Fantastic Places, Angelic Spaces

Abstract

This chapter examines the implications of angelic spaces in the larger literary and ontological framework of Poe’s thought and work. Angels in Poe are not traditional Judeo-Christian sweet-singing seraphs; there are no harps and no hosannas. Instead, they create (and destroy) worlds through words; they guard and they goad; they sigh—and they mature over time. An amalgam of Neoplatonic, Gnostic, and Islamic attributes, angels in Poe bespeak an essential and fundamental place of cosmic wonder rooted squarely at the core of his poetic imagination.

A preliminary draft of this essay was presented at the “SymPOEsium on Place” at Middle Tennessee State University on April 8, 2015. Taking into account the variants in Poe’s published works quotations follow whichever version or edition was judged to be the most apt relative to the point being made and will be duly cited.