Description
Book SynopsisLocating Poe firmly within his Zeitgeist vis-à-vis the science and pseudoscience of the early nineteenth century, Edgar Allan Poe as Amateur Psychologist: A Companion Anthology simultaneously looks back from the 1830s and 1840s (when his literary career was at its height) to eighteenth-century theories and sources of information on mental illness, as well as forward to our own time to demonstrate how Poe's dramatizations of psychological diseases occasionally anticipate modern nosological classifications and twenty-first-century forensic research. This interdisciplinary collection is a companion to its predecessor, Zimmerman's Edgar Allan Poe: Amateur Psychologist (Peter Lang, 2019); it gathers the most important essays by authorsHungerford, Stauffer, Stern, Bynum, Cleman, Hester and Segir, Phillips, Shackelford, Scheckel, Lloyd-Smith, Whipple, Butler, Uba, Walker, Zimmermanwho employ historicist and history-of-ideas methodologies. Topics include Poe's use of and eventual disillusio
Trade Review
“Zimmerman’s anthology is a rich resource for students delving into the dark mental underground of Poe’s characters. Many of these close readings are based on the history of the ‘science of mind,’ supplying a reservoir of terminology from the 1730s through the 1840s. These essays are instrumental in interpreting a world as unsettling as it is unknown to twenty-first-century readers. Tapping into modern psychological theory, other essays demonstrate Poe’s prescience as a pioneer of psychopathology.” —David E. E. Sloane, Professor of English, University of New Haven
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments – Brett Zimmerman: Introduction – Phrenology – Edward Hungerford: Poe and Phrenology – Madeleine B. Stern: Poe: “The Mental Temperament” for Phrenologists – Donald B. Stauffer: Poe as Phrenologist: The Example of Monsieur Dupin Mainstream Psychology – William Whipple: Poe’s Two- Edged Satiric Tale [“The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether”] – Allan Gardner Lloyd- Smith (Allan Smith): The Psychological Context of Three Tales by Poe – Elizabeth C. Phillips: Mere Household Events: The Metaphysics of Mania – Paige Matthey Bynum: “Observe How Healthily— How Calmly I Can Tell You the Whole Story”: Moral Insanity and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell- Tale Heart” – John Cleman: Irresistible Impulses: Edgar Allan Poe and the Insanity Defense – Vicki Hester and Emily Segir: “The Black Cat” and Current Forensic Psychology – Lynne Piper Shackelford: “Infected by Superstitions”: Folie à Deux in “The Fall of the House of Usher” – Susan Scheckel: Home- Sickness, Nostalgia, and Therapeutic Narrative in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” – Brett Zimmerman: Charley Goodfellow as Psychopathic Personality in “Thou Art the Man” – The Psychosomatic – I. M. Walker: The “Legitimate Sources” of Terror in “The Fall of the House of Usher” – David W. Butler: Usher’s Hypochondriasis: Mental Alienation and Romantic Idealism in Poe’s Gothic Tales – George R. Uba: Malady and Motive: Medical History and “The Fall of the House of Usher” – Index.
