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Spelling Test
(15 pts.)

Answer Key
Pondered
Chamber
Distinctly
Maiden
Entreating
Lattice
Raven
Placid
Utter
Melancholy
11. Decorum
12. Plume
13. Cushion
14. Discourse
15. Ominous

Edgar Allan Poe

Writer : 1809-1849
Father of the detective story.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, critic and editor
Famous for his short stories and poems of horror and mystery.
Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts and died on October 7,
1849

From 1831 to 1835, Poe lived in Baltimore, where his father was born, with his aunt
Maria Clemm and her daughter, his cousin Virginia. He began to devote his attention
to Virginia, who became his literary inspiration as well as his love interest.
The couple married in 1836 when she was only 13 years old. In 1847, at the age of
24 — the same age when Poe’s mother and brother also died — Virginia passed away
from tuberculosis.Poe was overcome by grief following her death, and although he
continued to work, he suffered from poor health and struggled financially until his
death in 1849.
Wife

The Raven
Poe’s poem "The Raven," published in 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror, is
considered among the best-known poems in American literature and one of the best of
Poe's career. An unknown narrator laments the demise of his great love Lenore and
is visited by a raven, who insistently repeats one word: “Nevermore.” In the work,
which consists of 18 six-line stanzas, Poe explored some of his common themes —
death and loss.

Famous works
Poem
Annabel Lee
The Raven

Short story
The tell-tale heart
The murders in the Rue Morgue
The Premature Burial
Black Cat
The Fall of the House of Usher

The Raven
(Poem Analysis.)

What is Poetry
Death and the afterlife (These themes are accompanied by memory, loss, and the
supernatural)
Speaker’s loneliness (He’s alone in his home on a cold evening, trying to ignore
the “rapping” on his chamber door. By the end, it appears that he will live forever
in the shadow of death and sorrow.)

Basic elements of Poetry

Rhythm - can be described as the beat and pace of a poem.
Meter - it is the rhythm of syllables in a line of verse or in a stanza of a poem.
Stanza - composed of lines —like a paragraph in prose or a verse in a song.
Rhyme - it is the correspondence of two or more words with similar-sounding final
syllables placed so as to echo one another.
Theme - This is what the poem is all about.
Symbolism - Often poems will convey ideas and thoughts using symbols.
Imagery - Imagery is the name given to the elements in a poem that spark off the
senses. Despite "image" being a synonym for "picture", images need not be only
visual; any of the five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell) can respond to
what a poet writes. (Chamber door - Insecurity)

Theme
Death and the afterlife (These themes are accompanied by memory, loss, and the
supernatural)
Speaker’s loneliness (He’s alone in his home on a cold evening, trying to ignore
the “rapping” on his chamber door. By the end, it appears that he will live forever
in the shadow of death and sorrow.)

Structure and Form

Ballad ( A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music.)
eighteen six-line stanzas.
First person POV
Trochaic octameter : Trochaic (/, U) - Octameter (8 meter)
Rhyme scheme : ABCBBB
Epistrophe (repeated words)

Literary devices
Alliteration
Parallelism
Metaphor ( To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core) 13th
stanza
Simile

Literary devices
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”