Scholarly annotated edition of Poe's Eureka; Originally published in 1848, Edgar Allen Poe's Eureka stands as the single most important expression of the philosophic views on which all of his literary endeavors depend. Put in the context of Melville's Moby Dick, Thoreau's Walden, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and the music of Liszt and Wagner, it is an explosive, startlingly unconventional creation of the High Romantic era. what its future might be, this user-friendly critical edition is also the first to put Eureka in proper context. It includes Poe's proposed emendations to the text and...

Edgar Allan Poe's reputation as an enduring and influential American literary critic rests mainly upon the pieces in this edition. Editors Stuart Levine and Susan F. Levine provide reading texts, detailed explanatory footnotes, variant readings, and introductions to show context. They also face frankly the contradictions in Poe's critical dicta. Poetry is for pleasure, not truth, Poe says, but argues that poetic inspiration leads to truth. Great works, Poe says, result from studied calculation, but also from irrational, supernal sources. Both biting critic and doughty defender of American...