The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 41 pages of analysis & critique of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 41 pages of analysis & critique of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
This section contains 10,707 words
(approx. 36 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Carol Peirce and Alexander G. Rose III

SOURCE: “Poe's Reading of Myth: The White Vision of Arthur Gordon Pym,” in Poe's Pym: Critical Explorations, edited by Richard Kopley, Duke University Press, 1992, pp. 57-74.

In the following essay, Peirce and Rose explore Poe's use of Celtic mythology in Pym, finding that it transforms the voyage narrative into a “revelation of symbolic vision.”

Toward its close, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym seems to suffer a sea change. In its early chapters, the work appears a straight, factually oriented account. However, as the novel progresses toward the South Pole and the conclusion, Pym seems to many readers to take on redemptive or apocalyptic imagery. Indeed, it has a strange mythic quality all its own—changing from a gripping sea yarn to a revelation of symbolic vision.

Myth in literature is characterized as either having unconsciously survived or being consciously revived.1 This essay is not concerned, however, with...

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This section contains 10,707 words
(approx. 36 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Carol Peirce and Alexander G. Rose III
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Critical Essay by Carol Peirce and Alexander G. Rose III from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.