The Metaphorical Trifecta in How to Write a Blackwood Article Jamie Leung College

Poe’s How to Write a Blackwood Article portrayed a symbiotic relationship between the soul, the body and money that drove the Victorian audience to search for an unattainable form of happiness in literature. Poe described the sought-after exhilaration in contemporary trends—at that time—to be so far extricated from real life that desperate writers would risk their well-being for a profitable story. And he questioned the reasoning and purpose behind the pursuit of such experiences with little sustainable contribution to culture and society, other than pure entertainment. The life-threatening stakes posed in How to Write a Blackwood Article were metaphorical to the quixotic themes writers pursued, which to an extreme extent could threaten the collapse of Gothic literature. Poe had not exempted his own work in this satire—guilty—but had advocated grounding this literary movement back to relevant cultural, historical and political context.

From the beginning, Zenobia reaffirmed the “Greek” beliefs throughout, alluding to iconic philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato and Socrates who debated the topic of dualism between soul and body. However, the mind creates the imagination, comparable to how the body is a vessel for the soul....