Talk:The Raven

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Contents 1 Slow Descent Into Madness 2 Location 3 Full text of poem 4 Unwarranted claims 5 Interpretation 6 there are many problems with this article. 7 Alternative suggestion to the present article 8 Why is the interpretation removed? 9 Italian version 10 Thankyou. 11 In popular culture

[edit] Slow Descent Into Madness

The phrase "traces his slow descent into madness", in the introduction to the article, seems to be more for the sake of the writer's sense of the dramatic, rather than any factual truth. The protagonist is already in a state of anguish and despair when the poem starts, for one thign, and even if there is a worsening of this state during the poem, it certainly couldn't be described as a "descent", as it's far less linear than that (the character first reacts to the raven with light-hearted amusement, for example, and for a while seems to be more occupied thinking about the bird than his loss). And "madness"? Even if his final state is utter depression and despair, it's hardly madness. And, above all else... "slow"? I think you'd have a hard time arguing that that's there for the sake of anything but drama. For these reasons, I've removed the sentence and replaced it with something a little truer (I'm not sure if reads quite as well, though, so if anybody wants to change it, feel free. Justdig 20:12, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Forgive me if I offer a lengthy defence of "tracing his slow descent into madness", it's just that I'm somewhat obsessed with this poem. The gist of my argument is this: 'descent' as well as 'madness' are 'factual truths' of the poem (as far as this elusive poem allows of factual truth, that is) or, if nothing else, more relevant to the introductory paragraph than 'self-torture' and 'despair'.

• "The protagonist is already in a state of anguish and despair when the poem starts"

Reply: At the beginning of the poem, the narrator is merely "weak and weary", and while I grant that he is sad because of his loss and a bit hysterical, his initial condition is far from "a state of anguish and despair".

• "even if there is a worsening of this state during the poem, it certainly couldn't be described as a "descent", as it's far less linear than that"

Reply: As you have pointed out, the appearance of the raven is, in a way, a welcome distraction to the author. I agree with you that the narrator's development is not a straight fall; he starts off very sad, then is hysterical as he peers into the darkness, then he is slightly amused by the appearance of the raven, then he is slightly depressed by the reminiscence of his friends, then perturbed by the story of the raven, but still smiling, then taken by a rush of sorrow as he remembers Lenore, and then he starts to question the raven, becoming more and more aggressive towards the bird until, in the last stanza, the raven becomes a sort of nightmarish demon in the imagination of the narrator. Though this plot is not strictly linear, I'd still maintain that it is essentially a downward spiral. Also, the word 'descent' in a sense suggests that the narrator 'chooses' madness rather than just having madness thrust upon him; this is in tandem with the narrator's indulgence in self-torture which you want to include in the introduction. Now, to look at the narrator as some sort of masochist is an important interpretative move with which I completely agree; but I would say that it is much less relevant to the introduction than the madness aspect, and thus I suggest that we leave it to the interpretation section, where it is discussed at length by the original author of this article in terms of "perverseness".

• "And "madness"? Even if his final state is utter depression and despair, it's hardly madness."

Reply: I would defend the use of the term 'madness' in reference to the last stanza: The narrator has not just had a bad night, or a bad dream, and now it's all over; he is still -- and will remain, for all we know -- seriously disturbed, haunted and oppressed by the associations triggered by the raven; and these associations are not just grief and sorrow (or despair and depression), but more akin to a hallucinatory presence of an evil power ("a demon"). The narrator's ultimate despair is so closely linked to the imagined raven in his head (and the raven of the last stanza clearly is a product of the narrator's imagination) that it becomes a mental delusion from which he can no longer escape: and that is madness.

• "slow"? I think you'd have a hard time arguing that that's there for the sake of anything but drama.

Reply: Well, it's a long poem (108 lines, is it?) and it takes the narrator quite some time to snap (last stanza). Yes, the word is somewhat dramatic -- but then the "The Raven" is a narrative (and dramatic) poem; also, the sentence flows better with one syllable added, and the import of the adjective is not so wrong as to compromise the entire article now, is it?

I hope that helped to make the sentence "tracing his slow descent into madness" a bit more lucid. Quoth-the-Raven 19:29, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Location

Why is this article here: [[The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe)]] instead of here: [[The Raven (poem)]] (which redirects to this article)? Is there another poem called "The Raven"? If so, it doesn't have an article and, thus, this poem should be located where the redirect currently is. [[The Raven (poem)]] is more intuitive than the cumbersome [[The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe)]]. That would be the correct title if it needed disambiguation, but since it currently doesn't, I don't think we should use it. Anyone know the reason for this? — Frecklefoot | Talk 14:49, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

NO, don't know. But I agree. --Sid 13:20, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Why is it so strongly suggested that the personna of the poem is a student? Many a scholar or curious intellect could be pouring over volumnes of lore.

[edit] Full text of poem

I removed the full text of the poem; this is already covered by Wikisource. Volland 19:40, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Unwarranted claims

"Famous horror writer Edgar Allan Poe" is an odd appelation: can't we do better?. The phrase "and is in fact considered by many to be the best American poem ever written"— like most sentences containing the dismal signal considered by many— is uninformative: "The Raven" is a weak contender in a simplistic category. Can't the opening paragraph be snappier and more accurate than this? --Wetman 18:34, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I think we do not really need any special appelation for Poe other than "writer and poet" (or even just "author"). I also agree with your comment on the "considered by many": first, it really is uninformative; second, while "The Raven" is rather popular, its merit as a poem is hotly debated (Poe is often ranked a second-rate poet). Also, I don't like the introduction as it stands (30/01/6:05); if noone protests within the next few days, I'll replace it by: START "The Raven" is a poem by the American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe. It was published for the first time on January 29, 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror. Noted for its musicality, stylized language and supernatural atmosphere, it tells of the mysterious visit of a talking raven to a distraught lover. END I think the word "macabre", though applicable to the better part of Poe's work, is not that present in "The Raven". I'm not too fond of the term "Gothic", either; "supernatural" does the trick. Last, I added "musicality": it's a distinct feature of the poem that deserves mention. Quoth-the-Raven 17:14, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Good job! ever more! --Wetman 02:23, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Interpretation

'...the bird, who acts only as he has been trained to act "by some unhappy master".'

The article states that as if fact. However, from the poem:

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore,

It can be seen that this is only speculation by the narrator.

[edit] there are many problems with this article.

"and these negative answers are instigated by the narrator himself, by his repeatedly questioning the bird, who acts only as he has been trained to act "by some unhappy master"."

The line "by some unhappy master" is said by the narrator who is trying to say to himself that the Raven could have picked up the word "nevermore" from some unhappy man. It is said to try to make this raven who is speaking the word "nevermore" seem logical and not scary.

Also, the raven isn't just about a talking bird. it is about a man slowly going insane.

another thing. who thought it was a good idea to use "the student"?? i've never heard anyone ever use that term...

i'm going to be going through this article and fixing alot of things that are wrong. Dposse 01:53, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The problem of the problem is the strategy of the original article: "The Raven" is a (deliberately) vague and elusive poem when it comes to interpretation. The writer of the original article apparently decided to offer one coherent -- if at times flawed -- interpretation and shape it (rather eloquently, I think) into one section, rather than offering several of the interpretive approaches taken to the poem. This happens at the expense of a general overview and has the danger of offending anyone who has his/her own view on the poem, but on the plus side offers a certain clarity and coherence. I have never felt comfortable with the Wikipedia interpretation myself, either, but then again I was impressed by the way it was presented and, given the abundance of material on the net on "The Raven", I contended myself with the argument that an original and well-articulated interpretation is better than a patchwork of several half-hearted interpretations lacking substance. On second thought, this is an encyclopedia entry we are talking about here, so the approach taken is perhaps besides the point.

Since this is an encyclopedia, we should not have an original definite interpretation (currently it seems that we have a bad highschool student interpretation), but rather a discussion on the most important interpretations made by literary critics. bogdan 20:08, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly, except that I think the current interpretation is well beyond high school level: it incorporates a lot of information about Poe's poetry and is pretty perceptive at times; also, it centres the interpretation on the notion of "guilt", which is an interesting approach, although certainly not a prominent one amongst critics of "The Raven". I know a wee bit about the critical reception of the poem, so I'll try and come up with an alternative suggestion.

well, it's obvious that whoever wrote this article took alot of liberties with the truth. Bogdan, how are we going to do that?

What if i started a description of the poem, and we all pitch in to create one masterpiece? Dposse 01:16, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me; I don't know what you mean exactly by "a lot of liberties with the truth", but I'll try to help as best as I can.

let me show you some example of "liberties with the truth":

the entire thing about "guilt" being the theme.

"His reaction to the loss has been colored by mysticism ("volume of forgotten lore"), and we know he is filled with fear at receiving a visitor (perhaps Lenore herself, "the whispered word 'Lenore'"), before he even sees the mysterious raven ("from the night's plutonian shore"--Pluto being the Roman god of the Underworld - known as Hades in the Greek mythology - implying that the Raven is from Hell), with its single word of judgment, "Nevermore.""

"The torture which the bird has brought to the narrator was already in the narrator's ruminating character--the bird only brought out what was inside. The raven itself is a mechanical process: deterministic, preordained, one word being the bird's "only stock and store." The Narrator throws himself against this process in a form of masochism, and lets it destroy him and consume him ("my soul from out that shadow shall be lifted--Nevermore!")"

"Why or how Lenore was lost, we do not know, but the narrator is torn between the desire to forget and the desire to remember."

those are a couple of the big example of the liberties the authors took with the truth of the poem and Edgar Allan Poe. it needs to be fixed. Dposse 02:55, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

The question we need to answer is: What do we want to include concerning the interpretation of the poem. Below, you suggested a paraphrase. I think the paraphrase should be part of the Overview section. Personally, I'd say your paraphrase is too lengthy for such a short poem: the reader of the article doesn't need to know every single detail of the poem. Maybe you could take a look at the very short paraphrase I offered above and add those details which you think MUST be mentioned in the overview.

Second, I don't think you can really accuse the original article of such a strong sin as "taking liberties to truth"; of course, the article is interpreting the poem, but it does so with reference to things that are really in there:

About the 1st quote: Apart from the speculation that the "volumes of forgotten lore" are about Mysticism, I think it's all in the poem: The narrator is filled with fear at receiving a visitor, visible in his doubtful self-reassurance that "It's just a visitor, nothing more!". The adjective "Plutonian" does indeed hint to Hell, only we don't know whether the raven is really from hell or whether this is just an idea that the narrator has.

About the 2nd quote: I think there is a hint of masochism in the narrator. Why else would he ask all those questions when he knows the answer? That the raven is "a mechanical process: deterministic, preordained" is a rather fancy and confusing way of saying that the raven just sits there and croaks "Nevermore" -- I guess the point is that the narrator cannot escape his destiny or something. I think we can definitely do without this.

About the 3rd quote: Again, much of this can be found in the poem. The narrator seeks "surcease of sorrow": That could either mean that he wants to be together with Lenore again -- that would end the sorrow supposedly -- or it could mean that he just wants to forget about her. That the narrator wants a "nepenthe" hints at the latter solution, whereas "balm of gilead" and the question about "Aidenn" seems to hint at the former. Whether the narrator has a "desire" to remember is doubtful, I'd say: rather, I think the narrator is haunted by his memory, demonstrated, for example, in his reaction to the cushioned wheelchair.

About the notion of guilt: One could easily mount an interpretation of the narrator having murdered Lenore. In this interpretation, you could argue that the chamber is in hell (there are various hints for this) and that the narrator experiences his inferal punishment for the murder. In this scenario, the raven as incarnation of "guilt" works very well. The writer of the original article decided to go for the "guilt" theme because of the links to other Poe stories; that's another strategy, and an interesting one in my opinion. I for one prefer to look at the poem in isolation for this article, which is my reason why I'm not happy about the current interpretation. But again: the fact is that the poem doesn't give any final indisputable clues: it is very vague.

All in all, the question is: Do we just want to offer a paraphrase of the poem in the article or do we want to interpret it as well; and if so, then which interpretation(s) should we include, and how do we present it/them. Quoth-the-Raven 14:33, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Totally Lame: The mp3 reading of the poem is preceded by a lexus commercial, completely against the spirit of wikipedia. Besides, the reading isn't particularly good.

[edit] Alternative suggestion to the present article

So for a concrete suggestion as to how to re-write this article, I patched together the following (suggestions, especially when it comes to formulation, are very welcome):

_____

Overview

At midnight, the narrator, pondering weird books to rid himself of the sorrow felt for a lost love, is disturbed by a raven tapping at the window of his study. The bird, whose only utterance is the single word "Nevermore," sits down on a bust of pallas. The narrator asks the raven a series of questions about his love, each answered by "Nevermore," slowly driving the narrator to despair and into madness.

The poem is famous for its mesmeric and musical qualities (typical of Poe’s poetry), achieved . through frequent alliteration, the repetition of words and sound patterns, and the rhyme scheme that makes use of internal rhymes as well as a consistent end rhyme remembered best in the refrain, "Quoth the Raven: 'Nevermore.'" The metrical construction, trochaic octameter, was adapted from Elizabeth Barret’s poem "Lady Geraldine’s courtship." The raven is thought to have been inspired by the raven Grip in Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge.

Critical Reception

The first publication of "The Raven" was an instant success; it was widely reprinted and admired and has since been regarded as one of the most famous American poems ever written.

"The Raven" has won critical acclaim but also spawned criticism: Dante Gabriel Rossetti thought that "Poe had done the utmost it was possible to do with the grief of the lover on earth," whereas William Butler Yeats' depreciative comment was that"The whole thing seems to me insincere and vulgar." The poem had a very enthusiastic reception in France, leading to translations by Charles Baudelaire and Stéphan Mallarmé.

Interpretation

Notwithstanding its simple narrative, the meaning of "The Raven" is rather vague: details of the narrator's past, his motivations, desires and mental condition, and the origin and nature of the raven remain obscure.

This vagueness is in tandem with Poe’s aesthetic theory, which he partly outlined in "The Philosophy of Composition," a famous essay in which he gives a partly tongue-in-cheek account of how he composed "The Raven." Poe argues that poetry should strive for a single effect, "the elevation of the soul," achieved through "some undercurrent, however indefinite of meaning."

Despite the intended opacity of meaning, critics have attempted definite interpretations: Poe himself suggested that the raven is "emblematical of Mournful and Neverending Rememberance." Freudian critics have read the poem as a pathological case study of perverseness, guilt or madness. The raven has sometimes been identified with the devil or the spirit of the narrator's lost love, Lenore. Edward H. Davidson saw the poem as an account of Poe’s despair at his own poetic endeavors.

_____

I still have to compile the bibliographic record for the Rossetti/Yeats quotes, the "Philosophy of Composition" and the Davidson theory. I also don't know how to add the hyperlinks to other articles.

Here some arguments as to why I wrote what I wrote: (1) The overview should contain comments on both the versification and the plot. (2) The critical reception is something I'm personally very interested in, not the least because "The Raven" is very popular but has always struggled for appreciation in professional circles. (3) The interpretation part now presents several approaches briefly instead of one detailed interpretation. (4) I post this here rather than editing the article right away because I'd like to hear what you think first.

Quoth-the-Raven 12:23, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say, but that doesn't do the poem justice. where is your evidence for the "critical reception"? Also, his mental state is quite clear in the poem.

Here's something that we can start with and improve on. then we can come up with a final version to edit the article with:

Summary

The poem's setting is in the middle of december at midnight. The narrator is reading a book to try to forget his sorrow for his lost love. He nearly falls asleep, when someone gently knocks at his bedroom door. He opened up the door, but he saw no one. The narrator looked into the darkness outside his door, and everything was very still. He called out "Lenore!" to see if perhaps his love had returned, but there was nothing there. Then, the narrator heard a loud tapping coming from his window. The narrator opened the window, and a raven walked into his room. The raven flew up and perched on top of his bedroom door on his bust of Pallas. The narrator asked what the ravens name was, and the raven replied "nevermore". The narrator was very surprised that the bird could talk so clearly. He didn't understand what "nevermore" meant. It didn't hold any relevance to anything. The narrator says outloud that the raven will leave him, just as his friends have in the past. The raven says "nevermore". The narrator is startled again by hearing the the bird speak. He says that the raven probably picked up the word "nevermore" from some other unhappy man and the raven is only repeating it after hearing it from him. The narrator wheeled a cushioned chair in from on the raven and started to think about the raven and what it meant by saying "nevermore". The narrator then feels the air grow denser. He says to the raven to forget about his lost love, and the raven replies with "nevermore". The raven then calls the raven an evil Prophet, and askes the raven if there is balm in Gilead. The raven again says "nevermore". He then asks if his lose love is in paradise, and the raven says "nevermore". The narrator then upstarts and yells at the bird to leave his room, but the raven stays and says "nevermore". The raven is still sitting above his chamber door with a look of a "demon that is dreaming", and the narrators soul "shall be lifted - nevermore!".

Look, it isn't perfect. It's a basic summary. With some work, it could be good enough to replace the disapointing article that we currently have. Dposse 02:49, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

First, thanks for the effort, but are you suggestion that we kick all the interpretation stuff out and reduce the article to a paraphrase of what's happening in the poem? I'd prefer a more concise summary plus an overview of the reception and interpretation of the poem, like bogdan suggested.

Second, what exactly do you mean by "doing justice to the poem"? I'm a big fan of "The Raven", and I guess I could write an article about its charm and what a fantastic poem it is. But in an encyclopedic article, truth prevails and the truth is that "The Raven" is often thought a minor poem by experts > see (1).

(1) Concerning critical reception: Unlike other poems -- Shakespeare's sonnets, for example -- "The Raven" has not always been received favourably. My evidence for this -- apart from the quotes by Rossetti and Yeats -- is taken from I. M. Walker's compilation of early critical responses to "The Raven" in his "Edgar Allan Poe, The Critical Heritage": they range from 1845 to about 1850; some of them are positive, others negative. Then there are the responses of the Modernist writers, which are collected in Eric Carlson's "The Recognition of Poe": Aldous Huxley thought Poe's poetry was vulgar, T.S. Eliot and Henry James considered it somewhat immature, Yvor Winters wrote a famous essay tearing Poe's poetry apart, there's also W.H. Auden's famous introduction to Poe's collected works, where Auden writes that "The trouble with "the Raven," for example, is that the thematic interest and the prosodic interest, both of which are considerable, do not combine and are even often at odds." So "The Raven" had quite an interesting, varying reception history, something I think would make for an interesting piece of information in the article. If we ignore them, the article will be the poorer for it.

(2) All we know about his mental state is that it's somewhat deranged; and while the poem is fruitful soil for the discussion of someone gone mad, it never really yields any answers. We don't know, for example, whether the narrator wants Lenore back, whether he wants to resurrect her or whether he just wants to forget her. We don't know about the nature of his love to her: He seems to idealize her in a very strange fashion, but then he also seems to be afraid of her coming back. We don't know whether he's suicidal, we don't know what happened to those friends of his. We also don't know what exaclty it is that drives him mad: is it guilt, grief, a desire for self-destruction, over-imagination? The poem doesn't clarify these things, it leaves them open to speculation. That's what I mean when I say the mental condition of the narrator isn't clear. We also don't know whether we can believe the narrator -- whether the raven is real etc. -- or whether it is all imagination and dream and delirium. In short: the poem has many gaps of information, and as a result is rather vague. And its vagueness is a sort of Poe trademark that deserves mention in the article. Quoth-the-Raven 14:43, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why is the interpretation removed?

I found this much easier to understand the poem, and very little of it is commentry, it discusses main valid points about the text.

This article has certainly worse off from its removal.

As I explained on your talk page, your literary analysis constitutes original research which cannot be included on Wikipedia. (ESkog)^(Talk) 05:45, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

However not all of it is original research, and a fair proportion of it could be incorporated into the article. Perhaps you should rewrite it, rather then removing it all then in one go hey?

• I agree. Edit if necessary, but do not remove this wholesale. Outriggr 01:02, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Italian version

I'd like to translate this page into Italian for the Italian Wikipedia. Can I? answer, please --87.11.67.136 12:56, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

• Yes you can (if you know Italian). Outriggr 03:51, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Thank! I'm Italian! :)

[edit] Thankyou.

Excellent piece you've got here, the analysis is very informative. Thankyou. I must say, this poem is indeed a classic. That is all.

[edit] In popular culture

I removed this section, as not only does it only contain one (repeated) Simpsons reference, it is also made obsolete by the link to the main article of popular culture references. Desdinova 23:53, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, I wanted to do this myself for some time now. I think from now on all references to popular culture or ad-like references (such as "this guy produced a video-version of the poem" etc.) should go there. In addition to your changes, I deleted the second publication history section. Quoth-the-Raven 12:02, 20 October 2006 (UTC)