ANALYSIS OF “THE RAVEN” AND “ANNABEL LEE” BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

LUISA FERNANDA GALVIS CONTRERAS

SILVIA FERNANDA ORTIZ GUTIERREZ
Students

DANIEL RICARDO PEDRAZA RAMIREZ

Professor

UNIVERSITY OF PAMPLONA

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

BACHELOR'S DEGREE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES ENGLISH - FRENCH

ACADEMIC TEXT PRODACTION IN ENGLISH

PAMPLONA

2019
 ANALYSIS “THE RAVEN” AND “ANNABEL LEE” BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

The following document is an analysis of the poems entitled “The Raven” and “Annabel

Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, which is going to be focused on: firstly, the voice and the tone; in a

second time, the dialogue, the diction and the euphemisms that they contain and finally, the verse

and the rhyme that the author uses in this written work.

First of all, Edgar Allan Poe was a North American writer, known not only for his poems

and tales but also for his dark, mysterious and macabre style. Moreover, he is widely regarded as

a central figure of romanticism in the United States and American literature.

Concerning the voice used inside each poem, Poe gives his own style in both of them; he

writes in a sad, slow, calm and cold way. In the same way, the tone used in "The Raven" is

progressive; at the beginning, it is melancholic, curious, annoyed and angry, then, resigned. While

in "Annabel Lee" is very nostalgic and the language Poe employs a mythical quality to the piece.

Secondly, in “The Raven” the narrator of this poem is going mad due to the entrance of a

in his library, constantly chasing him. The storyteller tries to beg the raven to leave him, but all the

raven will answer him is “nevermore”. This dialogue between the man and his delusion, makes his

madness to be more obviously. Otherwise, “Annabel Lee” tells the love between two people: she

and the speaker, portraying a male persona based on the poet himself. Taking into account the

diction that the author employed in both poems, “The Raven” is written in a formal way, for

instance “Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor” but also sometimes he

uses contractions, for example “’Tis some visitor,” that is the short form of “It is”. Conversely, in

“Annabel Lee” the diction is a little informal for the use of phrasal verbs, for example: “And bore

her away from me” and “To shut her up in a sepulcher”.

 In the raven is clear the utilization of euphemisms in lines such as:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

Only this and nothing more.”

The author adopts the term “napping” instead of use “sleep briefly”, in the same way, he

uses the word “tapping” instead of “striking sound”. Moreover there is an euphemism, for example,

in the word “rapping”, for saying knock the door.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulcher

In this kingdom by the sea.

Regarding the euphemisms inside “Annabel Lee”, we can see in the highlighted line the

use of “highborn kinsmen” as a replacement for “relatives”.

 In other matters, “The Raven” is composed by 18 stanzas, formed of 6 verses, named

sestet, that have the following rhyme ABCBBB. Whereas Annabel Lee is composed by 6 stanzas

formed in the next order: the first two have 6 verses, the third one contains 8 verses, the fourth

one comprises 6 verses, the fifth one comprehends 7 verses and the last one includes 8 verses.

with a rhyme that follows a pattern of ABAB.

As a conclusion, we can say that after carry out the analysis of these two well-known

poems, we could see not only the structure of its verses, the way in which the author expresses,

the type of vocabulary that he uses and the coldness that reflects his writings, but also we

achieved to understand more thoroughly the composition of these literary works, making

emphasis in the literary devices previously learned in English class.