The poetics of (macabre) space

I think some combination of Bachelard's "phenomenology" and Buell's suggestion that we open up ecocriticism to human-constructed environments could provide a way of reading The Narrative of AGP "ecocritically." As I'm not entirely sure how to do this, I'll just throw out a few reasons why I suspect these lenses (131 be damned) could be useful:

As per usual, Poe is dwelling on dark, claustrophobic, and labrynthine spaces; but I think what makes the ship a particularly interesting one is that it is a portable, suffocating enclosure in the midst of the most open, unconstructed, arguably least human space on earth. There's something to be said about this juxtaposition between unremitting nature and its undifferentiated space and the, what Poe I think is suggesting to be an almost wholly unconscious desire to bring our claustrophobic shells into the middle of it. In any event, I find it interesting how this portable home becomes much like the turtle in Bachelard's anecdote; starving men, like his wolf, facing a shell full of food that will not, initially at least, yield up its nourishment. Unlike the wolf, though, the men are fecklessly digging in their own shell; the frustration caused by its failure as a shared home leading them to eat each other. And while this interpretation could use some fleshing out, there's enough evidence that Poe is thematizing the shell, I think, to make this a worthwhile line of thought. Of course the sick crew eats the tortoise, but also the barnacles on the keel, crabs, etc. (I find the pickling of the turtle in jars of vinegar--and the dependence on the crew on tenuously secured containers in general--though practical, also somehow uncanny, or creepy...there's just something going on with the idea of containment in general).
And then there is the lengthy description of the nests of penguins and albatross, which finds Poe at his most Thoreauian: "In short, survey it as we will, nothing can be more astonishing than the spirit of reflection evinced by these feathered beings, and nothing surely can be better calculated to elicit reflection in every well-regulated human intellect" (115/Chapter XIV). The curious emphasis here on "calculated" reflection and the "well-regulated human intellect" suggests, at least, that Poe sees a parallel between the mathematically ordered dwelling places of birds and human beings. Perhaps the astonishing reflection is that the latter species seems to be faring not quite as well in its well-ordered dwellings. It may be that Poe's lengthy, seemingly digressive, accounts of ship construction and cargo holds has something in common with his also, seemingly digressive accounts of tortoises inhabiting their shells and birds building their nests. Though, this narrative is so stylistically heterogeneous that any suggestion that it is the product of a "well-regulated" intellect may be out of the question (which charge could probably be leveled at this blog post).
One other thing...
it is interesting, maybe from a Bachelardian angle, to consider how the ship in AGP (and elsewhere) is a fertile site for daydreams and figuration. Ghosts, dreams, visions, all staples of the ship. Although I got lost in exactly what Bachelard's argument about the relationship between reverie and the "function of inhabiting" was, it seems to me that all of the fantastical, dreamlike stuff we are getting here is related to how human beings organize themselves with relation to their built environments. Arthur's daydream on the theme of motion could be one place to pick up on this relationship. Even though Bachelard finds discussing the turtle as the "animal with the house that walks" the subject of "facile commentary", I think Poe is somehow concerned with human beings as creatures with walking houses; this daydream would be my first piece of evidence If I were to try to build this case:
"I fell into a state of partial insensibility , during which the most pleasing images floated in my imagination; such as green trees, waving meadows of ripe grain...I now remember that, in all which passed before my mind's eye, motion was a predominant idea. Thus, i never fancied any stationary object, such as a house, a mountain, or anything of that kind; but windmills, ships, large birds, balloons, people on horseback, carriages driving furiously, and similar moving objects, presented themselves in endless succession" (74/Chapter IX).
So anyhow it seems to me that this book requires an ecocriticism that is concerned not with place, or some specific local, but with portability and motion.