Although he is often regarded as one of the major voices of American Romanticism, Edgar Allan Poe describes the composition of "The Raven" in his essay "The Philosophy of Composition" as a cool and logical exercise, closer in spirit to the Augustan school than the Romantics. He had recently read and reviewed a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning called "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," which begins,

Dear my friend and fellow-student, I would lean my spirit o'er you!
Down the purple of this chamber tears should scarcely run at will.
I am humbled who was humble. Friend, I bow my head before you:
You should lead me to my peasants, but their faces are too still.

Although critical opinion is divided, there is nothing else in world literature quite like "The Raven." The narrative is rather foolish, meaning that the genius of the poem lies in its unique atmosphere and style: gothic, gloomy, portentous, verbose, sumptuous, and, as one would expect from one of Poe's unreliable narrators, not quite sane.