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The reason for the darkness of the night : Edgar Allan Poe and the forging of American science / John Tresch.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021Copyright date: ©2021Edition: First editionDescription: 434 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780374247850
  • 0374247854
Other title:
  • Edgar Allan Poe and the forging of American science [Portion of title]
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Part I: From Allan to Poe -- The Young Astronomer -- In Jefferson's Experiment -- Exile, Artificer, Cadet -- Part II: Setting Sail -- A Baltimore Apprenticeship -- Richmond: The Palpable Obscure -- Delirious Design -- Part III: Philadelphia -- The Athens of America -- Methods Grotesque and Arabesque -- Dizzy Heights -- The Tide Turns -- The March of Science and Quacks -- Part IV: New York City -- The Market for Novelty -- A Man of Wonders -- The Imp of the Perverse -- Part V: To the Plutonian Shore -- A Spectacle for Angels -- The Plots of God -- Falling Star -- Conclusion: From a Lighthouse.
Summary: "A biography of Edgar Allan Poe with an emphasis on his engagement with the scientists and scientific discoveries of his era"-- Provided by publisher.Summary: Tresch reveals Poe's obsession with science and lifelong ambition to advance and question human knowledge. Even as he composed dazzling works of fiction, he remained an avid and often combative commentator on new discoveries, publishing and hustling in literary scenes that also hosted the era's most prominent scientists, semi-scientists, and pseudo-intellectual rogues. In showing that Poe lived, thought, and suffered surrounded by science, Tresch shows that many of his most renowned and imaginative works can best be understood in its company. -- adapted from jacket
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography POE, E. T796 Available 33111010551618
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize | Finalist for the 2022 Edgar Award
Winner of the 2021 Quinn Award

An innovative biography of Edgar Allan Poe--highlighting his fascination and feuds with science.

Decade after decade, Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the most popular American writers. He is beloved around the world for his pioneering detective fiction, tales of horror, and haunting, atmospheric verse. But what if there was another side to the man who wrote "The Raven" and "The Fall of the House of Usher"?

In The Reason for the Darkness of the Night , John Tresch offers a bold new biography of a writer whose short, tortured life continues to fascinate. Shining a spotlight on an era when the lines separating entertainment, speculation, and scientific inquiry were blurred, Tresch reveals Poe's obsession with science and lifelong ambition to advance and question human knowledge. Even as he composed dazzling works of fiction, he remained an avid and often combative commentator on new discoveries, publishing and hustling in literary scenes that also hosted the era's most prominent scientists, semi-scientists, and pseudo-intellectual rogues. As one newspaper put it, "Mr. Poe is not merely a man of science--not merely a poet--not merely a man of letters. He is all combined; and perhaps he is something more."

Taking us through his early training in mathematics and engineering at West Point and the tumultuous years that followed, Tresch shows that Poe lived, thought, and suffered surrounded by science--and that many of his most renowned and imaginative works can best be understood in its company. He cast doubt on perceived certainties even as he hungered for knowledge, and at the end of his life delivered a mind-bending lecture on the origins of the universe that would win the admiration of twentieth-century physicists. Pursuing extraordinary conjectures and a unique aesthetic vision, he remained a figure of explosive contradiction: he gleefully exposed the hoaxes of the era's scientific fraudsters even as he perpetrated hoaxes himself.

Tracing Poe's hard and brilliant journey, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night is an essential new portrait of a writer whose life is synonymous with mystery and imagination--and an entertaining, erudite tour of the world of American science just as it was beginning to come into its own.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I: From Allan to Poe -- The Young Astronomer -- In Jefferson's Experiment -- Exile, Artificer, Cadet -- Part II: Setting Sail -- A Baltimore Apprenticeship -- Richmond: The Palpable Obscure -- Delirious Design -- Part III: Philadelphia -- The Athens of America -- Methods Grotesque and Arabesque -- Dizzy Heights -- The Tide Turns -- The March of Science and Quacks -- Part IV: New York City -- The Market for Novelty -- A Man of Wonders -- The Imp of the Perverse -- Part V: To the Plutonian Shore -- A Spectacle for Angels -- The Plots of God -- Falling Star -- Conclusion: From a Lighthouse.

"A biography of Edgar Allan Poe with an emphasis on his engagement with the scientists and scientific discoveries of his era"-- Provided by publisher.

Tresch reveals Poe's obsession with science and lifelong ambition to advance and question human knowledge. Even as he composed dazzling works of fiction, he remained an avid and often combative commentator on new discoveries, publishing and hustling in literary scenes that also hosted the era's most prominent scientists, semi-scientists, and pseudo-intellectual rogues. In showing that Poe lived, thought, and suffered surrounded by science, Tresch shows that many of his most renowned and imaginative works can best be understood in its company. -- adapted from jacket

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