The Use Of Gothicism In The Raven, Ulalume, By Edgar Allan Poe

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary...” What does this quote say to you? Does it bring shivers up your spine, is it dark and dreary? This is the first line from The Raven, written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1845. He was an american writer, editor, and was known best for his poetry. The Raven, is one of his famous poetry pieces. This poem is about a man who has lost his love Lenore, and a raven who comes to him, but continuously bothers him. In this poem there is an evil theme but, a romance wrapped into it, there are many sound devices with more meaning behind them than you would have thought, and lastly, there are many figurative languages that help tie the meaning together.

Gothic literature writers Poe, Irving, and Morgenstern wrote “The Raven”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Devil and Tom Walker”, and Night Circus. Morgenstern’s Night Circus shares one common gothic element of the supernatural, pain, or violence with each piece of gothic literature.

History plays an important part in shaping the lives of people and the literary works they produce. While not readily apparent, history can influence stories and their messages; it plays a pivotal role in how the authors write in their stories because events in real life affect how people think during a certain time period. Authors, like Edgar Allan Poe, used events that happened during his time to write some of his stories, and “The Raven” shows how well Edgar Allan Poe writes, which got him literary fame (Mays 107-108). William Faulkner used the events that happened around him in his stories and would later receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950 (298-299). Amy Tan, who wrote The Joy Luck Club, also uses history in her story. Stories

In normal life, people will sometimes suffer from depression or sickness caused by the loss of a loved one in a romantic or family relationship. This has been a part of life for hundreds of years and it is a way that authors like Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner and Horacio Quiroga connect with people all throughout the world. Using exaggerated scenarios, these authors communicate how much of an impact isolation or abandonment can have on a person physically or mentally decaying.

Through the use of an un-named narrator in his poem entitled “The Raven”, Poe darkly conveys feeling understood by many: hopelessness, lost love, and death. The poem follows the un-named narrator, as he reflects on, as well as struggles with, the realization of his lost love, Lenore. Like many, he tries to detract his overwhelming feelings for Lenore by investing his time in studying books. Despite his greatest efforts, he is unsuccessful. Much to his surprise, his solitude is interrupted by an unanticipated visitor. Throughout the poem, Poe uses imagery, tone, symbolism, and rhyme as a means of conveying his overall themes of undying devotion and lingering grief.

Edgar Allen Poe started with a traumatic childhood which would lead to a life of unfortunate events, ultimately causing his downhill spiral into both physical and mental illness. Throughout Poe’s work, various stages of mental distress can be seen reflected in the writings. One of his darker and more brooding pieces of literature, The Raven, dies deep into the darkest corners of Poe’s declining mental health and has strong ties to personal life events and experiences. Several symbolic references and characters depict the bereaved and deteriorating mental health of Poe within The Raven.

Gothic literature was a popular writing tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is still used today. Gothic literature explores the wicked, perverse and dark desires. Gothic conventions can include burial alive, ghosts, hysteria, ruined bodies, tales within tales, undead characters, underground spaces, and more. Gothic themes are guilt, sex, violence, death, and cosmic struggle. Gothic stories or poems should inspire terror or horror. Edgar Allen Poe was one of the many well-known Gothic writers. In his stories he uses a variety of themes to carry out the gothic theme.

I first learned of Edgar Allan Poe through his poem “The Raven”. I did not actually read the poem, but found out that it was the inspiration for the football team, the Baltimore Ravens. I found it interesting at a young age how a mere poem could influence an entire city. Poe’s literature crossed boundaries and was admired by many.

The series of unfortunate events that Edgar Allan Poe experienced in his lifetime are what influenced his writing. His poetry heavily reflects the built-up emotions that he carried within himself. He repeatedly dealt with loss, rejection, and poverty throughout his entire life. When his wife, Virginia, was deathly ill, Poe wrote his poem, “The Raven”, in which the reader can observe the speaker slowly fall into madness while grieving the death of his love, similar to Poe’s own experiences.

Poet Edgar Allan Poe, in his narrative poem, “The Raven”, articulates a story of a depressed and grieving man, that was thinking about his loss, Lenore, in the middle of the night then, he hears tapping at his door, the man sees nothing for a while then a raven flies in and, then the man starts talking to the raven, and every time the raven replied to what the man said, the raven would say “Nevermore,” this had gone over and over then it had angered the man and it reminded him more of his loss,

There is one known very influential writing style called Gothic Literature. It is not only considered to involve the horror or gothic element but is combined with romance, superstition, women in distress, omens, portents, vision and supernatural events to name a few (Beesly). The history and beginning of this era is not well known. From a few writers came this writing style that has impacted the world. A famous artists known for this type of writing is a man named Edgar Allan Poe. He wrote many short stories and poems that include horror, gothic, and romance just mentioned.

"The Raven" is the most acclaimed of Poe's sonnets, remarkable for its melodic and emotional qualities. The meter of the lyric is for the most part trochaic octameter, with eight pushed unstressed two-syllable feet per lines. Consolidated with the prevailing ABCBBB end rhyme plot and the successive utilization of inward rhyme, the trochaic octameter and the hold back of "nothing more" and "nevermore" give the lyric a melodic lilt when perused so anyone might hear. Poe additionally underscores the "O" sound in words, for example, "Lenore" and "nevermore" with a specific end goal to underline the despairing and desolate sound of the lyric and to set up the general air. At long last, the reiteration of "nevermore" gives a roundabout sense to the lyric and adds to what Poe named the solidarity of impact, where each word and line adds to the bigger significance of the sonnet.

The Raven is a poem written in January of 1845 by Edgar Allan Poe. It was written during the period of romanticism, a time when many people took the opposite ideology of rationalism, believing that imagination, nature, feeling, and nature are more important than logic and society. These ideas are infused into Poe’s poem, The Raven. However, this work is placed into the sub genre of Dark Romanticism, whose works deal with feelings rather than reason, and viewed events as symbols pointing beyond menial life. There are many elements in The Raven that correctly identify the poem in the Dark Romanticism genre. Incorporations of elements such as the supernatural, the search for truth in nature, and the exploration of evil in the poem The Raven rightly classify the work in the genre of Dark Romanticism.

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents David and Elizabeth Poe were professional actors. They had three children: Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie. When in 1817, Mrs. Poe died, Henry was taken to be raised with his grandmother, Edgar was adopted by the wealthy couple, Frances and John Allan, and Rosalie was taken by another couple. The luckiest one became Edgar because his new parents were very wealthy people, so he was able to go to different schools. When he was seventeen, he entered the University of Virginia, but because of his gambling and drinking problems he was dismissed from there.

The nineteenth century poet Edgar Allen Poe makes use of several literary devices in order to create a gloomy atmosphere in his poem “The Raven”. Alliteration, rhyme, onomatopoeia, assonance, and repetition are used to contribute to the melodic nature of the work and provide an almost “visual” representation of his gothic setting. Poe is a master of using these writing techniques. “The Raven” is one of his most popular works. This is certainly due, in part to his use of these literary devices in this piece.