SOURCE: "Edgar Allan Poe, Poet-Critic," in Nineteenth-Century American Poetry, edited by A. Robert Lee, Barnes & Noble, 1985, pp. 80-98.

In the following essay, Von Hallberg argues that Poe should be studied as a poet-critic instead of an academic critic. As a poet-critic Poe's focus is on constructing principles of literary criticism that can carve out a unique place for American literature, rather than on tracing the general development of literary history in the larger European context.

We are lamentably deficient not only in invention proper, but in that which is, more strictly, Art. What American, for instance, in penning a criticism, ever supposes himself called upon to present his readers with more than the exact stipulation of his title—to present them with a criticism and something beyond? Who thinks of making his critique a work of art in itself—independently of its critical opinions?

Who indeed? Surely not...