SOURCE: Eddings, Dennis W. “Theme and Parody in ‘The Raven.’” In Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu, edited by Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV, pp. 209-17. Baltimore, Md.: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, Inc., 1990.

In the following essay, Eddings analyzes “The Raven” as a work of satire and parody.

“The Raven” is undoubtedly Poe's most famous poem, although its defects have not gone unnoticed. The impossibility of footfalls tinkling on a tufted floor is a commonplace, and the detailed remarks of Clement Mansfield Ingleby, Howard Mumford Jones, and Jesse Bier, among others, show that despite its hypnotic effectiveness, “The Raven” abounds in absurdities of situation and poetics.¹ These deficiencies pose a problem in light of Poe's critical standards and his incisive application of them in dissecting bad verse. He insists, for example, that the passion so prevalent in “The Raven” is “absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty...