Edgar Allan Poe and American Sea Fiction

In The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), Edgar Allan Poe brilliantly riffs on the 19th century sea narrative, incorporating common literary devices of the genre and true tales of disaster into a delicious, terrifying, absurd and dream-like horror story.

Wrecks, mutinies, starvation, cannibalism, ghost ships…the list goes on. What could go wrong, did go wrong, for Pym and his companions. Eventually they are deceived by a seemingly peaceful, black skinned tribe on an island in the South Pole, as the story manifests white racist fears.

In James Fenimore Cooper and the Development of American Sea Fiction, Tomas Philbrick states that “Whatever its failings as a work of art or as a coherent study of the meaning of the sea, Poe’s short novel… occupies a pivotal place in the development of American nautical fiction” (168).

What texts and events influenced Poe when he wrote Pym? And how did writers after Poe continue to riff on Pym in their own work? Below, check out a timeline of the influencers and the influenced.