ENGL 357: Southern Literature

Using everyone’s favorite 140-characters or less medium, John Cusack announced that he will be playing Edgar Allan Poe in a cinematic adaptation of The Raven: “officiali- will play edgar allen poe in fall-a-film called the raven, send any poe- gold – my way as i begin this journey into the abyss (4:06 AM Aug 27th via TweetDeck).” (Also, because John Cusack tweets from his iPhone where his spelling is fast and loose, with no spellcheck, if you don’t like spelling errors, he will block u–paraphrased from his Twitter page, which you may read at your own risk).

An article in today Entertainment Weekly, focusing on a round-up of this weekend’s non-Emmy news, linked to this article which describes The Raven project in more detail. The article also mentions, interestingly, that before John Cusack was selected to play Poe, Joaquin Phoenix and Ewan McGregor were in negotiations to play Poe, and Budapest is going to be Baltimore in 1849. Jeremy Renner (from The Hurt Locker) was supposed to play the detective but he left the project to play second fiddle to Tom Cruise in a Mission: Impossible reboot.

Meganne’s post is exactly the sort of casual articulation that I’m hoping the blog will foster. Note how she’s nicely provided the active link to the Poe Museum in Richmond. The reply from Reverend (a.ka. Jim Groom, tech specialist for UMW blogs) is also in keeping with what I’m hoping for. Again it’s a sharing of information with a casual tone and yet a great image, in this case of Poe’s room at UVA.

Just thought if anyone’s interested in learning more about Edgar Allan Poe, especially in his personal life, the Poe Museum in Richmond is suposed to be a wonderful/ interesting source. I was looking at their website earlier this afternoon and it says that they have a lot of Poe’s personal artifacts and handwritten manuscripts. According to the website, some of their artifacts include Poe’s bed from his time with the Allans, the Poe Family Bible (with some pictures), and even a lock of his hair–the blurb accompanying the picture says that about fifty people in Baltimore took hair clippings after Poe had died.

It does make one wonder what Poe’s own interior monologue would be like if he was in fact thought dead, due to an illness such as that described in “The Premature Burial” and buried alive.

This image is from late in Poe’s life but suggests the less-than-classical body and face that seemed to create anxiety for him.

For details about the class, see the posted syllabus. If you have questions, especially during this first week of add/drop, don’t hesitate to contact me. My email is grichard@umw.edu; my campus phone number is (540) 654-2365. You can also find me in Combs 337.

Know that there is a significant number of students trying to add the course; therefore, if you are thinking of dropping, please do so promptly so other students have a chance to vie for that seat.

Regards,

Professor Richards