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Essay on Edgar Allan Poe and His Poem The Raven
The Raven is a remarkable poem about remembering – and a work that readers never forget. It invites our continued attention. Poe stated in his revealing but notalways-reliable essay on his writing “The Raven, ” “The Philosophy of Composition, ” that the raven had originally been a parrot ( E&R, 18). Susan Archer Weiss tells us in her informative but not-always-dependable book on Poe that he said that it had once been an owl. (Weiss 185) According to Poe, he had preferred the raven for its tone; according to Weiss, he had preferred it for the sake of the refrain, “Nevermore. ” Probably both parrot and owl have a legitimate claim.
And probably the raven had been encouraged by Poe's encounter with the raven in Charles Dickens's novel Barnaby Rudge. Poe had reviewed the book in 1841 and 1842: he first stated that the raven's “croakings are to be frequently, appropriately, and prophetically heard in the course of the narrative, ” but he later shifted his view, wishing that its “croakings might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama” (Poe 222, 243). Perhaps he was coming to consider how Dickens's raven might be improved upon effectively.
İn 1844 Poe was working on a version of “The Raven” close to that finally published since it was in that year Elizabeth Barrett Barrett's poem “Lady Geraldine's Courtship” appeared. This work, reviewed by Poe in early January 1845, offered the metrical model for “The Raven. ” Indeed, Poe candidly acknowledged in “The Philosophy of Composition” that he had offered “no originality” with regard to the poem's rhythm or meter ( Pe 21). Suggestively, Poe's 1845 collection The Raven, and Other Poems was dedicated to Barrett. It should be added that Poe is reported to have said that his poem had been prompted by a particular line of Barrett's poem...............
