The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and Related Tales

Edgar Allan Poe

Oxford University Press, May 21, 1998 - Fiction - 336 pages

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is an archetypal American story of escape from home and family which traces a young man's rite of passage through a series of terrible brushes with death during a fateful sea voyage. But it also goes much deeper, as Pym encounters various interpretative dilemmas, at last leaving the reader with a broken-off ending that defies solution. Apart from its violence and mystery, the tale calls attention to the act of writing and to the problem of representing truth. Layer upon layer of elaborate hoaxes include its author's own role of posing as ghost-writer of the narrative; Pym - his only novel - has become the key text for our understanding of Poe. This edition offers eight short tales which are linked to Pym by their treatment of persistent themes - fantastic voyages, gigantic whirlpools, and premature burials - or by their ironic commentary on Poe's mystification of his readers. - ;And now I found these fancies creating their own realities, and all imagined horrors crowding upon me in fact'. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is an archetypal American story of escape from home and family which traces a young man's rite of passage through a series of terrible brushes with death during a fateful sea voyage. But it also goes much deeper, as Pym encounters various interpretative dilemmas, at last leaving the reader with a broken-off ending that defies solution. Apart from its violence and mystery, the tale calls attention to the act of writing and to the problem of representing truth. Layer upon layer of elaborate hoaxes include its author's own role of posing as ghost-writer of the narrative; Pym - his only novel - has become the key text for our understanding of Poe. This edition offers eight short tales which are linked to Pym by their treatment of persistent themes - fantastic voyages, gigantic whirlpools, and premature burials - or by their ironic commentary on Poe's mystification of his readers. -

What people are saying

Review: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket & Related Tales (World's Classics)

User Review  - Ben Eldridge - Goodreads

Poe's only novel is essentially an informal treatise on the very act of narrative creation. There are levels of fictionality on display within The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym that are at times ...

Review: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket & Related Tales

User Review  - Jack Vinson - Goodreads

I picked this up on recommendation from somewhere. It's a seafaring adventure - Edgar Allen Poe's only full length novel, apparently. The details about ship-board life are beyond anything I've ever ...

Contents

• MS FOUND IN A BOTTLK 1 79: 179
• MYSTIFICATION: 203
• A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM: 223
• THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM: 240
• THE BALLOON HOAX: 256
• THE PREMATURE BURIAL: 270
• Explanatory Notes: 285

About the author

Gerald J. Kennedy is Professor at Louisiana State University. He is the author of

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and Related Tales; Oxford World's Classics; The world's classics
• Author: Edgar Allan Poe
• Editor: J. Gerald Kennedy
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, reissue
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998
• ISBN: 0192837710, 9780192837714
• Length: 336 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Classics