An analysis of Edgar Alan Poe’s “The Raven”

By Heini Reinert

‘Once upon a midnight dreary’ on January 29, 1845, the immensely famous epic poem ‘The Raven’ was written and published for the first time in the New York Evening Mirror and was immediately well received by critics and pastime readers alike. Since then the popularity of this classic has all but diminished, as it frequently pays a visit to the odd English class or horror-forum and even to this date keeps spawning countless parodies and homages, spanning everything from guest appearances in The Simpsons, Mad Magazine and Batman to constrained writing exercises, computer terminological versions, an adaptation pertaining to Fermat’s Last Theorem¹ and numerous musical interpretations.²

The reasons for the poem’s ever-growing popularity and appertaining analyses are as many as (more…)