WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.960 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.960 --> 00:00:05.720 align:middle line:84% As can be imagined, such negative criticism 00:00:05.720 --> 00:00:08.660 align:middle line:84% did not sit well with Poe's contemporaries. 00:00:08.660 --> 00:00:10.670 align:middle line:84% The predominant sense in the 1830s and 40s 00:00:10.670 --> 00:00:12.560 align:middle line:84% was that American literature was vulnerable 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:14.060 align:middle line:90% and had to be protected. 00:00:14.060 --> 00:00:16.670 align:middle line:84% And thus, the broad majority of American literary criticism 00:00:16.670 --> 00:00:18.980 align:middle line:84% looking at American books fell into the habit 00:00:18.980 --> 00:00:20.630 align:middle line:90% known as puffery, or puffing-- 00:00:20.630 --> 00:00:23.810 align:middle line:84% lauding books with superlative praise, regardless 00:00:23.810 --> 00:00:25.340 align:middle line:90% of their quality. 00:00:25.340 --> 00:00:27.950 align:middle line:84% Thus Poe's negative criticism was a marked departure 00:00:27.950 --> 00:00:28.820 align:middle line:90% from this habit. 00:00:28.820 --> 00:00:30.920 align:middle line:84% And though it rarely won him any friends, 00:00:30.920 --> 00:00:32.420 align:middle line:84% he seemed to recognize that in order 00:00:32.420 --> 00:00:35.030 align:middle line:84% to create a truly American fine literature, 00:00:35.030 --> 00:00:36.800 align:middle line:90% the puffing had to stop. 00:00:36.800 --> 00:00:39.830 align:middle line:84% As he remarks in one review, "We get up 00:00:39.830 --> 00:00:41.690 align:middle line:84% a hue and cry about the necessity 00:00:41.690 --> 00:00:43.370 align:middle line:84% of encouraging writers of merit-- 00:00:43.370 --> 00:00:45.680 align:middle line:84% we blindly fancy that we can accomplish this 00:00:45.680 --> 00:00:49.143 align:middle line:84% by indiscriminate puffing of good, bad, and indifferent, 00:00:49.143 --> 00:00:51.560 align:middle line:84% without taking the trouble to consider that what we choose 00:00:51.560 --> 00:00:53.570 align:middle line:84% to denominate encouragement is thus, 00:00:53.570 --> 00:00:58.150 align:middle line:84% by its general application, rendered precisely the reverse. 00:00:58.150 --> 00:01:02.200 align:middle line:84% In a word, so far from being ashamed of the many disgraceful 00:01:02.200 --> 00:01:04.870 align:middle line:84% literary failures--" and he thinks there are a lot of them 00:01:04.870 --> 00:01:07.450 align:middle line:84% "--to which our own inordinate vanities and misapplied 00:01:07.450 --> 00:01:09.640 align:middle line:84% patriotism have lately given birth, 00:01:09.640 --> 00:01:12.820 align:middle line:84% and so far from deeply lamenting that these daily puerilities 00:01:12.820 --> 00:01:16.030 align:middle line:84% are of home manufacture, we adhere pertinaciously 00:01:16.030 --> 00:01:18.850 align:middle line:84% to our originally blindly conceived idea, 00:01:18.850 --> 00:01:22.510 align:middle line:84% and thus often find ourselves involved in the gross paradox 00:01:22.510 --> 00:01:26.410 align:middle line:84% of liking a stupid book the better, because, sure enough, 00:01:26.410 --> 00:01:28.270 align:middle line:90% its stupidity is American." 00:01:28.270 --> 00:01:30.400 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:33.400 align:middle line:84% In place of puffing, Poe adopted a bold new stance 00:01:33.400 --> 00:01:34.870 align:middle line:84% that literary criticism should look 00:01:34.870 --> 00:01:37.720 align:middle line:84% at the object scientifically and analytically, 00:01:37.720 --> 00:01:40.870 align:middle line:84% judging it solely on what it is, not what it was intended to be, 00:01:40.870 --> 00:01:43.930 align:middle line:84% or what value its ideas might have. 00:01:43.930 --> 00:01:46.420 align:middle line:84% This is why Poe calls literary criticism an emerging 00:01:46.420 --> 00:01:49.720 align:middle line:84% new science that will supersede the flippant opinion 00:01:49.720 --> 00:01:51.940 align:middle line:90% of the older reviews and puffs. 00:01:51.940 --> 00:01:54.340 align:middle line:84% In one manifesto, he rallies for, quote, 00:01:54.340 --> 00:01:57.580 align:middle line:84% "an absolutely independent criticism, a criticism 00:01:57.580 --> 00:02:00.580 align:middle line:84% self-sustained, guiding itself only by the purest rules 00:02:00.580 --> 00:02:03.850 align:middle line:84% of art, analyzing and urging these rules as it applies them, 00:02:03.850 --> 00:02:06.790 align:middle line:84% holding itself aloof from all personal bias, 00:02:06.790 --> 00:02:09.759 align:middle line:84% yielding no point, either to the vanity of the author, 00:02:09.759 --> 00:02:12.100 align:middle line:84% or to the assumptions of antique prejudice, 00:02:12.100 --> 00:02:15.280 align:middle line:84% or to the arrogance of those organized cliques which, 00:02:15.280 --> 00:02:17.830 align:middle line:84% hanging like nightmares upon American literature, 00:02:17.830 --> 00:02:21.100 align:middle line:84% manufacture, at the nod of our principal booksellers, 00:02:21.100 --> 00:02:24.970 align:middle line:84% a pseudo-public opinion by wholesale." 00:02:24.970 --> 00:02:31.840 align:middle line:84% Lashing out at favoritism and publisher backed puffing, 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:34.060 align:middle line:84% Poe's critical point of view held instead 00:02:34.060 --> 00:02:36.040 align:middle line:84% that aesthetics and beauty were not subjective. 00:02:36.040 --> 00:02:38.020 align:middle line:84% They were not matters of opinion, 00:02:38.020 --> 00:02:40.600 align:middle line:84% and the literary quality could be analyzed by close attention 00:02:40.600 --> 00:02:43.990 align:middle line:84% to the book itself, to the words on the page. 00:02:43.990 --> 00:02:48.400 align:middle line:84% "A book is written," he writes, "and it is only as the book 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:50.800 align:middle line:90% that we subject it to review." 00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:53.530 align:middle line:84% This cutting out of the national character, the author's 00:02:53.530 --> 00:02:55.900 align:middle line:84% intentions, the opinion or stance of the book 00:02:55.900 --> 00:02:58.120 align:middle line:84% revolutionizes criticism and grounds 00:02:58.120 --> 00:03:01.570 align:middle line:84% critical literary study, even to some degree, today. 00:03:01.570 --> 00:03:05.590 align:middle line:84% For Poe, a true critic must possess above all, a, quote, 00:03:05.590 --> 00:03:08.550 align:middle line:90% "talent for analysis." 00:03:08.550 --> 00:03:11.400 align:middle line:84% Now, this may strike many as rather sterile. 00:03:11.400 --> 00:03:13.770 align:middle line:84% If beauty is objective and informal, 00:03:13.770 --> 00:03:16.470 align:middle line:84% it will have seem to have lost all of its soul. 00:03:16.470 --> 00:03:18.600 align:middle line:90% But Poe extended his claim. 00:03:18.600 --> 00:03:20.700 align:middle line:84% The forms of beauty are not empty, 00:03:20.700 --> 00:03:24.150 align:middle line:84% but are rather the physical mechanics of the universe. 00:03:24.150 --> 00:03:26.040 align:middle line:84% In one of his final books, Eureka, 00:03:26.040 --> 00:03:28.740 align:middle line:84% he suggested that the motion of the cosmos, gravity 00:03:28.740 --> 00:03:32.460 align:middle line:84% and repulsion, were one with the beauty of literary art. 00:03:32.460 --> 00:03:35.440 align:middle line:84% That is, beauty may be just math. 00:03:35.440 --> 00:03:37.560 align:middle line:90% But math is not just anything. 00:03:37.560 --> 00:03:40.830 align:middle line:84% It is, for Poe, actually the fabric of the universe. 00:03:40.830 --> 00:03:44.460 align:middle line:84% As he writes in Eureka, "The universe is a plot of God. 00:03:44.460 --> 00:03:47.400 align:middle line:84% And the plots of God are perfect." 00:03:47.400 --> 00:03:49.980 align:middle line:84% Thus the universe becomes a literary work, 00:03:49.980 --> 00:03:51.300 align:middle line:90% a formal arrangement. 00:03:51.300 --> 00:03:54.360 align:middle line:84% And when we analyze nature from crystals to stars, 00:03:54.360 --> 00:03:56.460 align:middle line:84% we uncover the same patterns that we find when 00:03:56.460 --> 00:03:59.010 align:middle line:90% we analyze poems and fiction. 00:03:59.010 --> 00:04:02.130 align:middle line:84% My point in gesturing to outer space in this 00:04:02.130 --> 00:04:04.590 align:middle line:84% is to show how for Poe, the stakes of literary criticism 00:04:04.590 --> 00:04:07.500 align:middle line:84% were much higher than simply recommending a book. 00:04:07.500 --> 00:04:10.830 align:middle line:84% And his approach-- formalist, mathematical, scientific-- 00:04:10.830 --> 00:04:13.470 align:middle line:84% demystified literature by turning it from spirit 00:04:13.470 --> 00:04:15.540 align:middle line:84% into matter, and then remystified it 00:04:15.540 --> 00:04:18.329 align:middle line:90% by turning matter into poetry. 00:04:18.329 --> 00:04:23.510 align:middle line:84% If you are a critic with a skill for analysis, 00:04:23.510 --> 00:04:27.100 align:middle line:84% then literature opens up to you, not in some supernal way 00:04:27.100 --> 00:04:29.530 align:middle line:84% in which you become flooded with emotion, 00:04:29.530 --> 00:04:31.780 align:middle line:84% but rather in a mechanistic way in which you 00:04:31.780 --> 00:04:34.600 align:middle line:84% are able to see the springs, pulleys, and levers by which 00:04:34.600 --> 00:04:35.320 align:middle line:90% it works. 00:04:35.320 --> 00:04:37.510 align:middle line:84% And if you see the machinery, then you 00:04:37.510 --> 00:04:39.850 align:middle line:84% could possibly do some pretty neat things, 00:04:39.850 --> 00:04:43.060 align:middle line:84% like see the ending before the beginning was even finished, 00:04:43.060 --> 00:04:46.750 align:middle line:84% or even before the ending was ever written. 00:04:46.750 --> 00:04:48.700 align:middle line:84% Such is what Poe himself did when 00:04:48.700 --> 00:04:52.300 align:middle line:84% he solved a Dickens novel while it was still in serialization. 00:04:52.300 --> 00:04:53.770 align:middle line:90% It happened this way. 00:04:53.770 --> 00:04:56.410 align:middle line:84% Charles Dickens, hugely popular in the US, 00:04:56.410 --> 00:04:59.080 align:middle line:84% was publishing the serialized mystery novel Barnaby 00:04:59.080 --> 00:05:01.900 align:middle line:84% Rudge periodically in Britain and the United States 00:05:01.900 --> 00:05:03.817 align:middle line:90% simultaneously. 00:05:03.817 --> 00:05:05.650 align:middle line:84% It was published in the spirit of the times. 00:05:05.650 --> 00:05:10.150 align:middle line:84% And this was the cover page of the first installment. 00:05:10.150 --> 00:05:12.700 align:middle line:84% So Poe undertakes to review Barnaby Rudge 00:05:12.700 --> 00:05:14.950 align:middle line:84% after the initial installments are published. 00:05:14.950 --> 00:05:18.040 align:middle line:84% Poe offhandedly predicts the murderer, the arrangement 00:05:18.040 --> 00:05:20.950 align:middle line:84% of the murder, and explains the cause of many of the clues 00:05:20.950 --> 00:05:23.260 align:middle line:84% before the later installments were published. 00:05:23.260 --> 00:05:25.210 align:middle line:84% When the rest of the novel was published 00:05:25.210 --> 00:05:26.860 align:middle line:84% and Poe turned out to be correct, 00:05:26.860 --> 00:05:30.220 align:middle line:84% Poe wrote another review in which he reminded everyone 00:05:30.220 --> 00:05:33.040 align:middle line:84% that he had predicted it all from the start. 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:35.260 align:middle line:90% Well, that's not quite true. 00:05:35.260 --> 00:05:39.640 align:middle line:84% There is one thing that Poe doesn't get right. 00:05:39.640 --> 00:05:42.070 align:middle line:84% OK, this is a little complicated, but bear with me. 00:05:42.070 --> 00:05:44.590 align:middle line:84% The fact that one character has a birthmark that 00:05:44.590 --> 00:05:46.450 align:middle line:84% looks like blood on his wrist leads 00:05:46.450 --> 00:05:49.630 align:middle line:84% Poe to believe that the character's mother was gripped 00:05:49.630 --> 00:05:53.200 align:middle line:84% by the wrist by the murderer while pregnant-- that 00:05:53.200 --> 00:05:56.590 align:middle line:84% is, when the murderer grasped the pregnant woman's 00:05:56.590 --> 00:05:58.540 align:middle line:84% wrist, the stain of that crime was literally 00:05:58.540 --> 00:06:02.650 align:middle line:84% transferred onto the baby's wrist while in utero. 00:06:02.650 --> 00:06:05.680 align:middle line:84% But when Dickens explains it much later in the novel, 00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:09.190 align:middle line:84% it is rather the pregnant woman who grasps the murderer. 00:06:09.190 --> 00:06:11.680 align:middle line:84% This leads Poe to say, "The differences 00:06:11.680 --> 00:06:14.950 align:middle line:84% between our preconceived ideas as here stated 00:06:14.950 --> 00:06:18.010 align:middle line:84% and the actual facts of the story will be found immaterial. 00:06:18.010 --> 00:06:20.710 align:middle line:84% That Rudge's wife seized him by the wrist instead 00:06:20.710 --> 00:06:23.260 align:middle line:84% of his seizing her has so much the air 00:06:23.260 --> 00:06:27.670 align:middle line:84% of a mistake on the part of Mr. Dickens that we can scarcely 00:06:27.670 --> 00:06:29.680 align:middle line:84% speak of our own version as erroneous. 00:06:29.680 --> 00:06:33.040 align:middle line:84% We may therefore say that if we did not rightly prophecy, 00:06:33.040 --> 00:06:36.070 align:middle line:84% yet at least our prophecy should have been right." 00:06:36.070 --> 00:06:37.480 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:37.480 --> 00:06:40.540 align:middle line:84% So Poe solves Barnaby Rudge and goes so far 00:06:40.540 --> 00:06:43.870 align:middle line:84% to say where the two versions diverge, Dickens, and not 00:06:43.870 --> 00:06:46.910 align:middle line:90% himself, was in the wrong. 00:06:46.910 --> 00:06:49.410 align:middle line:84% I had earlier been talking about Poe's analytical criticism. 00:06:49.410 --> 00:06:50.827 align:middle line:84% And here is where you start to see 00:06:50.827 --> 00:06:52.530 align:middle line:90% that it becomes sensational. 00:06:52.530 --> 00:06:56.340 align:middle line:84% Poe does not only innovate in analytical criticism-- 00:06:56.340 --> 00:06:58.140 align:middle line:84% and perhaps if his criticism were simply 00:06:58.140 --> 00:06:59.640 align:middle line:84% negative and analytical, it wouldn't 00:06:59.640 --> 00:07:01.200 align:middle line:90% have had such an effect-- 00:07:01.200 --> 00:07:04.170 align:middle line:90% but he sensationalizes it. 00:07:04.170 --> 00:07:06.270 align:middle line:84% And, as I hope in this last section to show, 00:07:06.270 --> 00:07:09.650 align:middle line:84% he turns it into an art all of its own. 00:07:09.650 --> 00:07:11.000 align:middle line:90%