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“Recent Work in Critical Theory” / 508
Brett Zimmerman
“A Catalogue of Selected Rhetorical Devices Used
in the Works of Edgar Allan Poe” / 637
Four-hundred forty-eight recently published monographs treat critical
theory: specifically semiotics, narratology, rhetoric, and language systems;
postmodernist criticism and deconstruction; reader-response and phenomenological
criticism; feminist and gender studies; psychoanalytic criticism; and cultural
and historical criticism.
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Brett Zimmerman, “A Catalogue of Selected Rhetorical Devices Used in the Works of Edgar Allan Poe” / 637
The issue of Poe's "style" remains contentious. To decide the debate
once and for all, I am attempting a methodical exploration of Poe's oeuvre
using classical rhetoric. So far, having read the majority of his tales
and several volumes of his criticism, I have identified 209 tropes and
schemes, with numerous instances of most. Poe employs figures belonging
to all fourteen classes in Lanham's typology; additionally, we can propose
special classes--the "comedic" and the "biblical"; Poe himself also wrote
of the "plausible and verisimilar" style. Patterns are emerging. Poe: loves
devices of syntactical parallelism; is a highly descriptive writer employing
most of the subtypes of enargia; uses dozens of emotional appeals;
has numerous figures of repetition, some becoming devices of ardency in
his hands; is eminently rhetorical, using figures of persuasion not just
in his criticism but fiction as well; loves linguistic comedy, displaying
verbal sportiveness and impressive powers of dialectal verisimilitude.
He is a dazzling stylist whose figurative devices are often related centrally
to his themes and characteristic concerns.
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