American terror: the feeling of thinking in Edwards, Poe, and Melville

Introduction : reopening darkness

Awakening terror : hellfire preaching, Jonathan Edwards, and the logic of revivalist affect

Critical terrors : Poe's aesthetic terror and the claims of art after Jena

The air of analysis : resolution and composition in Poe's sublime and confessional tales

The uneven balance : dialectical terror in Moby-Dick

Dread : space, time, and automata in The piazza tales

Afterword : "some dim, random way".