The work of Edgar Allan Poe and his place in the literary canon continues to provoke debate. Many critics have been puzzled as to how Poe can stand simultaneously as the germinal figure of a central modernist trajectory (leading via Baudelaire to French Symbolism and thence to the high modernism of Eliot and others) and as the acknowledged pioneer of several durable mass-cultural genres, including detective and science fiction and certain modes of sensational or Gothic horror. Arguing that Poe is not exceptional but exemplary in this ambivalent relationship to mass culture, the author offers...

What are we talking about when we talk about sovereignty? Is it about formal legitimacy or practical authority? Does it require the ability to control the flow of people or goods across a border; is it primarily a principle of international recognition; or does its essence lie in the power to regulate the lives of a state's citizens? Political theorists, historians, scholars of international relations, lawyers, anthropologists, literary critics--all approach the dilemmas of sovereign power with a mixture of urgency and frustration. In On Lingering and Being Last, Jonathan Elmer argues that...

What are we talking about when we talk about sovereignty? Is it about formal legitimacy or practical authority? Does it require the ability to control the flow of people or goods across a border; is it primarily a principle of international recognition; or does its essence lie in the power to regulate the lives of a state's citizens? Political theorists, historians, scholars of international relations, lawyers, anthropologists, literary critics-all approach the dilemmas of sovereign power with a mixture of urgency and frustration.In On Lingering and Being Last, Jonathan Elmer argues that the...