Poe, Islands, Archipelagoes
The Poe Studies Association will sponsor a session at the 2020 MLA Convention in Seattle on “Poe, Islands, Archipelagoes.” Islands are central to some of Edgar Allan Poe’s works—think “The Island of the Fay,” the later chapters of Pym, the barrier island setting of “The Gold-Bug”—but they also play important roles in other Poe texts in which they are not blatantly visible—for example, the orangutan in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is brought to Paris from Borneo. This panel will engage with the currents of archipelagic American studies to reassess how islands, oceans, and archipelagoes function in Poe’s literary corpus. What new insights might we gain from Poe’s work as we think through the ways continents and other geographical forms relate to the archipelago as an island-ocean complex? Please submit a 300-word abstract and 1-page CV to emronesplin@gmail.com and brianrussellroberts@byu.edu by March 15, 2019. Queries can also be sent to these same email addresses.