...logopoeic critique of poetry's foundational cluster via Edgar Allen Poe's remarkable statement ". . . the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world" (Poe 1984, 19). In his essay, this conclusion is a triumphant synthesis, with the glue being Woman,...

..."tone" of all good poetry. And since death is the most melancholy of all subjects, Poe concluded that "the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world" (1082-84). P°e had merely articulated the rationale behind an aesthetic principle that had informed...

...Perhaps Poe best appreciated women's death as an occasion of male cathexis in his 1846 remark that "the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world." 1o3 Poe is only about half right, however. The image of a dead woman is one of the most political topics...

...famously wrote in his scientific analysis of "The Raven" in "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846): "[T]he death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world" (Works, 14:201). In the poem, however, the "lost Lenore," like Ligeia and Madeline Usher, refuses to...

...women. This should not be surprising, considering Poe's often quoted assertion that "the death ... of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world" (Essays 19). As Joan Dayan and Richard Gray have argued, it is not a stretch to equate the antebellum...

...Allen Poe as a focal point for her analyses of the conflation of women, death, and beauty: "the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." In dealing with the connection between death and femininity, she summarizes Eugénie LemoineLuccioni's...

...UP, 1999] 91). 11 Given Poe's infamous identification of poetic beauty with women ("the death . . . of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world" [ER 19]; "[The Poet] feels [poetry] in the beauty of women" [£/?93]), it has become a commonplace...

...with her serious problems of anemia and pneumonia" (374). True to Poe's aesthetic that "the death . . .of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world" ("Philosophy" 19), Veronica finds her recovery disappointing: Her thin cheeks were growing rounded...

...obvious reply. "And when . . . is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?" . . . the answer ... is obvious — "When it most closely allies itself...is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world."8' In Poe's Formalist account of poetic beauty, the death of a beautiful woman is the perfect...

...melancolia? Para Põe, a nascente desses dois estados se encontra no tema da morte: When it [o tema morte] closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then,...is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the vvorld - and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved...