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Lecture

Professor David Peimer
Edgar Allan Poe: The Mysterious World of the Mind

Sunday 3.12.2023

Summary

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, “Where was the detective story until Poe breathed life into it?” Alfred Hitchcock once said, “It’s because I liked Edgar Allan Poe’s stories so much that I began to make suspense films.” Poe was a master of storytelling; the detective, horror, gothic, dark romanticism genres all evoke mysteries of the mind. In this talk, David Peimer will examine some of Poe’s work and adaptations in film, theatre and television.

Professor David Peimer

head and shoulders portrait of david peimer looking at camera, smiling

David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.

No, his father left when he was one, and his mother died when he was two. Rita, when Edgar was a baby, David abandoned the family. Here, we get it exactly, yeah, okay. Edgar was never officially adopted, yep.

As far as I know, I don’t know how much he believed in any religion, for that matter, but he would have understood it, certainly, and the confession ‘cause he does use that as a technique in “Usher.”

Don’t think so, I mean, not particularly the persona, but I don’t think it necessarily has a direct link. I think he understood it.