POE: THE ART OF PLAGIARIZING

Against the background of Poe’s several allegations of plagiarism against a host of his contemporaries, notably Hawthorne, and the resulting counter allegations broadly hinting at Poe’s own acts of plagiary, presumably to Poe’s great delight, this paper posits that Poe’s accusations were not an attempt to distract his readers from his own plagiary but rather a deliberate attempt to focus attention on it. An in-depth analysis of Ligeia reveals how Poe, the quintessential parodist, uses different devices and techniques to throw clues, as it were, at the few Legrands and Dupins among his audience in the hope that this would enable them to unravel his cryptograms and ciphers and thus savour the satiric undercurrent of meaning in his tales.