The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe | Daniel E. Lees (essay date winter 1970)
Daniel E. Lees (essay date winter 1970)
SOURCE: Lees, Daniel E. “An Early Model for Poe's ‘The Raven.’” Papers on Language and Literature 6, no. 1 (winter 1970): 92-5.
[In the following essay, Lees suggests that the inspiration of Poe's poem, “The Raven,” may have come from a poem titled “The Owl,” published in 1826.]
One of the most convincing sources for Poe's “The Raven” is a poem that appeared anonymously in Fraser's Magazine for March, 1839. The poem, first noted by Joseph Jones, is titled “The Raven; or the Power of Conscience.”1 Besides bearing an obvious titular resemblance to Poe's poem, Fraser's raven serves as gadfly to the protagonist, a perpetrator of a fratricide, by continually croaking the dead brother's name. This poem, then, thematically offers a claim as a possible inspirational source.
Yet the origins of a demoniac bird as a symbol of conscience are older than...
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