LITERARY

CONTEXTS

Michelle P. Lima

March 07, 2024

 CONTEXT
 is anything beyond the
specific words of a literary
work that may be relevant
to understanding the
meaning.
 THREE CONTEXTS
 LINGUISTIC CONTEXT
 BIOGRAPHICAL
CONTEXT
 SOCIOCULTURAL
CONTEXT
BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
 authorial context
 places a particular
literary work within the
context of the author’s
life
BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
 considers the
circumstances
under which the literary
work was written
CONTEXTS
 Annabel Lee
It was many and many a year ago, My beautiful Annabel Lee;
In a kingdom by the sea, So that her highborn kinsmen came
That a maiden there lived whom you may know And bore her away from me,
By the name of Annabel Lee; To shut her up in a sepulchre
And this maiden she lived with no other thought In this kingdom by the sea.

Than to love and be loved by me. The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
I was a child and she was a child, Went envying her and me—
In this kingdom by the sea, Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know
But we loved with a love that was more than love— In this kingdom by the sea)
I and my Annabel Lee— That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
Coveted her and me. But our love it was stronger by far than the love
And this was the reason that, long ago, Of those who were older than we—
In this kingdom by the sea, Of many far wiser than we—
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling And neither the angels in Heaven above

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
 Annabel Lee
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
 EXAMPLE OF
BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
 The author of the poem, Annabel Lee is Edgar Poe who was born in
Boston on January 19, 1809. He is a product of a broken home. Thus when
his mother died in 1811, Henry his eldest brother lived with his
grandparents; he was adopted by Mr. John and Mrs. Rosalie Allan; and
Rosalie the youngest was taken by another family. Since Allan was a
successful merchant, Edgar grew up in good surroundings and went to
good schools in London. He went back to the United States and continued
his studies at the University of Virginia in 1826. However, he started to drink
and become in debt; thus, he quit school.
Having no money and skills, he went to Boston and joined the U.S.
Army in 1827. After proving his sincerity towards being a sergeant in the
army, his foster father signed his application to West Point. While waiting for
West Point, Edgar lived with his grandmother and his aunt, Mrs. Clemm.
Also living there was his brother, Henry, and young cousin, Virginia. In
1830, Edgar Allan entered West Point as a cadet. He disobeyed some rules
and therefore, he was dismissed from the military school.
 In 1831, Edgar Allan Poe went to New York City where he had
some of his poetry published but some were denied. Hence, he had
financial struggles. In 1835, Edgar finally got a job as an editor of a
newspaper because of a contest he won with his story, "The Manuscript
Found in a Bottle". When Edgar missed Mrs. Clemm and Virginia, he
brought them to Richmond to live with him. In 1836, Edgar married his
cousin, Virginia. He was 27 and she was 13.
As the editor for the Southern Literary Messenger, Poe
successfully managed the paper and increased its circulation from 500
to 3500 copies. In 1845, Edgar Poe became an editor at The Broadway
Journal but Virginia's health was fading away and Edgar was deeply
distressed by it. Virginia died of Tuberculosis in 1847, 10 days after
Edgar's birthday. After losing his wife, Poe collapsed from stress but
gradually returned to health later that year. Two years after his wife
died, the poem Annabel Lee was published on October 09, 1849, two
days after his death, in the New Your Tribune.
 Annabel Lee is about a beautiful memory of the Edgar’s wife,
Virginia Clemm. He recalls this memory of innocence and pure love in the
lines,
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
 The 12 lines reveal that the author and Annabel Lee have
known each other very well since childhood, I was a child
and she was a child. This fact is so true because since childhood,
Edgar and Virginia were close to each other because Edgar’s
brother was taken care of Virginia’s family. Even though they were
only children, these were really, seriously in love with each other in
the lines, And this maiden she lived with no other thought than to
love and be loved by me and Bu we loved with a love that was more
than love— I and my Annabel Lee. Based on the biography of Edgar
Allan Poe, he met his 7 year-old cousin Virginia after 4 months after
he was discharged from the army. He then married his wife who was
13 years old then but she accepted Edgar’s love expressed in an
emotional letter. A kind of love that even the angels in heaven
noticed and were jealous which is conveyed in the line, With a love
that he winged seraphs of Heaven coveted her and me.
 On the other hand, the poem also speaks of the painful
memory of Edgar. This is in a form of a blaming the angels for killing
his beloved wife. This idea is presented in the lines:
And this was the reason that, log ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
The lines, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful
Annabel Lee and That the wind came out of the cloud by night chilling
and killing my Annabel Lee present that the coldness of the area
where Edgar and Virginia lived makes her sick and then eventually
died. It was stated in Poe’s biography that while Virginia played a
piano, she started coughing and blood poured out from her mouth.
That was a symptom of tuberculosis which was known as
consumption and had killed so many of Edgar’s loved ones.
 The line, So that her highborn kinsmen came and
bore her away from me reveals that although the
relatives’ reactions towards the marriage wasn’t stated
but in that time, first cousins were unusual to marry. More
so, Virginia became a messenger of Edgar to a neighbor,
Mary Deveraux. In addition, there was no mentioned of
Edgar developing a romantic interest towards Virginia but
he wrote his Aunt Maria, Virginia’s mom to support them
since they were the only two left living. Moreover, he
supported Virginia in her schooling, piano lessons, and
tutorials. The consummation of their marriage didn’t
happen not until Virginia reached 16 years old.
 The speaker wants to show that his love for Annabel Lee was more
than infatuation. Not only a little thing like death isn’t going to separate him
from Annabel Lee but also even angels or devils couldn’t do it. This is true
because he still loves Virginia after her death that’s why, he became an
alcoholic. He even renewed his childhood romance with Sarah Royster
Shelton and planned to marry her but it didn’t happen because he is still
devoted to Virginia. These are stated in the lines:
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
EXAMPLE OF LINGUISTIC
CONTEXT
 The speaker wants to show that his love for Annabel Lee was more
than infatuation. Not only a little thing like death isn’t going to separate him
from Annabel Lee but also even angels or devils couldn’t do it. This is true
because he still loves Virginia after her death that’s why, he became an
alcoholic. He even renewed his childhood romance with Sarah Royster
Shelton and planned to marry her but it didn’t happen because he is still
devoted to Virginia. These are stated in the lines:
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
 LINGUISTIC
CONTEXT
 is a discourse that
surrounds a language
unit and helps to
determine its
interpretation.
 OBJECTS LITERAL FIGURATIVE THEME

a country whose ruler tyranny or cruelty

kingdom is a king or queen True love conquers
everything even death.

the salt water that desolation and

sea covers much of the emptiness
Earth’s surface

Annabel Lee a girl’s name special someone

a male relative older people in the

kinsmen speaker’s life and they
don’t understand them

sepulcher tomb horror of death

 SOCIOCULTURAL
CONTEXT
 is evident when literary
works respond in some way
to the society in which they
were written
 SOCIOCULTURAL
CONTEXT
 is about how a particular
literary work depicts society
 EXAMPLE OF
SOCIOCULTURAL
CONTEXT
 Living in 1805 to 1849, Edgar Allan Poe’s experienced
both worlds: the United States of America and Europe. While war
broke out in some parts of the United States of America and
even Europe, a white plague or tuberculosis was also causing
havoc during Edgar’s time. By the late 19th century, 70 to 90% of
the urban populations of Europe and North America were
infected with the TB bacillus, and about 80% of those individuals
who developed active tuberculosis died of it (Harvard University,
2017). According to the American Lung Association Crusade
(2007), Americans died of tuberculosis every day, most between
ages 15 to 44. For 56 months during the war, there were noted
6, 802 people who died in battle but 7,997 were killed by
tuberculosis. The disease was so common and so terrible that it
was often equated with death itself.
 Edgar’s family was not an exception to some of the
people who lost loved ones because of the disease. When he
was in the United States at 2 years old, he lost his mother from
the disease which was also called “consumption”. Aside from
his mother, he lost his brother, Henry from the said illness.
Moreover, he also lost another loved one in the person of
Virginia Clemm who was Annabel Lee in his poem. Annabel
Lee was killed by the cold wind which made her chill and
eventually was killed. Since tuberculosis is characterized
externally by fatigue, night sweats, and a general “wasting
away” of the victim and it is also marked by a persistent
coughing-up of thick white phlegm, sometimes blood. What
happened during the society where Edgar lived was so evident
in his poem especially about the reason why Annabel Lee died.
Furthermore, the fact that he couldn’t give any cure to the
disease that Virginia Clemm experienced is so true in the
society where lived because tuberculosis was incurable
since no practitioner was able to find the best cure and the
root of the disease not until 1882 Robert Koch’s discovery of
the tubercule baccilum which revealed that TB was not
genetic which everybody thought, but rather it was highly
contagious and was also somewhat preventable through
good hygiene. However, the discovery was late for Virginia
died in 1947. The same thing happened in the poem, the
speaker just accepted the fact that he couldn’t win Annabel
Lee over the disease she caught and he had to do is to
accept that he was about to lose her; he did at the end of the
poem.
Romanticism was the literary style which became popular during Edgar’s
time. In fact, he himself was one of the well-known romanticists. Romanticism
replaced the period of Enlightenment in American and English literature.
Romanticism is a rebellion against the Period of Enlightenment which purely
valued reasons over emotions in an imaginative form. Romanticism was
concerned with the emotions: happiness, sadness, joy, loneliness which are
inspired by nature. Thus, romantics got emotional about nature and they were
true to their emotions. Moreover, they were concerned with the individual
more than with society. Since they rebelled against the Period of
Enlightenment which was so strict when it comes to structure, romantics had
poetic experimentation which revolutionized the way poetry was written.
Imagination, emotion, and freedom are certainly the focal points of
romanticism. In addition, subjectivity, emphasis on individualism; spontaneity;
freedom from rules, solitary life rather than life in society; the beliefs that
imagination is superior reason and devotion to beauty; love of and worship of
nature; and fascination with the past, especially the myths and mysticism of
the middle ages are emphasized in romanticism.
The presence of natural things: the
sea, wind, cloud, heaven, and moon
appeals to the imagination and adds to
the emotional aspect of the poem.
Emotions such as love, melancholy,
and anger were present in the poem.
Indeed, this poem proves that the
writer Edgar Allan Poe is a romanticist.
REFLECTION
Love is indisputably one of the most powerful and wonderful feeling one
can feel while dwelling on Earth. This emotion was the reason why Taj
Mahal was built; Odysseus went back to Penelope; all of us were here;
and the son of God died on the cross. The poem shows this kind of love
—a love that stands the test of time even the afterlife. A love that grows
as time ticks and understands in spite a loved one’s shortcomings is a
kind of love that lasts for a lifetime and is beyond mortality. Hence, love
isn’t felt in an instant eye contact but it is nurtured through time. The
heart doesn’t beat just for the sake of beating but love strikes in
unexpected time and in an unexpected person. Love may come in
various sizes and faces and one might bump into a face or a size which
he or she doesn’t desire for but love knows the exact time and place.
Time never questions love in fact time conspires with it. Love knows
what’s best for every one and once it knocks on the door, welcome it
with a smile.
Hence, love as much as you can and enjoy
every minute of it before it’s too late. Don’t
wait for your ideal love because there is no
such thing as such. There’s only this right
love so once it is there in front of you, it’s
either you give it a shot or you walk away.
I have already made up my mind because
of this poem. What’s your choice then?