VOLUME 2(4) • 2014
We thus establish the Universe on a purely geometrical basis
ABSTRACT. The schizomorphic vision sees the world as a huge machine, as a mechanical cosmos, for in its application of the art of self-destruction this vision evinces a morbid preoccupation with geometric forms and patterns, that is, with the skeleton of things. Round or irregular, oval or angular, ..
Utopias of Mastermind
ABSTRACT. Poe was trying to find solutions to baffling problems of reality, be they the cosmic large infinity, the social medium infinity, the atomic small infinity, or the human psychological interior infinity. He delighted in mapping labyrinths of any problematic world – be they the worlds of reas..
A Pallady-based reading of Poe
ABSTRACT. The intricate game of reality and appearance with its reliable agency of dreaming, also with its treacherous agency of memory, is the bridge connecting Poe with Theodor Pallady, a Romanian painter at the confluence of stylistic genres like (decadent) romanticism, symbolism and fauvism. pp...
Poe’s hieroglyphic universe: the master keys
ABSTRACT. Edgar Allan Poe elaborated an ambitious cosmological system in Eureka, according to which a primordial material particle (the first cosmic egg of the physical Universe) propagated through a flash-like explosion into infinite space to form the Universe we know. To Poe, planetary systems lik..
Dancing mad: a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming
ABSTRACT. The Gold-Bug includes a number of intriguing details (scaraboeus, invisible ink, seventh dead limb of a magnificent tree, death’s-head etc.) that prompt a closer examination of the text. The analysis reveals a sophisticated pattern the significance of which extends beyond the intention of ..
The imp of the perverse
ABSTRACT. We will explore a dimension of (self-)aggression as regulatory mechanism. This examination of Edgar Allan Poe’s case attempts to corroborate pathography with the American author’s implicit and explicit aesthetics, a study oriented by the notion of ‘perverse’ somehow seeming to reconcile su..
Edgar Allan Poe on the silver screen
ABSTRACT. Edgar Allan Poe’s classic macabre stories and melancholic love-stricken poems have always been a source of inspiration. While the adaptations have been more or less faithful to the original pieces of literature, the results include absolute landmarks in the careers of many directors and ac..
The (pre-/post-)romantic bedlam
ABSTRACT. Autobiographical, biographical and medical records for three eminent English poets (Samuel Johnson, Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe), born within a hundred-year period (between 1705 and 1805) and included in a threefold system of thought (preromanticism, romanticism and late romanticism) were ..
Detective fiction and common sense
ABSTRACT. Common sense, inner sense, and good sense are defined and described in a Renaissance context, with constant reference to fantasy, magic and long-distance erotic manipulation – with special reference to Ioan Petru Culianu’s detective fiction and, in general, to this stylistic genre. pp. 153..
Poison most genteel
ABSTRACT. Stressing the body by feeding it with some element, oxygen and water included, to say nothing of chromium, copper, fluoride, nickel, potassium, selenium, sodium and tin, is as damaging as any kind of poisoning, even if such elements are essentially vital. As borderlines between the necessa..
The thought of a thought
ABSTRACT. The Vigil of Roderick Usher is one of Ion Barbu’s most emblematic and hermetic texts. However, its cryptic language contains a deeper truth that illuminates the Romanian author’s relation with Edgar Poe’s poetics and cosmology. It is his manner of paying homage to the American writer, in w..
Double, shadow, mask
ABSTRACT. The article reviews some of the expressions of the fantastic double, in the realm of supernatural literature, in which one can include motifs such as the shadow, the mirror, the androgynous, the double personality or the presence of an unknown, evil entity. Each writer, beginning with Cham..