The Raven (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Edgar Allan Poe
- First Published: 1845
- Type of Work: Ballad
- Genres: Poetry, Ballad
- Subjects: Love or romance, Nineteenth century, Despair, God, Gods or goddesses, Reading, Bereavement or grief, Afterlife, Birds
The Poem
“The Raven” is a ballad of eighteen six-line stanzas with decidedly emphatic meter and rhymes. The ballad is a nightmarish narrative of a young man who, bereaved by the death of the woman he loved, compulsively constructs self-destructive meaning around a raven’s repetition of the word “Nevermore,” until he finally despairs of being reunited with his beloved Lenore in another world.
Narrated from the first-person point of view, the poem conveys, with dramatic immediacy, the speaker’s shift from weary, sorrowful composure to a state of nervous...
[The entire page is 1582 words long]
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