"Poe's "The City in the Sea

ARLY critical approaches to The City in Sea assumed city is sunken and were largely confined to identifying Poe's sources. Two articles by T. 0. Mabbott, for instance, took that direction.' Roy P. Basler first noticed that city is not sunken but on a level with waters which surround it, and subsequent critics have taken Basler into account.2 But in Harvard Collected Poe, Mabbott unaccountably ignores Basler and sticks to his contention that The City in Sea is about Gomorrah. Legends, he says, have it that the ruins of Cities of Plain are close to surface at ordinary times, and in dry tops of walls and columns may be seen above water. Everything in poem fits this interpretation.' But everything does not fit interpretation. Poe's city cannot be sunken. There open fanes and gaping graves/Yawn level with luminous waves.' Clearly only very dry weather which could expose those graves would also evaporate Dead Sea. Gomorrah is not only suggested model for Poe's city. Killis Campbell thought it was Babylon, an idea which Mabbott finds unexpectedly inept, since ruins of Babylon are not near any sea, let alone in one, and since Poe could scarcely have called walls

Art · Interpretation (philosophy) · Linguistics · History · Literary, Cultural, Historical Analysis · Philosophy

• Poe’s Dark Sublime and the Supernatural

  Russell Brickey•English Studies•2019

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