The Humanities Index

There’s something just satisfying about reading Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps it’s the visceral freeing of the id to do what it wants vicariously though characters like Montressor, Usher, and the Red Death. Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” takes the reader on a psychological journey through the mind of Montresor; his and Fortunato’s descent in to the catacombs [...]

Shelley, in his A Defense of Poetry, begins by making a distinction between reason and imagination: “Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole” (109). Shelley likens reason to analysis and imagination to synthesis; reason examines the workings of particulars, [...]

Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole.

Goethe’s Faust is a complex work of literature that is concerned with the place of humanity in the cosmos.

What is a poet? To whom does he address himself? And what language is to be expected from him?