SOURCE: Davidson, Edward H. “Aspects of a Philosophy of Poetry.” In Poe: A Critical Study, pp. 43-75. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1957.

In the following excerpt, Davidson discusses Poe as one of the major philosophic voices of nineteenth-century America.

Poetry is a form of philosophy. It distills the major philosophic precepts of its time. One poet is not expressing his whole age and time: not even Shakespeare was the total record of the Elizabethan age; yet we rightly consider Shakespeare as the distinctly summarizing and even philosophic voice of his age.

Some poets are apparently aware that they are the “voices” of their age, and, like Tennyson and Longfellow of Poe's own time, are deeply conscious of their poetic place and destiny in their age. To be aware of such distinction is, however, not to have it. In order to explore the intellectual and philosophic poetic temper of the nineteenth...