Composition and plot in "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe

Essay by Suse April 2004

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Edgar Allan Poe is one of the greatest representatives of American Romanticism. He is writer and poet, which was misunderstood by America, his native country, of yesterday and is appreciated by America of today. In his works Poe writes much about the Beauty and its role in man's life. Beauty has always fascinated him, as well as other romanticists, only Poe's beauty has some elements of strangeness in it. This moment of strangeness gives a special aura of mysticism and unusualness to Poe's works. This aura will not leave the reader of Poe's tales or poems all the time. Besides this mystery, there are some more interesting peculiarities in this poet's works.

One of them is uneasy investigation of man's soul and sub-consciousness. I absolutely agree with French poet Charles Baudelaire who "hailed Poe as a writer who had made profound discoveries about the human heart and had explored the potentialities of art to express them."

[Ch. R. Anderson "American literary masters", Volume 1, New York, 1965, p. 353] Really in almost every his work Poe analyses and tries to understand one of the most complicated elements of human - mind and heart, as well. His works show that he is really very interested in the mysterious and confusing aspects of human consciousness. That is the thing that fascinates him. I think that Poe is interested in exploring the world of dreams and of nightmare. Everything that is inside one's soul - emotions, sufferings, dreams, and feelings - fascinates Poe. Actually, as it is said: "For Poe's characters, the body is a mere machine: it is effectively cut off from the consciousness which lives within, but aspires to live beyond, the body. " [Ch. R. Anderson "American literary masters", Volume 1, New York, 1965, p. 360] The main emphasis in...