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The Raven

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The Raven—by Edgar Allen Poe—is widely considered to be one of the greatest poems of all time. It features striking imagery, deep symbolism, near perfect rhythm, and rhyming structure and, of course, a soul wrenching story of lost love. It was first published in 1845 in The American Review, under the pseudonym Quarles. Part of what separates The Raven from other poems is the technique of internal rhyming, in which a line can rhyme with itself as well as with the next line. Although the rhyming meter isn’t exactly the same throughout, in general the poem is written in trochaic octameter: eight trochaic feet per line with the emphasis placed on the first syllable, or one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable. For example, the first line of the poem is: “Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary”. “Once” is stressed, while the first syllable of “upon” is not. The second syllable of “upon” is stressed, while “a” is not and so on and so forth, the sum total of which make eight pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables in that line.

The greatest strengths of Poe’s masterpiece are its symbolism and allegorical capacities. In the poem, the raven for which the poem is named sits atop a bust of Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. The raven’s perch symbolizes that it speaks from a position of wisdom, whereas the unnamed narrator argues against it. The raven speaks very little, in fact only saying one word repeated several times throughout the poem: “Nevermore.” Compared to the raven, the narrator is actually quite verbose, variously accusing the raven of having demonic origins, attempting to mislead him, or imploring it to say more than the simple negation that is its only response. The narrator’s main line of inquiry concerns the fate of his beloved Lenore, who it is revealed has died. At the beginning of the poem the narrator is

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