Death in American Literature (Vol. 89) - David Baguley (essay date 1982)

David Baguley (essay date 1982)

SOURCE: “Guiomar's Poetics of Death in ‘The Raven,’” in Poe Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, December, 1982, pp. 38-40.

[In the following excerpt, Baguley offers a reading of “The Raven” based on Michael Guiomar's Principes d’une esthétique de la mort. According to Baguley, the raven becomes “a harbinger … of irretrievable, even Diabolical or Infernal, destruction” in Poe's poem.]

Few groups of English-speaking critics are more thoroughly informed about critical developments in their field in France than Poe specialists.1 The primary purpose of this article is to make a modest contribution to that longstanding tradition by bringing to the attention of Poe critics and readers a book of which I have found no mention in connection with Poe studies, namely Michael Guiomar's Principes d’une esthétique de la mort.2 Admittedly, even though this book does contain...

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