplay between nature and civilization, between light anddarkness, between the West and the East, all converging in an urban imagery of thenineteenth century. This state of spectatorship marks the paradoxes of an urbanpsychology of collective and anxious solitude, anticipating detective fiction and, in theprocess, revealing an ambivalent sense of belonging and of being conditioned by ageographical space. Illustrative moments in the demonstration are the intertwiningtendencies with colonial narratives, the telling exclusions and surprising resonancesthat determine the cautiousness in situating Poe. Under these circumstances, the citylooms as a firm territory for the present enterprise.

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