Abstract

The aim of this essay is to discuss Rorty’s sceptical view of knowledge as representation, particularly as expressed in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity as a framework for a rereading of Poe’s poetics. Despite the differences in their historical context, this comparative approach discloses Rorty’s and Poe’s shared anti-representationalism, which subverts the accepted notions of the relationship between language and reference on the one hand, and between the world as referent and its poetic representation on the other.