Eve Dunbar
evedunbar@yahoo.com
Edgar Allan Poe, considered to be one of the quintessential horror writers in American literary history, is often critiqued for his proposed disengagement with his culture, the culture of the antebellum South. By examining Poe’s review of Paulding’s Slavery in the United States in the Southern Literary Messenger it becomes evident that Poe is anything but disengaged with his culture. The fear of slave revolt, slave emancipation , and a critique of Northern infringement can be seen in many of Poe’s short stories, most notably in The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether. When placed against the backdrop of the antebellum South, newspaper coverage of slave revolt, and Poe’s own views of slavery and rebellion, Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether becomes less about the terrors of insanity, and more about the terror of what may happen when the institutionalized are allowed to rebel and gain power over their ‘keepers’.
Dr. Kittrell Rushing or Dr. David Sachsman 311 Frist Hall Communication Department The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Chattanooga, Tennessee 37403-2598 http://www.utc.edu/commdept/conference/
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Last updated: November 20, 1999
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