Locating Poe firmly within his Zeitgeist vis-a-vis the science and pseudoscience of the early nineteenth century, Edgar Allan Poe as Amateur Psychologist: A Companion Anthology simultaneously looks back from the 1830s and 1840s (when his literary career was at its height) to eighteenth-century theories and sources of information on mental illness, as well as forward to our own time to demonstrate how Poe's dramatizations of psychological diseases occasionally anticipate modern nosological classifications and twenty-first-century forensic research. This interdisciplinary collection is a companion to its predecessor, Zimmerman's Edgar Allan Poe: Amateur Psychologist (Peter Lang, 2019); it gathers the most important essays by authors-Hungerford, Stauffer, Stern, Bynum, Cleman, Hester and Segir, Phillips, Shackelford, Scheckel, Lloyd-Smith, Whipple, Butler, Uba, Walker, Zimmerman-who employ historicist and history-of-ideas methodologies. Topics include Poe's use of and eventual disillusionment with phrenology; his attitude toward the controversial "moral treatment" of the insane as well as the "insanity defense" and its connection with the new theory of "moral insanity"; the possible sources of his knowledge of theories of mind, psychopathology and related therapies; his evolution as an amateur psychologist; the connection between physiological sickness and mental distress (the psychosomatic); and the ways in which the psychological profiles of his homicidal characters look forward to modern serial killers. This companion anthology represents a significant addition to Poe scholarship and will be of interest not only to Poe specialists but also to students, teachers, and any intelligent reader interested in the history of ideas and the intersection between literature and "mental philosophy."

Edgar Allan Poe: Amateur Psychologist is the "first and foremost" major source of information dedicated to the theme of Poe and psychopathology. Its introduction, conclusion, chapters, and appendices highlight and employ the best insights from earlier and current scholars, but this text goes beyond them in its analysis of Poe's relation to mainstream psychology and its rival system, phrenology. His knowledge of this subject matter is far broader and deeper than Poe specialists have hitherto supposed; his method-contrary to the "Poe myth" according to which an alcoholic, drug-addicted, tormented artist wrote to exorcise his own pathologies-was to research mental illnesses for the sake of scientific precision and verisimilitude. We also come to appreciate the interrelatedness of the psychopathologies he illustrates and other "knowledge frames," characteristic themes, featured in his tales, such as the occult, symbology, chromatography, the "cult of sensibility," Neoplatonism, and Transcendentalist epistemology. While locating Poe firmly within the science and pseudoscience of his time, Edgar Allan Poe: Amateur Psychologist simultaneously looks back from the 1830s and 40s (when Poe's literary career was at its height) to theories and possible sources of information from the late eighteenth century, as well as forward to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to demonstrate how Poe's theories of mind, and his depiction of psychological illnesses, occasionally anticipate modern insights and therapies. The book will be of interest not only to Poe scholars but also to students, teachers, and any intelligent reader interested in psychology, psychotherapy, and the history of ideas.

An introduction to style and rhetoric (the art of persuasion) in American literature and oratory. The core of this book consists of catalogues of terms from stylistics, rhetoric, and Speech Communication (oratory), with examples illustrating the various devices taken almost exclusively from American sources--novels, plays, poetry, nonfiction, television programs. This book is essential reading for academics and nonacademics interested in U.S. culture, history, literary history, literature, and oratory--but it will be valued by anyone, scholarly or otherwise, who simply loves language and the amazing things it can be made to do in the hands of great writers and skilled persuaders. The catalogues, which often provide lively and informative mini-essays, cover the span of U.S. literary history from the early Puritans to Barack Obama, from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first, from high-brow sources (literary and oratorical masterpieces) to popular culture.

The term "Pensees" is appropriated from a book of the same name (it translates from the French as "Thoughts") by the philosopher Blaise Pascal. Pascal argues that a universe without God is terrifying and meaningless; he goes on to offer his famous-perhaps infamous is a better word-"wager," whereby he argues that belief in God is a good bet, an expedient decision. In lively and accessible prose, shot through and through with humour and satirical wit, Professor Zimmerman demolishes the choice for Christian faith by exploring some powerful moral and intellectual objections to religion. He does so partly through a look at history: the brutal outrages of the Protestant Reformation; the crimes of the Catholic Church with its thought-police, the Inquisition; the heart-breaking travesty of the Salem witchcraft delusion. He also discusses how Christianity has impeded the growth of scientific progress (the Galileo affair) and, through an interpretation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's romance-novel "The Scarlet Letter," how it can be detrimental to a person's psychological health and sense of self-worth. While "Pensees" destroys the argument for religious belief, Zimmerman does not leave the reader hanging over an existential and philosophical void: the book introduces the theme of atheistic existentialism with a chapter on Friedrich Nietzsche and ends, via an exploration of Viktor Frankl's logotherapy, with a passionate recommendation of existential humanism as a viable alternative to religion as a philosophy of life. Zimmerman ranges widely through the disciplines to come to this final recommendation-history, literature, science, philosophy, psychology, sociology-appealing both to our reason (logos) and our emotions (pathos), and drawing upon sources from the highbrow (noted authors, notable scholars) to popular culture (The Simpsons, South Park, Monty Python, George Carlin, Woody Allen). Pensees is a lively and profoundly thought-provoking read, even a life-changing-certainly a life-affirming-experience.