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Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"

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Re-Reading Questions

Text on p. 982 of the full Ninth Edition and p. 982 of the shorter Eight Edition.

Re-Reading Questions

1. Read "The Philosophy of Composition" and consider how it might help you understand aspects of the poem. Are there questions you have about the poem or passages that you have noticed which he does not address?

2. In the essay, Poe draws his reader's attention to several aspects of the poem, especially the refrain, the progression of the speaker's questions, and the versification scheme. He notes that the refrain "must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt: and these considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous vowel, in connection with r as the most producible consonant." Look for other words in which the sound reflects and reinforces the sense, as this one does. Pay special attention to the alliteration, the assonance and consonance, and the internal rhyme as well as examples of onomatopoeia, such as "rapping, tapping" or "silken sad uncertain rustling." What other aspects of the poem do you see which are not mentioned or explored in the essay?

3. Poe claims in the essay, "It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referrible either to accident or intuition—that the work proceeded step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem." Many readers have problems with this statement, although they recognize that the poem is carefully crafted. For example, Poe says of the meter:

The former is trochaic—the latter is octametre acatalectic, alternating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrameter catalectic. Less pedantically—the feet employed throughout (trochees) consist of a long syllable followed by a short: the first line of the stanza consists of eight of these feet—the second of seven and a half (in effect two-thirds)—the third of eight—the fourth of seven and a half—the fifth the same—the sixth three and a half.

What do you think about this description? It is technically precise, yet it does not mention other characteristics of the rhythm, especially how it speeds up or slows down to fit the movement of the poem, something you hear as you read it aloud.

4. The raven is a key point in the poem because it is "the bird of ill omen" and can speak, or rather mimic, like a mockingbird or a parrot. Look at the speaker's questions and how the expected answer becomes a confirmation of what the speaker knows but cannot or will not say for himself and, as Poe says, gradually leads to a "phrensied pleasure" and a "most delicious because the most intolerable of sorrow." Why does the speaker find "pleasure" in anticipating the raven's answer? Why is it perched on a bust of Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom—presumably forever?

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