RICHARD KOPLEY is Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus, Penn State University DuBois. He has published two monographs on Poe and has been editor of Resources for American Literary Study since 1992.

[O]riginating mostly in the classroom, many of Kopley's chapters would furnish excellent texts to teach in combination with their primary materials, as they alert students to the formal aspects of literary writing. The historic and thematic breadth of the texts under discussion also adds to the persuasiveness of Kopley's argument for the relevance of the center, opening up intriguing possibilities for further chapters in the cultural history of the literary center. [...] [I]n drawing attention to a still strangely underdiscussed aspect of form, Kopley's ideas deserve to be in our center of attention.

• Introduction"Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance" in Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon PymRetracing Our Steps in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Man of the Crowd""Scrutinizing the Parchment More Closely": The Form of "The Gold-Bug" and Its Relationship to That of the Dupin TalesForm and Reform in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Earth's Holocaust"The Circle and Its Center in Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener"Chiasmus in Henry David Thoreau's WaldenThe Mythological Centers of Lewis Carroll's Alice BooksTable as Text in James Joyce's "The Dead"The Structure of Sherwood Anderson's "Hands"The Architecture of Ernest Hemingway's "The Three-Day Blow"Balance in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese FalconFraming Caesar in Raymond Chandler's The Big SleepThe Ridge of the Domino in Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a TrainThe "X in the Air" in Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"The Hybrid Center of Zadie Smith's White TeethNotesBibliographyIndex

RICHARD KOPLEY is Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus, Penn State University DuBois. He has published two monographs on Poe and has been editor of Resources for American Literary Study since 1992.

[O]riginating mostly in the classroom, many of Kopley's chapters would furnish excellent texts to teach in combination with their primary materials, as they alert students to the formal aspects of literary writing. The historic and thematic breadth of the texts under discussion also adds to the persuasiveness of Kopley's argument for the relevance of the center, opening up intriguing possibilities for further chapters in the cultural history of the literary center. [...] [I]n drawing attention to a still strangely underdiscussed aspect of form, Kopley's ideas deserve to be in our center of attention.

• Introduction"Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance" in Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon PymRetracing Our Steps in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Man of the Crowd""Scrutinizing the Parchment More Closely": The Form of "The Gold-Bug" and Its Relationship to That of the Dupin TalesForm and Reform in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Earth's Holocaust"The Circle and Its Center in Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener"Chiasmus in Henry David Thoreau's WaldenThe Mythological Centers of Lewis Carroll's Alice BooksTable as Text in James Joyce's "The Dead"The Structure of Sherwood Anderson's "Hands"The Architecture of Ernest Hemingway's "The Three-Day Blow"Balance in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese FalconFraming Caesar in Raymond Chandler's The Big SleepThe Ridge of the Domino in Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a TrainThe "X in the Air" in Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"The Hybrid Center of Zadie Smith's White TeethNotesBibliographyIndex