Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer born in 1809 in Boston. He became orphaned as a child and was taken in by John and Frances Allan, though he was never formally adopted. Poe struggled financially throughout his life and worked as a literary critic and editor but is now best known for his poems and short stories featuring Gothic horror themes. His most famous works include "The Raven," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Fall of the House of Usher." Poe had a turbulent personal life, marrying his 13-year old cousin Virginia and watching her die of tuberculosis. He himself died under mysterious circumstances in 1849 at the age of 40.

1. and

3. Born in Boston , January 19, 1809
Edgar was the second of three children
Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died
Poe became a ward of the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his
wife Frances Allan. They never legally adopted him.
Poe’s siblings went to live with other families
Even as a child, Poe had dreams of becoming a writer like his hero the
British poet, Lord Byron

4. For most people, Edgar Allan Poe brings to mind images of murderers and
madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead.
His works have been in print since 1827 and include classics such as “The Tell-
Tale Heart”, “The Raven”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher”.
Poe was a versatile writer who wrote short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a
book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews.
He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an
innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first
great literary critic and theoretician.
Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his
haunting lyric poetry

5. •1826 Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, but had to return
because John Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts and Poe had to drop out
of college.
•Due to fights with his foster-father, Poe went to Boston where he wrote his first
book of poetry Tamerlane.
•In an attempt to support himself Poe enlisted in the army, and then in
1829, Frances Allan died of tuberculosis and John Allan and Poe briefly reconciled
their differences.
•John Allan helped Poe get an appointment at the U.S. Military Academy in West
Point.
•Poe realized that the military was not what he wanted to do that literature was
his “calling” and John Allan did not support Poe’s decision in dropping out.
•Poe was court marshaled for refusing to report for class or duty
•Poe moved to Baltimore where he lived with his poor aunt, Maria Poe Clemm
and her young daughter, Virginia.

6. • In 1833, he wrote, “Ms. Found in a Bottle.” It lead to a job offer as an editor for a
magazine in Richmond, Virginia.
• In 1835, he accepted the position of editor and married his thirteen year old
cousin, Virginia.
• In 1838, Poe moved his family to Philadelphia where he worked as editor for
Graham’s Magazine. He wrote some of his most famous stories: “Fall of the House
of Usher,” “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Gold-Bug,” and others.
• In 1842, Virginia became ill with tuberculosis
• 1845, The Raven was published
• 1847, Virginia died of tuberculosis
• For the next two years, Poe continued to write poetry and short stories and then
on October 7, 1849, while in Baltimore, Poe died at the age of 40. There are many
mysteries concerning Poe’s death. It has been attributed to “acute congestion of
the brain” due to drug and alcohol overdoses.

7. Opened in 1922
An Old Stone House, blocks away from Poe’s
first Richmond home
Museum shows Edgar Allan Poe’s finest
collection of manuscripts, letters, first
editions, memorabilia, and personal
belongings.

8. • "The Raven" was first published in the New York Evening Mirror
on January 29, 1845, and received popular and critical praise
• "The Raven" has become one of America's most famous
poems, partly as a result, of its easily remembered
refrain, "Nevermore."
• The speaker, a man who pines for his deceased love, Lenore, has
been visited by a talking bird who knows only the
word, "Nevermore.“
• The narrator feels so grieved over the loss of his love that he
allows his imagination to transform the bird into a prophet
bringing news that the lovers will "Nevermore" be reunited, not
even in heaven.
• Poe's own essay about "The Raven," he describes the poem as
one that reveals the human penchant for "self-torture" as
evidenced by the speaker's tendency to weigh himself down with

9. The chamber of a house at midnight. Poe uses the
word chamber instead of bedroom because
apparently chamber has a dark and mysterious
connotation.

10. First-Person Narrator (Persona) A man who
has lost his beloved, a woman named Lenore.
He is depressed, lonely, and possibly mentally
unstable as a result of his grief.

11. A raven, which can be up to two feet long, is a
type of crow. Ravens eat small
animals, carrion, fruit, and seeds. They often
appear in
legend and literature as
sinister omens.

12. The death of a beautiful woman, as
lamented by her bereaved lover.

13. As in his short stories, Poe is careful to use
primarily words that contribute to the overall
atmosphere and tone of the poem. These
words include
weary, dreary, bleak, dying, sorrow, sad, dark
ness, stillness, mystery, ebony, grave, stern,
lonely, grim,
ghastly, and gaunt.

14. The melancholy tone of "The Raven" relies as much
on its musical sound and rhythmic pattern as on the
meaning of the words. To achieve his musical
effect, Poe uses rhyming words in the same line
(internal rhyme), a word at the end of one line that
rhymes with a word at the end of another line (end
rhyme), alliteration (a figure of speech that repeats a
consonant sound), and a regular pattern of accented
and unaccented syllables. This pattern uses a
stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable
with a total of sixteen syllables in each line.

15. It is possible that
Lenore, the idealized
deceased woman in the
poem, represents Poe’s
beloved wife, Virginia, who
was in poor health when
Poe wrote "The Raven."
She died two years after
the publication of the
poem, when she was only
in her mid-twenties.

16. Some reviewers in Poe’s day, including poet Walt
Whitman, criticized “The Raven” for its sing-
song, highly emotional quality. The poem is still
criticized today–and often parodied–for the same
reason. However, the consensus of critics and
ordinary readers appears to that the poem is a
meticulously crafted work of genius and fully
deserves its standing as one of the most
popular poems in American literature. It is indeed
a great work.

17. It is midnight on a cold evening in December
in the 1840s. In a dark and shadowy
bedroom, wood burns in the fireplace as a
man laments the death of Lenore, a woman
he deeply loved. To occupy his mind, he
reads a book of ancient stories. But a tapping
noise disturbs him. When he opens the door
to the bedroom, he sees nothing–only
darkness.

18. When the tapping persists, he opens the
shutter of the window and discovers a
raven, which flies into the room and lands
above the door on a bust of Athena (Pallas in
the poem), the goddess of wisdom and war in
Greek mythology. It says “Nevermore” to all
his thoughts and longings. The raven,
a symbol of death, tells the man he
will never again ("nevermore") see
his beloved, never again hold her–
even in heaven.

19. •"The Raven" is the most famous of Poe's poems, notable
for its melodic and dramatic qualities.
•The meter of the poem is mostly trochaic octameter, with
eight stressed-unstressed two-syllable feet per lines.
Combined with the predominating ABCBBB end rhyme
scheme and the frequent use of internal rhyme, the
trochaic octameter and the refrain of "nothing more" and
"nevermore" give the poem a musical lilt when read aloud.

20. •Poe also emphasizes the "O" sound in words such as
"Lenore" and "nevermore" in order to underline the
melancholy and lonely sound of the poem and to establish
the overall atmosphere.
•The repetition of "nevermore" gives a circular sense to the
poem and contributes to what Poe termed the unity of
effect, where each word and line adds to the larger
meaning of the poem.
•Like a number of Poe's poems such as "Ulalume" and
"Annabel Lee," "The Raven" refers to an agonized
protagonist's memories of a deceased woman.

21. •Poe's choice of a raven as the bearer of ill news is
appropriate for a number of reasons. Originally, Poe sought
only a dumb beast that was capable of producing human-
like sounds without understanding the words'
meaning, and he claimed that earlier conceptions of "The
Raven" included the use of a parrot.
•The raven is important because it allows the narrator to be
both the deliverer and interpreter of the sinister
message, without the existence of a blatantly supernatural
intervention. At the same time, the raven's black feather
have traditionally been considered a magical sign of ill
omen.

22. •Due to the late hour of the poem's setting and to the narrator's
mental turmoil, the poem calls the narrator's reliability into question.
At first the narrator attempts to give his experiences a rational
explanation, but by the end of the poem, he has ceased to give the
raven any interpretation beyond that which he invents in his own
head.
•The raven thus serves as a fragment of his soul and as the animal
equivalent of Psyche in the poem "Ulalume." Each figure represents
its respective character's subconscious that instinctively understands
his need to obsess and to mourn.
•As in "Ulalume," the protagonist is unable to avoid the recollection of
his beloved, but whereas Psyche of "Ulalume" sought to prevent the
unearthing of painful memories, the raven actively stimulates his
thoughts of Lenore, and he effectively causes his own fate through
the medium of a non-sentient animal.

23. The Raven is a poem that has many interpretations. One
could say The Raven is a reflection of Poe’s delusions, or a
foreshadowing of his premature death. Furthermore, this
poem could even mirror his struggle with Poe’s dark past.
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe has been the inspiration for
many widely acclaimed motion pictures such as
Batman, The Crow, and even story lines for T.V. sitcoms
like the Simpsons. Edgar Allan Poe was the first to use a
raven to symbolize death. One thing is for certain Poe did
struggle with reality and his past. He was a man that
emulated women. After losing many women in his life Poe
definitely had a premise for writing on loss.

24. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPmpDD3MGas

25. 1. http://www.slideshare.net/tranceking/edgar-allan-poe-the-life-of
2. http://www.poemuseum.org/life.php
3. "Overview: 'The Raven'." Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 1.
Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.
4. archive.mrs-sullivan.com/263/documents/The_Raven.ppt
5. http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/Raven.html
6. http://www.gradesaver.com/poes-poetry/study-guide/section8/
7. http://bookstove.com/classics/literary-analysis-of-the-raven/
8. http://theravenanalysis.com/