A Criticism upon E.

ALLAN POEs The Raven

The Raven is narrative poem that written by famous American Writer Edgar Allan Poe
and it was published in the year of 1845. Poe was a southerner and he was famous for his own
dark metaphysical vision, musical rhythm of his poems and stylized, metrical language. He
was born on January 19, 1809 as the second son of a professional actor family. But his father
left his family in 1810 and his mother died in the following year. The orphaned child was
taken by the couple of John and Frances Allan. He attended to University of Virginia but quit
because of the money problems and never took a proper education. In other words, he passed
his early years with insecurity. In 1927, he joined to army and in the same year started to his
writing career by publishing his first collection of poems Tamerlane and Other Poems. The
second volume of his poems appeared in 1929 with the name of Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and
Minor Poems. Later on, he was changed his focus and turned to the Prose. In 1935, he
married with his 13 years old cousin, Virginia Clemm and in 1945 he published his famous
narrative poem The Raven.

The poem attracted the attention of literary critics with its musical style, stylized
language and supernatural atmosphere. It tells the story of a haunted, sleepless narrator who
has been mourning for a long time for the death of his beloved love, Lenore. In a December
night, suddenly a talking raven comes to visit him from the shadows into his doorstep and
disturbs him in his chamber by tapping his door. Its mysterious visit leads the miserable lover
into a total madness. The raven comes and sits on a bust of Athena and investigates his misery
with its constant repetition of the word Nevermore. But behind the background of the poem,
Poe uses several themes such as a tragic death of a beautiful woman at a young age, the grief
of a young man and his affection for his lost love and his transcendentalism. These are the
common themes of his works. In the poem, the raven stands there as an embodiment of
constant grief caused by loneliness and a lost love. Through this loneliness, a ghost presence
appears in the form of the raven with supernatural ability of talk which he borrowed from the
C. Dickens Barnaby Rudge. His poem has become one of the most known and most
famous poems of American Literature and with this popularity received so many critical
arguments from the literary critics. After its publication, it became a very popular poem on the
both sides of Atlantic Ocean with its dramatic and fantastic imagination, emotional density
and its strictly metrical language.

Much of his stories, like the story of The Raven has classified by the critics as the tales
of horror. His stories, mostly deals with the strange aspects of psychological process, madness
and extreme emotion and much of them contains his melancholy, rhythmical rigid verses,
classical references, a dark vision or imagery and his fantasy. In his stories, we can see the
doomed and introspective aristocrats as characters. These are dark and gloomy characters and
they do not try to socialize with the society but instead of socializing, they mostly prefer to
live in dark castles or libraries filled with strange artworks and bizarre but oriental devices.
His Gothic settings, reflects the shattered psyches of his disturbed and antisocial characters.
We can see these aspects, in his raven, because the woeful lover of the poem lives in a dark,
attic like a house as alone and there is also a Pallas Bust in the poem which the raven sits on.
 When we come to analyze his poem, he is giving us an impression that the woeful
lover is a student or scholar and the bust of Pallas stands there for confirming this situation
because the goddess Athena was the Goddess of Wisdom back in ancient Greek. Moreover,
the word lore also gives us this impression. But he is also telling us that, this narrator is
trying to read something with curiosity which is called as forgotten lore and that is refers to
the black magic. And this situation also gives us an impression about the psyche of narrator
and his choice of darkness. The word of bleak December also underlines this darkness. Poe
also completes his darkness image with the usage of a devil bird, his Raven. He says that this
devil bird comes from the Nights Plutonian Shore. We know that the Romans called the
God of Underworld as Pluton. So he is trying to tell that, this terrible beast is comes from the
darknesss heart as a messenger from afterlife. His raven comes from the Dickenss Barnaby
Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty but Poes raven is more likely a symbol of Mournful
and Never-ending Remembrance as he said it. The purpose of this creature is to give prophecy
from the afterlife for the narrator. In other wise, the creature is just a reflection of the mind of
this mournful lover and this bird reminds to narrator his lost lover. The character of raven is
also a reference to Ovids Metamorphoses. Metamorphosis was written by Ovid in the golden
age of Roman Empire and it was a collection of short stories that about the transformation of
bodies and one of its stories is about the transformation of raven. In that story, the God of the
Silver Bow, Apollo punishes the raven and changes its color from white into the black for
delivering a message of a lover's unfaithfulness. As you can see that, his raven and its purpose
comes from this stories. Therefore, the narrator calls the Raven as Prophet and the thing of
evil. He also mentions about the Balm of Gilead in the poem. It is a reference to a biblical
story. The balm of Gilead is a kind of resin and it is used for medicinal purposes. So in that
part of the poem, the narrator asks for the Balm of Gilead to the Raven for finding a cure for
the death of his beloved with his shattered and ruined mind state. He also wonders that if
Lenore has been accepted into heaven by referring to Aidenn (Garden of Eden). At the end
of this bizarre poem, the narrator suddenly realizes that continuing to this conversation is
pointless and decides to send this Raven back into the darkness where the place which it
always belongs, without leaving a trace or not even leaving a feather. He orders the raven to
get off the statue which on his doorstep and go to hell. But the raven does not move from
there and stands still above on the Pallas bust above his chamber door. And he realizes that
the raven is actually, his imprisoned soul. He understands that his grief will never leave him
or he will never ease his pain which he desires with a nepenthe. He knows that he shall be
lifted but he also knows that it is not possible and summarizes this situation with the final
word of Nevermore.

When we come to its formal structure, we see that the poem consists of eighteen
stanzas and there are six lines in each stanza. The meter of the poem is Trochaic Octameter. It
is a kind of poetic meter that has eight trochaic metrical feet in each line and each foot has one
stressed syllable and one unstressed syllable. The best known example of this meter is
obviously Poes The Raven which we are talking about. The rhyme scheme of the poem is
ABCBBB, or AA,B,CC,CB,B,B. In every lines the B line and the final words such as Lore,
Lenore, Evermore or Evermore puts a big emphasis to the final syllables and makes the
rhythm of the poem more effective. It is a heavy formulaic or rigid poem and it is considered
as an artificial because of its systematic lines.

Many of the critics has been always found the work as fascinating and focused their
attention to its genesis instead of its supreme technical and musical style. Poe also tried to
explain the genesis of its poem in his The Philosophy of Composition which he published in
1846. It was literary theory written by Edgar Allan Poe as intention for explaining how to
write a well-designed poem. In this literary theory, he argues that, for writing a good poem,
the unity of effects and the logical methods are necessary and they are the critical
considerations. For explaining his theory, he shows The Raven as his example. In his
literary theory, he explains his illustrates his intention as creating a different type of writing
style which depends on logical for creating it in a contrast with the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings.

His writing style was rigidly logical and his poetical philosophy was based on three
principles; the length, the method and the unity of effect. He argued that in his essay, all the
literary efforts must be short and there must be a distinct limit of all the literary arts. His
emphasis was especially on the poetry by explaining this rule. He also argued that, the poetry
is all about metrical, methodical and musical schemes and it has nothing to do with the artistic
intuition. Therefore, his style is in a contrast with the movement of literary romanticism and
instead of passions and feelings he gave his emphasis upon the rhyme schemes for creating
the musical effect of his poems. He concludes his essay by saying that a writer should start to
write his work only after deciding its end or final for creating a kind of emotional effect which
he called as unity of effect. He argues that, once this effect determined, the writer should
decide all the other things including tone, theme, characters, setting, plot and conflict. At this
moment, he suggests that, the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic of the
world and he explains in his essay thats why he used this topic in his The Raven. Maybe
this topic seemed very logical to him because of his life experiences and traumas but we dont
know this. We know that he had lost his mother at an early age. Moreover, he had also lost his
foster mother and his beloved wife Virginia. Therefore, many critics comments about that, the
true poetry can only be attainable that by the eradication of female beauty for Edgar. A. Poe.
In his essay, he says that The Raven is his attempt to write "a poem that should suit at once
the popular and the critical taste." He claims that he considered every aspect in his poem from
its setting to its words and its plot. He argues that, in the poem, the bird seeks a shelter
because it is night time. It sits on a bust of Pallas (Athena) for giving an impression that the
narrator is a student. The bust is pale for contrasting the color of the bird. The words of
Lenore, evermore and nevermore is similar to each other and by using this repetitions he
creates his unity of effect. Poe says, even the ravens itself means mournful never ending
remembrance for giving some biographical details of his life. Shortly, he claims that
everything which inside of his poem calculated by him before its creation. As he claimed that,
his poem appeals to both critical and popular tastes because of its logical and methodical
writing style. Therefore, there is no spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings in poetry. For
these reasons, it is widely accepted as Poes one of the most characteristic works in theme,
tone, plot, characters and plot.
 The title of the poem takes its name from its mysterious creature which stands on the
bust of Pallas. And it has a powerful gloomy atmosphere that is suitable for the thoughts of
the darkness which the narrator always talks about. Poe does not tell what exactly this room
is, but it gives an impression that a kind of old library which full of old and dusty books. His
work was full of idioms, references, symbols, despair, gloom, dark thoughts, elegy, mourning,
internal rhyme schemes and sound repetitions and through these devices his intention was to
create a kind of hypnotic, mystic, doubtful and a dreary poem. He published his poem on 29
January 1945 and the publication of his poem made him widely popular in his life but it did
not bring him much financial success. Yet again through his publication of his poem, The
Raven, he earned himself a world-wide fame. He also tried to create this poem by using a
technical method because for him poetry was a business of repeated sounds. Therefore his
poem was not a romantic poem in spite of its high fantasy. He is claiming that he wrote this
poem by using rational methods and through these methods he wanted to create something
different, something beyond explanation. Nevertheless, by using his technique, he created one
of the best masterpieces of American Literature and earned himself an unshakable place
among the other famous writers such as Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville
and Howard Philip Lovecraft.