Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem “The Raven” is often read and taught as the tortured attempt of a grieving poet-scholar to escape from the pain of losing his beloved. In my presentation, I argue against this traditional reading. The following is the introduction to the paper:
In his "Philosophy of Composition," Poe claims that nothing is more poetical than a bereaved lover mourning the death of a beautiful woman. His famous work "The Raven" exactly embodies this scenario, as the poem's scholar-speaker laments the lost Lenore. Throughout the work, however, the speaker is often more obsessed with his own creative process than with Lenore’s passing. Thus, the poem is not an attempt to cope with Lenore’s death; rather, her death merely serves as the catalyst for the creation of a poem. Such an attitude is exploitative, and indeed the speaker comes to be deeply troubled by his own mindset; nevertheless, he is ultimately unable to treat Lenore’s death as anything more than the launching-point for his own artistic endeavor.
