Friday, July 4, 2025
1:45 pm-3:15 pm
Sorbonne Université International Conference Center
On July 4, 2025, Professor Bill Engel will represent Sewanee at the 4th International Poe and Hawthorne Conference in Paris, with a presentation on “Embodied Cognition in Poe and Montaigne: Imagining Feline Consciousness.” Poe’s own reported preoccupation with observing his cat becomes a vehicle concerning embodied cognition to entertain the “shadowy nature” of “the boundary between instinct and reason”(Alexander’s Weekly Messenger 4-5 [January 29, 1840]: 2).
While we cannot doubt the verisimilitude of Poe’s narration about his clever “puss” opening a thumb-latch door any more than we question the veracity of Montaigne's amusing himself with his cat (Essais (L'édition 1595), ed. Villey II.12, 452), important questions about cognitive embodiment, anthropomorphism and interspecies communication are raised in both instances. Although it is hard not to see Montaigne mirrored in Poe’s reflection on “one of the most remarkable black cats in the world,” something more substantial is being reflected back to the reader, in a sort of tactical mise en abyme, about imagining feline consciousness--a theme resumed in the 20th century by Martin Buber in the third section of I and Thou.
For more about the life and work of Professor Bill Engel, see his website at: williamengel.org
