by Kerry Michael Wood

Created on: July 04, 2008   Last Updated: November 26, 2011

Edgar Allan Poe earned 9 dollars for this poem, which is one of the most famous in American literature. The author was often asked to recite it at literary gatherings and loved to oblige. He would first request for the stage lights to be turned down. His recitation was so dramatic that his audience thought they could hear sounds like the shutter being thrown open and the flutter of bird wings. (Silverman, A Mournful   and Never-ending Remembrance) Short and dark-haired, Poe picked up the nickname "the Raven" as a result of these numerous performances.

Poe was inspired to use a raven in this poem because he had recently read Charles Dickens's novel Barnaby Rudge in which the title character has a pet raven. Dickens himself had such a pet, and his raven, Grip, purportedly had a vocabulary that went far beyond the single word of Poe's bird. You can see Dickens's stuffed raven and a number of Poe's belongings in an exhibit at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

No other poet has lived through such oddities as can be found in Poe's biography - his fiery temper, his ill-starred and abbreviated military career, his accusing genial and universally respected Longfellow of plagiarism, his drug and alcohol addiction, and his mysterious death. Indeed, his life story would qualify for inclusion among his creations labeled Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.

The Raven's phenomenal popularity rests not in any philosophical complexity but in its incantatory rhythm and mystical language, its employment of assonance and alliteration. The meter is trochaic. The latter word comes from Greek and means "running": an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable.

The speaker appears to be a student studying alone late at night. He is about to nod off over his "quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore" but is roused to consciousness by a tapping at his chamber door. The second stanza informs us that his reading was an unsuccessful attempt to divert his mind from sorrowing for the customary dead sweetheart who figures in so many of Poe's stories and poems. In The Raven her name is Lenore, but she seems indistinguishable from his other euphoniously named and untimely deceased beauties: Annabel Lee, Ulalume, Ligeia, Rowena, Madeline, and Morella.

The opening line of stanza three is an example of sound supporting and illustrating the sense of words. "And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain." The sibilance of those repeated "s" sounds reinforces,

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