# The Biblioscape

Edgar Poe invented the biblioscape in the early 1830’s. A definition is difficult, because one must first believe in the biblioscape to actually “see” it; indeed, that is one of the constituent pieces of the biblioscape. It doesn’t exist (for you) if you don’t want it to. The burghers of Rotterdam don’t see it: “Don’t believe it — don’t believe a word of it.”

ur-Author

The ur-Author appears only once, and it is a message direct to the reader:

"I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock."

Author

The one who has written and sometimes published the text.

Narrator

What we imagine as a speaking voice as we read the text.

Editor

Marginalia and commentary on the text.

Text

Malleable, wavering, and shimmering but then shockingly concretized (reified). We slide from imagined scenes in our heads to thebook/journal/magaizne/gazette in our hands. A paper cut!

Bibilioscape

A cosmology based upon the phenomenology of reading as experienced in “real life”, not theory. Interdimensional conflict yields mistakes and maladaptations and mutations such as talking text (Pym).

When young, we center on the moment of discovery in our reading. When older, we desire to add context and assign meaning. Poe actively resists this approach, keeping the center — for those who Get It — solely on discovery. He is having great fun at hurling rubber chickens as well as puzzlers like the mirrors thrown in at the end of Pym.

It is very very hard to write at the point of the Trace. Poe lived it every day. See how neat his vest was, how tasteful his house, not at all what the uninitiated would surmise from the tales.

The reading consciousness

[Or a critic?]

Lampooned in Pym’s explication of the mysterious markings/engravings (with out-of-sequence figures!) in the isle of Tsalaal.

The act of reading

Personified (reified?) in “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the act of reading is morphed through the biblioscape (while existing within it) into an active force intruding into the narratoor’s “life”.

Biblioscope

An imaginary device through which one may perceive the biblioscape to read the hoax work aright.