eprintid: 10201278
rev_number: 7
eprint_status: archive
userid: 699
dir: disk0/10/20/12/78
datestamp: 2024-12-10 11:22:47
lastmod: 2024-12-10 11:22:47
status_changed: 2024-12-10 11:22:47
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
sword_depositor: 699
creators_name: Beasley-Murray, Tim
title: Poe on Brick Lane
ispublished: pub
divisions: UCL
divisions: B03
divisions: C01
divisions: K22
note: This is an Open Access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
abstract: What parallels might there be between Poe’s story of a proud prince and his noble acolytes who shut themselves away to take refuge from the red death and the twenty-first-century non-fiction story of Covid-19? The author of this piece take a personal, auto-fictional approach to this question, narrating his own experience of locking down with his family in London’s vibrant East End. If Prospero and his nobles devote themselves to revelry and aesthetic pleasure, leaving the poor beyond the abbey’s walls to die, so the author’s privilege manifested itself in an ability to turn to literature—and indeed, to Poe—and to the communities of online seminars, while the homeless and marginalized of the city around him were left to fend for themselves. This piece uses these parallels to ask questions about the sorts of fantasy that Poe’s tale articulates: a fantasy “from below” of come-uppance for the rich and powerful, and a fantasy “from above” of the aesthetic as anaesthetic and a means of combatting death. And it concludes by asking what has changed when the story comes to an end and when Covid-19/the red death has passed: what sort of response might there be to the inequalities that the fictional story of the red death and the reality of Covid-19 reveal and emphasize?
date: 2023-05-03
date_type: published
publisher: Liverpool University Press
official_url: https://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.419
oa_status: green
full_text_type: pub
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
elements_id: 2279668
doi: 10.3828/mlo.v0i0.419
lyricists_name: Beasley-Murray, Timothy
lyricists_id: TMBEA21
actors_name: Beasley-Murray, Timothy
actors_id: TMBEA21
actors_role: owner
full_text_status: public
publication: Modern Languages Open
volume: 2023
number: 1
article_number: 21
issn: 2052-5397
citation:        Beasley-Murray, Tim;      (2023)    Poe on Brick Lane.                   Modern Languages Open , 2023  (1)    , Article 21.  10.3828/mlo.v0i0.419 <https://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.419>.       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10201278/1/Poe%20on%20Brick%20Lane.pdf