Dr Darryl Edwards gives a talk on Poe's only novel.
15 Aug 2013
PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, AESTHETICS SEMINAR SERIES
A talk given by Dr Darryl Jones, School of English, Trinity College DublinThursday 29th October 2009 6.30
Lecture Theatre G7, School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Architecture, University of Brighton, Pavilion Street (opposite The Royal Pavilion)
ALL WELCOME
For further information please contact Dr Cathy Bergin at c.j.bergin@bton.ac.uk
Abstract:
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, closes with its protagonist being sucked into a gigantic vortex at the South Pole. This paper will explore some of the various manifestations of the 'polar imaginary' in nineteenth-century fiction and culture, with particular reference to the work of Poe, in which it is a recurring concern. What did these polar explorers, imaginative and actual, expect to find at the very limits of the Earth?
Darryl Jones is Head of the School of English, Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, and founding director of the Graduate Programme in Popular Literature. He is author or editor of four books, including Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film (2002) and Jane Austen(2004), and two forthcoming books - an edition of the complete stories of M R James for OUP, and an edited volume of essays: It Came From the 1950s: Popular Culture, Popular Anxieties. He is currently working on a study of 20th-century British horror fiction and film, and on mass death and catastrophe fiction, on which he has published a series of articles.
