Poe\u27s Poisoned Pen: A Study in Fiction as Vendetta

Edgar Allan Poe, widely regarded as an extremely influential American writer and prolific literary critic, exacted high standards in both his writing and in the writing of those he reviewed. Though his criticism was harsh, it was a necessary part of the growing process for American literature to become a separate and distinct body of literature. However, Poe\u27s literary criticism is not his only work that bore the stinging marks of his pen; his fiction was also a venue for Poe to express his dissatisfaction with the literary field in America. Using a combination of close reading for textual analysis and Walter Fisher\u27s narrative paradigm, this thesis explores the question of who, exactly, Poe was chastising in his literature. Some have said Poe was a racist, or a misogynist, or just bitter. This thesis examines Poe\u27s literature, focusing on his short stories, in light of his literary milieu. In his detective stories, Poe seems to be questioning and attacking the established literary authority--the Transcendentalists and the Literati--as well as those who chose to plagiarize. In some of the other literary genres in which Poe wrote, it appears he is doing the same. Poe\u27s short stories, then, were not just a means of generating revenue for himself; they were an attack and an argument against the current literary field

The Cryptographic Imagination

Originally published in 1996. In The Cryptographic Imagination, Shawn Rosenheim uses the writings of Edgar Allan Poe to pose a set of questions pertaining to literary genre, cultural modernity, and technology. Rosenheim argues that Poe's cryptographic writing—his essays on cryptography and the short stories that grew out of them—requires that we rethink the relation of poststructural criticism to Poe's texts and, more generally, reconsider the relation of literature to communication. Cryptography serves not only as a template for the language, character, and themes of much of Poe's late fiction (including his creation, the detective story) but also as a "secret history" of literary modernity itself. "Both postwar fiction and literary criticism," the author writes, "are deeply indebted to the rise of cryptography in World War II." Still more surprising, in Rosenheim's view, Poe is not merely a source for such literary instances of cryptography as the codes in Conan Doyle's "The Dancing-Men" or in Jules Verne, but, through his effect on real cryptographers, Poe's writing influenced the outcome of World War II and the development of the Cold War. However unlikely such ideas sound, The Cryptographic Imagination offers compelling evidence that Poe's cryptographic writing clarifies one important avenue by which the twentieth century called itself into being. "The strength of Rosenheim's work extends to a revisionistic understanding of the entirety of literary history (as a repression of cryptography) and then, in a breathtaking shift of register, interlinks Poe's exercises in cryptography with the hyperreality of the CIA, the Cold War, and the Internet. What enables this extensive range of applications is the stipulated tension Rosenheim discerns in the relationship between the forms of the literary imagination and the condition of its mode of production. Cryptography, in this account, names the technology of literary production—the diacritical relationship between decoding and encoding—that the literary imagination dissimulates as hieroglyphics—the hermeneutic relationship between a sign and its content."—Donald E. Pease, Dartmouth Colleg

Into the abyss : a study of the mise en abyme

As no single English study of the mise en abyme with its examples in our late-modern world has been undertaken, this thesis concerns the mise en abyme in English literature. In approximately the last third of the twentieth century, the concept has increasingly been associated with ‘postmodernism’ and the essential groundlessness of all claims to general or universal truth. In this thesis, I argue that the mise en abyme has become such a broad staple of character and narrative study that its meaning is diffuse in the extreme. First celebrated in the 1980s and 1990s, by several literary thinkers as a figure capturing the spirit of postmodernism, the eventual symptomatic dissipation of the mise en abyme in literary studies resulted from critical suggestions that the mise en abyme was after all, perhaps, bogus. It subsequently became associated with aesthetic phenomena far beyond its initial characterisation by André Gide in 1893. I argue that it has now become a trope of things wider than Gide’s initial allusion and has become a metaphor for abyssal - and abysmal - things. This thesis seeks to consider the history of the mise en abyme and to offer a contemporary account of what it might mean: it does this by uncovering the latent rhetorical figures which preceded the name ‘mise en abyme’. Formal readings of the play within the play in Hamlet and the gothic story read in The Fall of the House of Usher are both starting points to relink Gide’s idea to its, more common, metaphorical applications. Thus, metaphors of the abyss, the dark, the occulted, the uncanny and, most precisely, the ‘sinister’ are examined in this dissertation. The thesis first evaluates the theoretical inheritance of Gide’s work and then, in the second part, applies, through close reading, the meaning of Gide’s idea to recent, and representative literary examples. The thrust of the argument is that the reason many definitions, and applications, of the mise en abyme are such a source of problems, is because the mise en abyme, as an English literary phenomenon supporting the broad thesis of postmodern Gothic aesthetics, is concerned with representing abyssal metaphors. A clear delimitation of the mise en abyme is difficult whenever connotations of the abyss, the dark, the occult and the sinister are overlooked. So, this dissertation gives a circumspect view of what is designated as mise en abyme, and argues that, in late-modernity, its meaning is closest to the rhetorical figures named ekphrasis, metalepsis, and epanalepsis. This study concludes that, realistically, there is probably no such thing as the mise en abyme and instead, there are only rhetorical figures and metaphors of the sinister and of the abyss

Interpretive Multiplicity: Audiences and Mediators on the Shakespearean Stage

The question of audience (dis)unity has been a central, if not always ex­plicit, element of the theory and practice of drama since its inception. In this essay, I consider the staging of rhetorical expression and interpreta­tion in Shakespearean drama, whereby the playwright intervenes in the relationship between audience and performance in order to problematize and retheorize the interpretive dynamics of the theater. There are many such moments of staged interpretation in the Shakespeare canon, but I will focus here on two plays which deploy subtle and complex strategies of in­terpretive disunification. In the first part, I offer a brief outline of theoreti­cal debates about audience unity, and an overview of the intersections of oratory and dramatic performance. In the second part, I turn to characters who serve as "internal audiences" or "mediators" on the Shakespearean stage. I first consider the unifying nationalist rhetoric of the titular monarch in Henry V, analyzing the staging of resistance to that rhetorical unification by the always already alienated low characters in the play. Fi­nally, shifting from spoken to silent rhetorical performance, I examine the complex dynamic between internal mediator and gestural performance in Titus Andronicus, whereby interpretive ambiguity operates in and destabi­lizes the drive toward both linguistic and socio-political unity

Wi-Fi Enabled Healthcare

Focusing on its recent proliferation in hospital systems, Wi-Fi Enabled Healthcare explains how Wi-Fi is transforming clinical work flows and infusing new life into the types of mobile devices being implemented in hospitals. Drawing on first-hand experiences from one of the largest healthcare systems in the United States, it covers the key areas associated with wireless network design, security, and support. Reporting on cutting-edge developments and emerging standards in Wi-Fi technologies, the book explores security implications for each device type. It covers real-time location services and emerging trends in cloud-based wireless architecture. It also outlines several options and design consideration for employee wireless coverage, voice over wireless (including smart phones), mobile medical devices, and wireless guest services. This book presents authoritative insight into the challenges that exist in adding Wi-Fi within a healthcare setting. It explores several solutions in each space along with design considerations and pros and cons. It also supplies an in-depth look at voice over wireless, mobile medical devices, and wireless guest services. The authors provide readers with the technical knowhow required to ensure their systems provide the reliable, end-to-end communications necessary to surmount today’s challenges and capitalize on new opportunities. The shared experience and lessons learned provide essential guidance for large and small healthcare organizations in the United States and around the world. This book is an ideal reference for network design engineers and high-level hospital executives that are thinking about adding or improving upon Wi-Fi in their hospitals or hospital systems