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ALMOST EVERYONE HAS HEARD OR USED THE HACKNEYED PHRASE that something is "elegant in its simplicity." We often use the word simplicity in a variety of contexts, but we make little effort to explain it, assuming that the concept is so very elementary it needs no further amplification. Yet in one synonym finder, Rodale's The Synonym Finder (1986), the editors list sixty-six separate definitions for "Simplicity."
Paradoxically, the subject of Simplicity is very complex, and in order to keep it as concrete as possible, I will offer a generic definition of the term as Edgar Allan Poe would have likely understood it, and then show how this conception expanded or contracted according to the context in which the word appeared. My theses is that simplicity as used by Poe and the Blackwood's critics becomes a concept of the utmost complexity, well nigh impossible to nail down, despite the critics' assumption that it was a term they and their audience understood without need for qualification. The following definition I have abstracted from Professor Robert Jacobs's book Poe: Journalist and Critic (1969) with particular reference to Hugh Blair's definition (1783) of "simplicity" as one form of written composition:
Simplicity, as opposed to affectation, is "virtually the same thing as unity," having a design of "relatively small number of parts" in "contrast to gothic modes." Opposed to too much ornament, or "pomp of language," a simplicity of style manifests an "easy and natural manner" of expression.1
My intent is to demonstrate that throughout his criticism, Poe and some critical essayists contributing to Blackwood's from 1830 to 1840 relied upon simplicity as an all-encompassing critical standard. To Poe and the British critics who contributed to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine between 1830 and 1840, simplicity is an appropriate and vital requisite of literary composition. It is not surprising, moreover, that Poe and the Blackwood's critics would in their reviews and critical essays focus upon salient examples of simplicity within the context of literary genre, including poetry, the prose narrative as well as other forms of prose, and drama. Unlike Poe, Blackwood's critics often judge the fine arts, even architecture by a standard of simplicity.
Poe was not always convinced that simplicity is a desirable aesthetic. Even though he consistently points to...