Virginia Historical Society Podcast

On June 4 at noon, Barbara Anne Cantalupo delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Poe You May Not Know." Although Edgar Allan Poe’s name is most often identified with stories of horror and fear, Barbara Cantalupo's talk will reveal the less familiar Poe—the one who often goes unrecognized or forgotten—the Poe whose early love of beauty was a strong and enduring draw. Poe’s “deep worship of all beauty,” expressed in an 1829 letter to John Neal when Poe was just twenty, never entirely faded, despite the demands of his commercial writing and editorial career. “The Poe You May Not Know” gives us a look at Poe’s connection to such visual beauty, his commitment to “graphicality” (a word he coined), and his knowledge of the visual arts. Barbara Cantalupo, professor of English at Penn State Lehigh Valley, is the editor of The Edgar Allan Poe Review and author of Poe and the Visual Arts.