The Empire Strikes Back: Poe’s Critique of US Vampiric Imperialism in “Ligeia”

Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia” has been an object of scholarly attention ever since D. H. Lawrence’s ground-breaking reading of it as a ‘vampire story’ in Studies in Classic American Literature. That attention has one critical blind spot to it, which is the lack of consideration on one of the story’s three main characters: Rowena. This paper proposes giving her a chance to be examined as yet another vampiric figure along with the narrator and Ligeia, on account of the symbiotically interdependent relationship between the vampire and the victim. The paper parallels this relationship with the complex interaction between the US and England in the 19th century, which revolves around a paradox of the former’s attempt to liberate itself from the latter’s imperial dominion while aspiring to be a new empire like the latter. The paper posits the narrator and Rowena as the US and England, respectively, and traces their struggle to take over the origin of Western imperialism which is embodied in Ligeia and to perpetuate its legacy. The ultimate goal of this paper is to show “Ligeia” as a story of Poe’s questioning the US’s unquestioning pursuit of global imperialism, thereby proving its resonance for our own time.