Poe’s Raven says more than “nevermore”

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyze Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven in light of Freudian concepts and Romantic manifestos with the intention to identify traces that might lead one to believe that the poetic persona of the poem is, in fact, facing itself. This possibility stems from the impression that certain contrasts, at times paradoxical, in expressions, technique choices, as well as in subject matter, may reveal broader meanings to the poem The Raven and the essay “The Philosophy of Composition”, especially regarding the unconscious. The theoretical reflections shed light on what the analysis of the poetic self may give away in terms of culture and of concerns inherent to the human condition. The argumentation is mainly based on Sigmund Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917) and “The uncanny” (1919), and on Dennis Pahl’s essay “De-composing Poe’s Philosophy” (1996).