In this book, Charity McAdams discusses how Edgar Allan Poe uses music to set the scenes of his stories and poems. McAdams shows how the musical ideas used by Poe mimic the ways other authors, particularly Romanticists, used music in their works to represent a spiritually ideal artistic realm, and ultimately, how we can look at Poe's poems and stories through music to unpack the mysticism of Poe's work.

Charity McAdams is professor in the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Is This Divine? No, This is the Voice of a Woman.
Madame Malibran: The Very Genius of Music
"The Spectacles": In Imitation of Malibran
The Alchemy of Unreason: Well and Strenuously Sung!
2 Another Kind of Musician Altogether
"The Fall of the House of Usher": The Guitar and the Ballad
The Case of the Ballad
"Ulalume": Faëry Ballet
Indefinitiveness: The True Musical Expression
"Annabel Lee": The Sounding Sea
"The Haunted Palace": Spirits Moving Musically
3 An Almost Magical Melody
"Ligeia": Siren Who Never Sings
4 The Wantonest Singing Birds
Poems as Songs in Language, Aim, and Purpose
Ventum Textilem: The Veil of the Soul
Mere Words: Birdsong
"Fanny": Wild Death Song, Sweet and Clear
"Romance": Unless It Trembled with the Strings
"Nameless Here For Evermore": To Sing Well is to Avoid Naming
5 The Starry Choir (And Other Listening Things)
Music of the Spheres: Music, in Our Own More Limited Sense of the Word
"Al Aaraaf": Music of the Passion-Hearted
"Israfel": Sweetest Voice of All God's Creatures
Power of Words: The Naiad Voice that Addresses Them From Below
6 But Gradually my Songs They Ceased
"The Cask of Amontillado": The Conical Cap and Bells
"The Bells": What a World of Solemn Thought Their Monody Compels
"A Pæan": The Requiem for the Loveliest Dead
"The Masque of the Red Death": The Music Swells, and the Dreams Live, and Writhe
Conclusion
Appendix
An Inherited Musical Talent
The Idea without Music: Decontextualizing Poe
'The Rational Agent of Enchantment Itself': Absolute Music and the Music of the Spheres
Bibliography