Controversies abound in studies of Poe. For years after his death, partisans debated his character: was he an alcoholic? a drug addict? a pathological liar? a necrophile? Later, psychoanalytic critics sought to free him from Victorian morality but courted scandal by linking his dreamlike stories to his personality. The value of Poe's literary productions was similarly disputed, as New Critics dismissed his work while poets such as W. C. Williams and Allen Tate championed him. Recent scholars have focused on race, class, and gender in Poe: how racist and misogynist was he, and how do the answers bear on his work? Finally, how have the countless plays, films, novels, comic books, and pop-music experiments based on his image and works intertwined with academic study of Poe? Scott Peeples examines these and other controversies, and his book will be of great interest both to Poe scholars and to all those interested in Poe and his work. Book jacket.

Scott Peeples is associate professor of English at the College of Charleston