ABSTRACT
This chapter delimits the epoch of the modernist writer-son, starting with Rousseau, passing through Poe, and continuing up to Samuel Beckett, and then it juxtaposes this epoch with what, considering the effects of deconstruction in literary studies, has been called “The Age of Grammatology.” The chapter focuses on a little-studied text by Poe, “Morella,” where the phantasm of an eternal mother appears. It shows how, by linking this eternal mother to Plato’s identical One, and by making her the source of all philosophical and mystical knowledge, Poe exposes the connection between truth and the effaced maternal body of inscription.
