Symbolic Transitions as Modalities of Aging

The nineteenth-century American author Edgar Allan Poe published a series of reviews of the literary works of the Victorian writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton that evince that Poe was particularly well-acquainted with some of Bulwer-Lytton’s novels. Given these preliminary signs of intertextuality, this book is grounded within the theoretical framework of comparative literature, and particularly, of transatlantic literary studies, which focus on the historical influence existing between British and American literature years after the American War of Independence, as well as the theoretical frameworks of biographical studies and aging studies, being especially based on the premise that the perceptions of aging are culturally conditioned. Taking into consideration these frameworks, this book aims to identify the intertextualities existing between the literary works of Poe and Bulwer-Lytton, and detect shared symbolic transitions in the lives of both authors from their youth until their late years, which are reflected in their works, with the ultimate purpose of decoding the different modalities of aging that the authors displayed as symptomatic of their respective cultures.