Everybody�s favorite Edgar Allan Poe poem. Endlessly quoted (quoth?

) and frequently
parodied. The only famous example of trochaic octameter in English verse, although
Poe borrowed the meter and rhyme structure from Elizabeth Barrett Browning�s �Lady
Geraldine�s Courtship.�

The poem describes a man�s tormented obsession with his lost love, Lenore. Is the
raven who mocks him real, or just a figment of his increasingly unhinged
imagination?

Poe�s bird was inspired partly by the pet raven, Grip, in Charles Dickens�s Barnaby
Rudge. One scene in particular bears a resemblance to several moments in the poem:

�What was that? [Grip] tapping at the door?�

�No,� returned the widow. �It was in the street, I think. Hark! Yes. There again!
'Tis some one knocking softly at the shutter. Who can it be!�

Poe�s raven may also draw on mythological and biblical sources.

Poe elaborately detailed the writing process behind �The Raven� in his essay �The
Philosophy of Composition,� which claims that �the work proceeded step by step, to
its completion, with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical
problem.�

Christopher Walken reads �The Raven�:

James Earl Jones reads �The Raven�: