<span style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-style:italic;">Deciphering Poe</span><span> expands the contextual framework of Poe’s work and explores the subversive nature of his art: its use of codes, secret writing, and ratiocination. The essays offer fresh perspectives Poe’s debt to baroque tradition, his response to Catholicism, his tribute to philosophical idea of sublimity, his complex response to racial issues, and his controversial afterlife reception.</span><span> </span></span><br /><span><span> </span></span>