SOURCE: Green, Andrew J. “Essays in Miniature: ‘The Raven.’” College English 4, no. 3 (December 1942): 194-95.

In the following excerpt, Green opines that Poe's essay, “The Poetic Principle,” offers a reasonable explanation of the genesis and development of “The Raven.”

“the Raven”

The widespread doubt concerning the veracity of Poe's account of the creation of “The Raven” probably arises less from critical application to “The Poetic Principle” than from a perpetuation of the conviction of our adolescence that the author of a poem and of short stories so compelling was a wild genius who drew his inspiration either directly from the supernatural or directly from a bottle of rum. For who of us, at fourteen, alone and at midnight, dared read the dreadful climax of The Fall of the House of Usher?

It is, nevertheless, as easy to believe that Poe wrote much as he says he did as that...