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{"id":16967,"date":"2015-01-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1792"},"modified":"2015-01-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-01-20T00:00:00","slug":"poe-etic-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/01\/poe-etic-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Poe-etic Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

In an essay on Poe in\u00a0NYRB<\/a>, Marilynne Robinson observes that \u201cthe horror that fascinated [Poe] and gave such dreadful unity to his tales is often the inescapable confrontation of the self by a perfect justice, the exposure of a guilty act in a form that makes its revelation a recoil of the mind against itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

More elaborately, \u201cPoe\u2019s great tales turn on guilt concealed or denied, then abruptly and shockingly exposed. He has always been reviled or celebrated for the absence of moral content in his work, despite the fact that these tales are all straightforward moral parables. For a writer so intrigued by the operations of the mind as Poe was, an interest in conscience leads to an interest in concealment and self-deception, things that are secretive and highly individual and at the same time so universal that they shape civilizations.\u201d In Pym<\/em> and in his short stores,\u00a0\u201chorror breaks through deception and delusion.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"