{"product_id":"the-cryptographic-imagination-9781421437156","title":"The Cryptographic Imagination","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOriginally published in 1996. In The Cryptographic Imagination, Shawn Rosenheim uses the writings of Edgar Allan Poe to pose a set of questions pertaining to literary genre, cultural modernity, and technology. Rosenheim argues that Poe's cryptographic writinghis essays on cryptography and the short stories that grew out of themrequires that we rethink the relation of poststructural criticism to Poe's texts and, more generally, reconsider the relation of literature to communication. Cryptography serves not only as a template for the language, character, and themes of much of Poe's late fiction (including his creation, the detective story) but also as a secret history of literary modernity itself. Both postwar fiction and literary criticism, the author writes, are deeply indebted to the rise of cryptography in World War II. Still more surprising, in Rosenheim's view, Poe is not merely a source for such literary instances of cryptography as the codes in Conan Doyle's The Dancing-Men or in\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA masterful and imaginative work which is truly Poe-like in its fascination with cryptography, ciphers, and codes. Poe takes his place as the first postmodern thinker, a precursor of such figures as Pynchon, Borges, and William Gibson.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eErrol Morris, director of The Thin Blue Line and A Brief History of Time\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eAcknowledgments \u003cbr\u003eIntroduction \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart I: Genres\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 1: The King of Secret Readers \u003cbr\u003eChapter 2: Secret Writing as Alchemy: Recoding Defoe\u003cbr\u003eChapter 3: Detective Fiction and the Analytic Sublime \u003cbr\u003eChapter 4: Dark Fiber: Cryptography, Telegraphy, Science Fiction\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart 2: Effects\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 5: Resurrexi: Poe in the Crypt of Lizzie Doten\u003cbr\u003eChapter 6: Deciphering the Cold War: Toward a Literary History of Espionage \u003cbr\u003eChapter 7: Ciphering the Net \u003cbr\u003eCoda: Strange Loops and Talking Birds\u003cbr\u003eAppendix: Public-Key Cryptography \u003cbr\u003eNotes \u003cbr\u003eGlossary \u003cbr\u003eIndex\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Johns Hopkins University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49408137232727,"sku":"9781421437156","price":35.1,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781421437156.jpg?v=1730501722","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-cryptographic-imagination-9781421437156","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}