Poe's Magazinist Career and "The Cask of Amontillado"
This paper explores Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" in terms of the author's turbulent magazinist career which has often been overlooked or omitted from the academic analysis. As he wrote of himself, Poe was "essentially a magazinist," the nineteenth century term for a working journalist, editor, and reviewer. While critics influenced by post structuralism tend to construe Poe's texts irrespective of the authorial presence, the biographical approach is not an outdated mode of investigation in Poe scholarship. Eventually, "The Cask of Amontillado" appears as a personal fantasy of revenge against the powerful cliques, editors, publishers, and the New England literary establishment as a whole in the 1840s, rather than a simplistic tale of revenge against the paternal figure.