Patroclus
December 17th 2003, 03:01 AM
Robert Clark
30 November 2003
….................................…Defacing Death
……Edgar Allen Poe’s poetry, when it concerns itself with death, reveals a public secret; it defaces death in order to reveal that the fear inherent in death is not simply death, but the uncertainty around, especially concerning the aftermath of, death. In his book, Defacement, Michael Taussig discusses “sympathetic magic” (4): the magic that destroys the voodoo doll with pins but touches truly the subject for whom the doll is formed. Defacement, therefore, is an act that requires a certain value to be revaluated by means of a contrast. In order to do this, Poe employs two characters: the speaking dead and the mourner. Poe, furthermore, does not focus on a death, itself, but the effects of death, excluding any sense of finality. This exclusion of finality reopens the scab of fear surrounding death that subordinates death as the most fearful conclusion of life to some sense of afterlife.
……To what purpose is this afterlife discussed? In order for the defacement to have any value, there must first be established a greater system that has provided the effacement. Taussig mentions Santa Claus as one such symbol that is subject to defacement. Santa Claus, being a symbol within Christmas, is a vehicle by which gifts are achieved. Taussig describes the trauma of his personal experience with the defacement of the Santa Claus myth – the revelation that Santa Claus is not real (269-271), but he does not probe the question of why to a much greater depth than to say that the defacing act was accidental and cold (271). In each of Taussig’s other examples, the implication is that defacement serves a purpose in revealing what he calls “the public secret – what is generally known but cannot be stated” (267). What then might be the purpose of defacing Santa Claus? Perhaps it removes the medium – this value of focused generosity – in order to reveal the parents behind the value. A child no longer obeys mother and father, for the sake of presents, to appease Santa Claus (if they are obedient at all); rather, a child is now obedient to mother and father, for the sake of presents, to appease mother and father. The pleasure of Christmas is not Santa Claus. The pleasure of Christmas is gift-getting. However, with the void left by Santa Claus, a child may recognize that behavior has not, in fact, merited gifts. Now that the Mother and Father are benefactors of Christmas, and it is Mother and Father who have throughout the year been the moral enforcers through various rewards and punishment, Christmas has very little to do with behavior. In place of Santa Claus is a two-dimensional painting of Norman Rockwell: an icon.
……Death, in much the same way, is defaced in order to leave only a shadow. In the Old Testament, righteous characters, such as Job, are much more concerned with life. It is the supposed sin of Job that, his friends claim, is the cause of his calamity. His initial act of mourning is to declare, “the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away” (Job 2:21 NRSV). In this, death is summed up in the act of removal. Death is final; it is the terminus of bliss in the Garden of Eden, the first defacer in Biblical literature. Yet, here is a foreshadowing of the transition that has taken full swing in the New Testament.
……Perhaps the best illustration of this transition is found in Luke’s Gospel. A leader of the synagogue, Jairus, finds Jesus. Jairus begs Jesus to heal his dying daughter. Upon approach, and again at arrival to the house, Jesus is implored not to waste his time, for the girl has died. In this, there is an underlying sense of finality. Hope only lives within the living. However, Jesus soon obliterates the value of cessation by declaring that she is only “sleeping.” The mourners begin to laugh, mocking Jesus for his apparently doltish analysis of the situation, but in the midst of this laughter Jesus reaffirms what the public already knows but would not face since the time of Adam and Eve: the ultimate dread in life is not of what humanity is certain (death) but of what is uncertain – what happens after death? If a human being can thus live after being dead, from whence is that person resurrected; is death only a state of sleep (Luke 8:40-42, 49-53)?
……Sleep, then, becomes a common metaphor for death, and it is this metaphor that introduces us to the mourning character in Poe’s poetry. “The Sleeper” maintains the ambiguity between death and sleep. Before proceeding too much farther, “sleep” must first be categorized as an act within life, and therefore impossible in death. Without making such a distinction, however obvious or not, there is no basis for defacement. There must be a contrast between life and death, and these contrasting pairs must be thrust upon each other. If sleep is death, then the narrator is simply mad. If death is merely sleep, one should not be surprised at seeing a resurrection, or several, but where Poe differs from the New Testament is in the direction of life-in-death. Whereas for the New Testament writer, life follows death by resurrection, for “The Sleeper” an alter-life is enabled by death. Furthermore, the sleep or death of Irene is addressed in terms of fragility. The narrator asks her, “[w]hy and what art thou dreaming here” (31), and that her sleep “be deep” (36). Moreover, the narrator, in that he addresses her, assumes that some sort of response is not altogether impossible. This sense of expectation signifies the purpose behind the use of the word “sleep” several times in the last stanza, and why Irene must always be referred to in such terms. Given that images such as “worms” (45) and “the closed and fringéd lid” (26) suggest that Irene is dead, despite the ambiguity that is so tenacious in the narrator, the struggle with life interposed onto death is in the narrator. Though the narrator appears to hope for the eternal “sleep” of Irene, sleep suggests for him that she will still live. It is this continuance of life in his mind that will torment him. For the character of the mourner, therefore, the after-life is the self-imposed haunting of the unreleased dead.
……The speaking dead have two categories. The first, and most prolific, are those poems in which the narrator is a speaking dead disenfranchised from any other human society. “Silence – A Fable” is such a poem, but the reader is not sure that the narrator is dead until the end of the narration. Rather than ambiguity, the suggestion of death is somewhat surprising. It is this surprise that enforces the necessary ambiguity for the defacement of death. Furthermore, the bulk of the narration is artificial in that it is framed. The Demon wrests attention away from the actual narrator so that the presumably human character is relatively silent. However, the most important contrast here is between the two inscriptions upon the rock: “DESOLATION” (59) and “SILENCE” (142). Of desolation there are at least two observations to make. First, though the valley that the demon describes is stagnant, the surroundings are lush – at least alive. Second, though the man seems to be troubled – “his eye wild with care” (73) – he is content to sit. It is not until the Demon curses the realm with silence that the man runs away in terror. The epilogue is essential to the poem in that it explains silence, which explains desolation.
And as the Demon made an end to his story,
He fell back within the cavity of the tomb
And laughed.
And I could not laugh with the Demon,
And he cursed me because I could not laugh. (175-178)
……The narrator appears to be walking amongst a graveyard in which he finds this Demon. However, his inability to laugh, his dramatic silence, is the clue of his death. Like the man in the Demon’s tale, the narrator is surrounded by a kind of desolation, despite some living presence. But, unlike the man in the tale, the narrator does not turn and run from the Demon. The man on the rock, being supposed “a deity” (68) is not subject to the death of humans. Nonetheless, it is significant that the man on the rock be frightened by silence in that voicelessness represents, in this poem, powerlessness. It is the narrator who is cursed by the Demon.
……The obscurity of images in this poem may tend to give the effect of fear. By raising the dread of silence above the dread of desolation, a reader may be more inclined to fear afterlife than death. The concept of effect brings this essay to a critical point. By discussing effect, one cannot avoid discussion of the effective fallacy. In his “Philosophy of Composition,” Poe’s entire argument for how one might compose a poem is based around a concept of effect. Is, then, Poe completely wrong? Furthermore, to claim that Poe writes for effect is to claim intent, which raises the question of the intentional fallacy. Can, then, such a claim be made? The problem, however, lies not on the part of the author, but on the part of the critic. Though critics can never prove the exact intent of the author (nor, indeed, necessarily the author him or herself), it is reasonable to assume that the work does have some intent driving it. Even if the intent is to be pointless, there is intent. Therefore, if critics can suppose – though not prove – that there is some intent behind effect, critics can look for the effect of a work. This is significant because until there is some basis for believing intent, there is no basis for evaluating defacement since defacement, as described in the first paragraph, is an act. It is the effect of defacement that gives the defaced object value.
……The effect of “The Lake: To-” is to cause tension between the delight of the narrator, and the terror on the part of the reader. The narrator, describing experiences of his youth contrasts delight and terror within the dark solitude of a wild lake. To delight in terror is a kind of defacement of terror. These two polarities of feeling evince defiance on the part of the narrator: “a feeling not the jeweled mine/ Could teach or bribe me to define” (15-16). Furthermore, there is purpose behind his defiance. Line seventeen suggests that there is unrequited love that troubles “his lone imaginings” (21). Therefore, in order to defy the rejected partnership, the narrator chooses to be alone at this lake. The terror for the reader is in the suggestion of suicide in the last stanza. Again, death is not ultimate fear or evil, rather, it is the implication of the after-life that is truly frightening. The implication of suicide, for many, is eternal condemnation. Furthermore, this is juxtaposed against the reference to Eden in the final line of the poem. The torment of Hell is confused with the pleasure of paradise. Again, ambiguity is essential to exposing the public secret that death is not as fearsome as after-life.
……It is this afterlife that is so ominous a discussion in “The Raven.” As this is the poem for which Poe affords his sole effort in his “Philosophy of Composition,” this is perhaps the best place to climax this discussion. If Poe is truly as deliberate as he claims, then his act of defacement is tenable. First of all, Poe says that “every plot, worthy of the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement” (549). For this device, Poe speaks mostly concerning the poetic development. However, the climactic antepenultimate stanza begins a dramatic shift in the poem. The first six stanzas involve the narrator without the raven. The next three stanzas illuminate the curiosity of the narrator surrounding the raven. The next four stanzas attempt to reconcile the uncanny answer given by the raven in response to the narrator’s lament of loss. The next three stanzas narrate the queries of the narrator, concluding with the climactic question of the afterlife. The penultimate stanza is the demand of the unsatisfied narrator. The poem up to this point is narrated in the present tense. However, the final stanza shifts into a present tense, leaving the plight of the narrator in the eternal presence of literature.
……Second, Poe decides that the poem shall be confined to one hundred eight lines (553). The purpose of this, according to Poe, is to maintain the unity of effect. What that means for the purpose of this discussion is the necessity of discovering whether or not there is sufficient attention to the defacement of death to warrant this claim. Third, Poe selects beauty as his effect or impression (554); then he selects melancholy as his tone (555) and chooses death as vehicle of this melancholy (557). In Poe’s discussion of this decision, there is another defacement, but this is a defacement of beauty by death.
“And when,” I said, “ is this most melancholy topic most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious—“when it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world—and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.” (557)
Again, there is a contrast between a beautiful life, and the death thereof. Next, Poe emphasizes the “close circumspection of space” (560). This presents a potential problem to the theme of defacement since Taussig’s thesis relies on what he calls the “public secret…knowing what not to know” (2). However, this problem is overcome by the fact that the desired effect is in the reader, rather than the just the subject of the poem.
……This public nature of the poem lends itself to the necessity of contrast within the poem. The narrative structure of the poem has already been elaborated to the shift in tense into the eternal presence. However, it is necessary to see how various images are elaborated within the poem. Each descriptive image of the narrator’s chamber, even the chamber itself, is mentioned passively. In this instance the reader is unaware that the narrator is beginning the action his private chamber until the narrator mentions the “rapping” at his “chamber door” (4). While this may appear to be a simple example of Poe’s poetic prowess, it bear’s significance to the theme of defacement. The supreme example of this is the bust of Pallas (described as “a bus”) that appears only once the Raven has perched upon it (41).
……The dramatic introduction of the bust of Pallas is indicative of Taussig’s idea of the invisible monument: “the most striking thing about monuments is their lack of strikingness. In fact, they are invisible” (51). The principle at work is that even though they are made to be seen, statues have a way of “‘de-notic[ing] us.’” So defacement is understood “as an act whose uncanny capacitaty to animate dead matter, by magically fusing the representation with what it represents, is already inscribed in the nature of the statue itself” (52). The necessity of defacement is already built into the statue. When the Raven alights upon the bust of Pallas, the contrast of the very white goddess and the very black bird must alert the savvy reader to the related myth in Metamorphoses. In his “Philosophy of Composition,” Poe mentions that the first reason in choosing Pallas is that it is “most keeping with the scholarship of the lover” (561).
……The story of Apollo’s Raven also has with it a theme of defacement. First, the Raven is introduced as formerly white (Ovid II.539). The unspoken knowledge inherent in this statement is the common experience with the Raven as a black bird. Second, Apollo takes pleasure in Coronis of Larissa “just as long/ As she was chaste, or, anyway, undiscovered” (II.549-550). Apollo can accept the potential that Coronis is unchaste as long as he is not confronted with the issue. Furthermore, a crow tells the raven her story concerning knowledge that Pallas would just have rather not known (II.553-560). The accepted knowledge is that the gods are just and favor truth. The public secret, however, is that the gods prefer to be ignorant when it is to their advantage to be so. When Apollo kills Coronis, her blood stains her white skin (II.610). The stain against her chastity is signified in the blood that Apollo sheds when defacing her body in his anger. However, in killing her, and learning that she is pregnant with his son, Apollo realizes the rashness of his action, but too late (II.614). Through this defacement, Apollo realizes a powerful attachment that he has with her. This attachment supports Taussig’s point that “acts of desecration seem to create sacredness” (51). In the narration, Apollo is never so close to Coronis as when he is holding her lifeless body and removing their son from her womb (II.620-624). All of this transpires because the once white raven does not heed the crow’s advice concerning her ordeal with Pallas. However, without both birds performing what Taussig calls (an appropriation from Hegel), “the labor of the negative” (1): that labor that begs the revelation (necessarily a manifestation) of the public secret.
……The labor of the negative in “The Raven” begins with the Raven perching on a bust of Pallas. It is important to note that the narrator says “a bust,” and not “my bust” or “the bust.” This implied insignificance of the bust amplifies the effect of the perching. The bust must be invisible before the Raven perches upon it and visible only when the Raven introduces it by disregarding, for a second time, the sacredness of Pallas. It is only through this sacrilege that Pallas becomes significant to this story. As Poe suggests, the connection between Pallas and the Raven is not lost on the narrator, and for him, Pallas once again has a place of prominence; she is made sacred to the narrator because of the Raven’s sacrilege. Furthermore, the marble statue is contrasted against the black Raven that should be white. In Ovid’s story, chastity is a subtle, yet significant theme. Now, in “The Raven” the virgin goddess is mute and bodiless. She is only given a voice when the bird, cursed for talking too much (Ovid II.543-545) allows her a position in the poem. Likewise, the deceased woman, Lenore, whose memory is actively purged (at least the attempt is being made), is voiceless in death, but her memory and her name are continually mentioned throughout the course of the poem. This contrast of the voiceless Pallas and Lenore with the talkative Raven suggest something darker than what the narrator will let on.
……Lenore is mentioned by name in four stanzas. She is associated with angels three times between the four stanzas (11, 94, 95). She is called “lost” twice (10, 83). The assertion of an angelic nature may actually suggest against an actual angelic nature. Furthermore, by the end of the poem, the narrator is mad. He is completely unreliable for plain truth. Moreover, according to Cassell’s Dictionary of Classical Mythology, the name Pallas may mean “maiden” and is an alternate name for Athena, the virgin goddess of war (580). All we see of Pallas in this poem is her head (the bust). This bust is, as already explained, defaced by the disregard of the Raven that land’s on the head to say “Nevermore.” If a parallel between Coronis, by way of Pallas, and Lenore is possible, inasmuch as Lenore is “lost,” the defacement of Pallas is an objectification of Lenore’s loss of maidenhead. There can be no greater defacement of Pallas, who is identified by her virginity, and no greater defacement for the “sainted maiden” (Poe 94), Lenore, than a loss of virginity.
……If Lenore parallels Coronis through Pallas, the narrator parallels Apollo. Apollo, unlike Pallas, is referenced, though without a name, which is appropriate since the narrator has no name.
“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—so, when Hope he would adjure,
Stern despair returned, instead of the sweet Hope he dared adjure—
That sad answer, “Nevermore!” (61-66)
These verses closely relate to Ovid’s story concerning Apollo’s reaction to the impurity and death of Coronis. First of all, the Raven mercilessly uncovers Coronis’ infidelity; that, in turn, destroys the relationship between Apollo and Coronis. Apollo then shoots Coronis, but upon learning of her pregnancy attempts to revive her: “He lifts the fallen girl, as if caressing/ Might bring her back to life; he tries to conquer/ Her fate beyond all hope of healing” (II.617-620). After this, Apollo curses the Raven that he may nevermore be with the white birds (II.630). The images of the poem present two problems. First, that Lenore may not be as saintly or maidenly as the narrator would suggest. Second, the suggestion is that the narrator has killed Lenore out of jealousy. Apollo is not so concerned about Coronis’ chastity – he has sexual relations with her – as he is her fidelity. His loss of her is a loss of love. Likewise, Lenore’s loss of virginity is more critical to the narrator as a loss of her love for him. The narrator is obsessive about the memory of Lenore, and his books – so much so that he does not even tend to his fire properly, but lets the embers spill over onto the floor (8). This obsession is emphasized in his repeated assertions of Lenore’s sainthood and maidenhood.
……This bilateral transgression is necessary to provide the impetus for defacement, if defacement is deliberate. Furthermore, this transgression is necessary for imposing the fear of the afterlife in the narrator (perhaps, for anybody). Perhaps the greatest fear of afterlife is that such life will be torturous – hellish. In prevailing Christian thought, of which Poe is well aware, retribution is the ultimate end of those who die in their transgressions, or sin. Conversely, those under grace should look forward to an eternal reward. The dilemma is that the afterlife is always before a person, and as it is not yet experienced, it is necessarily uncertain – a matter of faith. The secret is that many (perhaps all) fear that he or she may somehow deserve a torturous afterlife, or not deserve a blissful afterlife. So, as Taussig says, “secrecy is intertwined with taboo, and hence with transgression, so as to create a powerful yet invisible presence; indeed, the presence of presence itself, essential to religion” (209). The taboo is, do not eat the fruit. The transgression occurs when Adam and Eve do eat the fruit, hence creating the presence of death that is already present in its initial proclamation: “in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:17). For the new humans, and for those who likewise fear death, death is not a cessation, but a judgment. If death is a judgment of a transgression, how terrible is the result? For the narrator and Lenore, the transgression forces the climactic antepenultimate stanza. If Lenore has sinned, she is damned. If the narrator has sinned, he too is damned. There is no “balm in Gilead” (89) for the narrator, so is it possible that the “distant Aidann” (98) is part of a perverse fantasy that he has created to reconcile an ultimate meeting for the two lovers? If, after all, she has committed a transgression, they just as well may suffer in Hell together. This option might be tenable, however the images of the poem, spoken through the voice of an insane, and therefore unreliable narrator, suggest the narrator’s conclusions. The easiest conclusion to draw is that Lenore is saintly, and that the narrator is just as saintly, and therefore should live in Paradise with her. Upon looking into Ovid and attempting to interpret through the narrator’s insane perspective (for instance, the self-aggrandizing parallel between himself and Apollo), Lenore may have been a promiscuous woman who is killed be her lover out of passion in order that they may live together in Hell. As a godlike character, in his self-perception, he has the right to execute judgment upon Lenore. So, in either case, the narrator has tried to defeat his fear of death by assuming the togetherness of he and Lenore in the afterlife.
……Once this tension between justification and judgment builds to its peak, the Raven can speak the climactic word of the antepenultimate stanza. But how does the Raven communicate? Part of the practical reason, as Poe writes in “Philosophy of Composition,” for using a Raven is for its ability to speak. But he likens the Raven’s ability to that of a parrot – a mimicker, not a rational creature (556). The narrator even remarks that this word is most likely “caught from some unhappy master.” However, the narrator, especially at the climax, treats the Raven’s word with immense weight. It is the narrator that has allowed the Raven the ability to cross over from speech to communication. This crossover occurs in the very first reaction to the Raven’s speech: “Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly/ Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore” (49-50). First, the narrator affords that the bird’s answer is “discourse,” implying that what the bird has to say actually has some rationality behind it. And, though it may be, in part, a metrical devise, if the critic believes that Poe chooses his words carefully, it is irresponsible not to consider that the narrator says “little” and not “no.” This treatment of the Raven begins to illustrate the madness in the narrator – at which is already hinted by the admission that he talks to himself (i.e. “‘Tis some visitor,’ I muttered” [5]) – that builds throughout the poem. The madness of the narrator contrasts the perfect sense of the Raven. It is the narrator that speaks the long and beautiful verses that are wrapped-up in madness and pointed images. The bird speaks only one word, and only when prompted. Yet, it is the promptings of the maddened narrator that afford sense and discourse to what the bird speaks. Consider that the first answer, the response of a name, is coincidental (48), it is still the narrator who gives meaning to the Raven’s speech. It is completely appropriate to ask a stranger for a name, but why inquire of a bird? When the Raven responds to his offhand comment (60) the narrator actually assumes that the word has meaning (72). Furthermore, the narrator calls this word “his only stock and store,” so it would seem logical to ask amusing questions as if this visitation is a game: “will I have to pay my taxes?” “Nevermore!” Instead, the narrator is so trapped in his obsession for Lenore that he appears unable to ask questions that will lead to anything but despair. By taking away Lenore’s voice in murderous obsession, he has given the voice to the Raven that is necessary for keeping him in madness and despair for his deed.
……At the last, the Raven speaks: “Nevermore” (96). The narrator has, up to this point, put on a mask of deception. He deceives the reader into thinking that he and Lenore should be united because she is saintly, and he gives no overt reason why the reader should dislike him. He even tries to deceive the savvy reader who may make the connection between Pallas, Coronis and Lenore, and between Apollo and the narrator. Of course, justifying murder with fornication is inequitable, and his story breaks down at this point. However, it is not until the Raven’s last utterance that his ideology is defaced, and he is confronted with the reality of his judgment, the reality that Lenore may be innocent, the reality that despite his best efforts, the afterlife is more fearsome than death. In the end, he is more like Apollo than what he would wish; Like Apollo, he can never visit his love.
……It is this defacement of death through the labor of the negative that allows the presence of the fear of afterlife to take hold of the mind once the transgression has been unearthed. In most of Poe’s poetry, the defacement, for Taussig’s explanation, is incomplete. The Raven, however, when compared against other related texts illustrates, quite well, the value of discovering defacement in literature. Taussig’s book is an anthropological study concerning various societies and traditions around the earth. His work is one of explaining mimetic principles of the sacrosanct in society and culture, and why people react such as they do when that monument, however forgotten or public it may be, is destroyed or defaced. In much the same way, Gothic literature, particularly American Gothic, is an exposition of the human condition in extreme and supernatural conditions. The American Gothic affords the character studies requisite for the sociological constructs. It combines the inversion of the natural, exposing itself to the very determined probe of terror, and includes people (who are often just as inverted, or perverted) to react to such situations. The inversion of nature, for instance, from a passive set of trees to an aggressive, forested wilderness by the simple setting of the sun begs to be explored in terms of defacement. What does the public know about the forest that they will not talk about? What deep-seeded sins (transgressions) lurk in the lore of those boughs? What hides in the darkness that reacts against a humanity that has always been at odds with it? Defacement is an inherent motif in any work that distorts or magnifies reality. Furthermore, it may allow the critic to explore sociological meaning (i.e. people fear the afterlife more than death) in a controlled environment, unlike the violent and/or traumatic situations that Taussig describes.
Works Cited
March, Jeremy. “Pallas” Cassell’s Dictionary of Classical Mythology. 2001 ed.
Ovid. Metamorpheses. Trans. Rolfe Humphries. Indiana University Press. Bloomington, IN:
……1955. 45-48.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “Lake: To-, The.” The Portable Poe. Ed. Philip Van Doren Stern. Penguin.
……New York: 1977, 602.
---. “Philosophy of Composition, The.” The Portable Poe. Ed. Philip Van Doren Stern. Penguin.
……New York: 1977, 549-565.
---. “Raven, The.” The Portable Poe. Ed. Philip Van Doren Stern. Penguin. New York: 1977,
……617-623.
---. “Silence—A Fable.” The Portable Poe. Ed. Philip Van Doren Stern. Penguin. New York:
……1977, 588-594.
---. “Sleeper, The.” The Portable Poe. Ed. Philip Van Doren Stern. Penguin. New York: 1977,
……609-611.
Taussig, Michael. Defacement. Stanford University Press. Stanford, CA: 1999.
Selected Bibliography
Freedman, William. “Poe’s ‘The Raven.’” Explicator- (Expl). 1999 Spring; 57(3): 146-48.
Godden, Richard. “Poe and the Poetics of Opacity: Or, Another Way of Looking at That Black
……Bird.” ELH- (ELH). 2000 Winter; 67(4): 993-1009.
Kopley, Richard & Kevin Hayes. Two Verse Masterworks: 'The Raven' and 'Ulalume'. 191-204
……IN Hayes,-Kevin-J. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Edgar ……Allan Poe. Cambridge,
……England : Cambridge UP, 2002. xx, 266 pp.
Link, Franz. Edgar Allan Poe: Romantik und Moderne. 51-67 IN Alexander,-Vera (ed. and
……introd.); Fludernik,-Monika (ed. and introd.). Romantik. Trier, Germany : Wissenschaftlicher, 2000. 249 pp.
Rachman, Stephen. “Subterranean Homesick Poe: Lou Reed's The Raven.” Edgar-Allan-Poe-
……Review (EAPR). 2003 Spring; 4(1): 28-41.
Stevenson, Frank W. “Resonant Noise: Poe's Pit and Deleuze's Pendulum.” Concentric:-Literary-
……and-Cultural-Studies (Concentric). 2001 Jan; 27(1): 29-65.
30 November 2003
….................................…Defacing Death
……Edgar Allen Poe’s poetry, when it concerns itself with death, reveals a public secret; it defaces death in order to reveal that the fear inherent in death is not simply death, but the uncertainty around, especially concerning the aftermath of, death. In his book, Defacement, Michael Taussig discusses “sympathetic magic” (4): the magic that destroys the voodoo doll with pins but touches truly the subject for whom the doll is formed. Defacement, therefore, is an act that requires a certain value to be revaluated by means of a contrast. In order to do this, Poe employs two characters: the speaking dead and the mourner. Poe, furthermore, does not focus on a death, itself, but the effects of death, excluding any sense of finality. This exclusion of finality reopens the scab of fear surrounding death that subordinates death as the most fearful conclusion of life to some sense of afterlife.
……To what purpose is this afterlife discussed? In order for the defacement to have any value, there must first be established a greater system that has provided the effacement. Taussig mentions Santa Claus as one such symbol that is subject to defacement. Santa Claus, being a symbol within Christmas, is a vehicle by which gifts are achieved. Taussig describes the trauma of his personal experience with the defacement of the Santa Claus myth – the revelation that Santa Claus is not real (269-271), but he does not probe the question of why to a much greater depth than to say that the defacing act was accidental and cold (271). In each of Taussig’s other examples, the implication is that defacement serves a purpose in revealing what he calls “the public secret – what is generally known but cannot be stated” (267). What then might be the purpose of defacing Santa Claus? Perhaps it removes the medium – this value of focused generosity – in order to reveal the parents behind the value. A child no longer obeys mother and father, for the sake of presents, to appease Santa Claus (if they are obedient at all); rather, a child is now obedient to mother and father, for the sake of presents, to appease mother and father. The pleasure of Christmas is not Santa Claus. The pleasure of Christmas is gift-getting. However, with the void left by Santa Claus, a child may recognize that behavior has not, in fact, merited gifts. Now that the Mother and Father are benefactors of Christmas, and it is Mother and Father who have throughout the year been the moral enforcers through various rewards and punishment, Christmas has very little to do with behavior. In place of Santa Claus is a two-dimensional painting of Norman Rockwell: an icon.
……Death, in much the same way, is defaced in order to leave only a shadow. In the Old Testament, righteous characters, such as Job, are much more concerned with life. It is the supposed sin of Job that, his friends claim, is the cause of his calamity. His initial act of mourning is to declare, “the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away” (Job 2:21 NRSV). In this, death is summed up in the act of removal. Death is final; it is the terminus of bliss in the Garden of Eden, the first defacer in Biblical literature. Yet, here is a foreshadowing of the transition that has taken full swing in the New Testament.
……Perhaps the best illustration of this transition is found in Luke’s Gospel. A leader of the synagogue, Jairus, finds Jesus. Jairus begs Jesus to heal his dying daughter. Upon approach, and again at arrival to the house, Jesus is implored not to waste his time, for the girl has died. In this, there is an underlying sense of finality. Hope only lives within the living. However, Jesus soon obliterates the value of cessation by declaring that she is only “sleeping.” The mourners begin to laugh, mocking Jesus for his apparently doltish analysis of the situation, but in the midst of this laughter Jesus reaffirms what the public already knows but would not face since the time of Adam and Eve: the ultimate dread in life is not of what humanity is certain (death) but of what is uncertain – what happens after death? If a human being can thus live after being dead, from whence is that person resurrected; is death only a state of sleep (Luke 8:40-42, 49-53)?
……Sleep, then, becomes a common metaphor for death, and it is this metaphor that introduces us to the mourning character in Poe’s poetry. “The Sleeper” maintains the ambiguity between death and sleep. Before proceeding too much farther, “sleep” must first be categorized as an act within life, and therefore impossible in death. Without making such a distinction, however obvious or not, there is no basis for defacement. There must be a contrast between life and death, and these contrasting pairs must be thrust upon each other. If sleep is death, then the narrator is simply mad. If death is merely sleep, one should not be surprised at seeing a resurrection, or several, but where Poe differs from the New Testament is in the direction of life-in-death. Whereas for the New Testament writer, life follows death by resurrection, for “The Sleeper” an alter-life is enabled by death. Furthermore, the sleep or death of Irene is addressed in terms of fragility. The narrator asks her, “[w]hy and what art thou dreaming here” (31), and that her sleep “be deep” (36). Moreover, the narrator, in that he addresses her, assumes that some sort of response is not altogether impossible. This sense of expectation signifies the purpose behind the use of the word “sleep” several times in the last stanza, and why Irene must always be referred to in such terms. Given that images such as “worms” (45) and “the closed and fringéd lid” (26) suggest that Irene is dead, despite the ambiguity that is so tenacious in the narrator, the struggle with life interposed onto death is in the narrator. Though the narrator appears to hope for the eternal “sleep” of Irene, sleep suggests for him that she will still live. It is this continuance of life in his mind that will torment him. For the character of the mourner, therefore, the after-life is the self-imposed haunting of the unreleased dead.
……The speaking dead have two categories. The first, and most prolific, are those poems in which the narrator is a speaking dead disenfranchised from any other human society. “Silence – A Fable” is such a poem, but the reader is not sure that the narrator is dead until the end of the narration. Rather than ambiguity, the suggestion of death is somewhat surprising. It is this surprise that enforces the necessary ambiguity for the defacement of death. Furthermore, the bulk of the narration is artificial in that it is framed. The Demon wrests attention away from the actual narrator so that the presumably human character is relatively silent. However, the most important contrast here is between the two inscriptions upon the rock: “DESOLATION” (59) and “SILENCE” (142). Of desolation there are at least two observations to make. First, though the valley that the demon describes is stagnant, the surroundings are lush – at least alive. Second, though the man seems to be troubled – “his eye wild with care” (73) – he is content to sit. It is not until the Demon curses the realm with silence that the man runs away in terror. The epilogue is essential to the poem in that it explains silence, which explains desolation.
And as the Demon made an end to his story,
He fell back within the cavity of the tomb
And laughed.
And I could not laugh with the Demon,
And he cursed me because I could not laugh. (175-178)
……The narrator appears to be walking amongst a graveyard in which he finds this Demon. However, his inability to laugh, his dramatic silence, is the clue of his death. Like the man in the Demon’s tale, the narrator is surrounded by a kind of desolation, despite some living presence. But, unlike the man in the tale, the narrator does not turn and run from the Demon. The man on the rock, being supposed “a deity” (68) is not subject to the death of humans. Nonetheless, it is significant that the man on the rock be frightened by silence in that voicelessness represents, in this poem, powerlessness. It is the narrator who is cursed by the Demon.
……The obscurity of images in this poem may tend to give the effect of fear. By raising the dread of silence above the dread of desolation, a reader may be more inclined to fear afterlife than death. The concept of effect brings this essay to a critical point. By discussing effect, one cannot avoid discussion of the effective fallacy. In his “Philosophy of Composition,” Poe’s entire argument for how one might compose a poem is based around a concept of effect. Is, then, Poe completely wrong? Furthermore, to claim that Poe writes for effect is to claim intent, which raises the question of the intentional fallacy. Can, then, such a claim be made? The problem, however, lies not on the part of the author, but on the part of the critic. Though critics can never prove the exact intent of the author (nor, indeed, necessarily the author him or herself), it is reasonable to assume that the work does have some intent driving it. Even if the intent is to be pointless, there is intent. Therefore, if critics can suppose – though not prove – that there is some intent behind effect, critics can look for the effect of a work. This is significant because until there is some basis for believing intent, there is no basis for evaluating defacement since defacement, as described in the first paragraph, is an act. It is the effect of defacement that gives the defaced object value.
……The effect of “The Lake: To-” is to cause tension between the delight of the narrator, and the terror on the part of the reader. The narrator, describing experiences of his youth contrasts delight and terror within the dark solitude of a wild lake. To delight in terror is a kind of defacement of terror. These two polarities of feeling evince defiance on the part of the narrator: “a feeling not the jeweled mine/ Could teach or bribe me to define” (15-16). Furthermore, there is purpose behind his defiance. Line seventeen suggests that there is unrequited love that troubles “his lone imaginings” (21). Therefore, in order to defy the rejected partnership, the narrator chooses to be alone at this lake. The terror for the reader is in the suggestion of suicide in the last stanza. Again, death is not ultimate fear or evil, rather, it is the implication of the after-life that is truly frightening. The implication of suicide, for many, is eternal condemnation. Furthermore, this is juxtaposed against the reference to Eden in the final line of the poem. The torment of Hell is confused with the pleasure of paradise. Again, ambiguity is essential to exposing the public secret that death is not as fearsome as after-life.
……It is this afterlife that is so ominous a discussion in “The Raven.” As this is the poem for which Poe affords his sole effort in his “Philosophy of Composition,” this is perhaps the best place to climax this discussion. If Poe is truly as deliberate as he claims, then his act of defacement is tenable. First of all, Poe says that “every plot, worthy of the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement” (549). For this device, Poe speaks mostly concerning the poetic development. However, the climactic antepenultimate stanza begins a dramatic shift in the poem. The first six stanzas involve the narrator without the raven. The next three stanzas illuminate the curiosity of the narrator surrounding the raven. The next four stanzas attempt to reconcile the uncanny answer given by the raven in response to the narrator’s lament of loss. The next three stanzas narrate the queries of the narrator, concluding with the climactic question of the afterlife. The penultimate stanza is the demand of the unsatisfied narrator. The poem up to this point is narrated in the present tense. However, the final stanza shifts into a present tense, leaving the plight of the narrator in the eternal presence of literature.
……Second, Poe decides that the poem shall be confined to one hundred eight lines (553). The purpose of this, according to Poe, is to maintain the unity of effect. What that means for the purpose of this discussion is the necessity of discovering whether or not there is sufficient attention to the defacement of death to warrant this claim. Third, Poe selects beauty as his effect or impression (554); then he selects melancholy as his tone (555) and chooses death as vehicle of this melancholy (557). In Poe’s discussion of this decision, there is another defacement, but this is a defacement of beauty by death.
“And when,” I said, “ is this most melancholy topic most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious—“when it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world—and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.” (557)
Again, there is a contrast between a beautiful life, and the death thereof. Next, Poe emphasizes the “close circumspection of space” (560). This presents a potential problem to the theme of defacement since Taussig’s thesis relies on what he calls the “public secret…knowing what not to know” (2). However, this problem is overcome by the fact that the desired effect is in the reader, rather than the just the subject of the poem.
……This public nature of the poem lends itself to the necessity of contrast within the poem. The narrative structure of the poem has already been elaborated to the shift in tense into the eternal presence. However, it is necessary to see how various images are elaborated within the poem. Each descriptive image of the narrator’s chamber, even the chamber itself, is mentioned passively. In this instance the reader is unaware that the narrator is beginning the action his private chamber until the narrator mentions the “rapping” at his “chamber door” (4). While this may appear to be a simple example of Poe’s poetic prowess, it bear’s significance to the theme of defacement. The supreme example of this is the bust of Pallas (described as “a bus”) that appears only once the Raven has perched upon it (41).
……The dramatic introduction of the bust of Pallas is indicative of Taussig’s idea of the invisible monument: “the most striking thing about monuments is their lack of strikingness. In fact, they are invisible” (51). The principle at work is that even though they are made to be seen, statues have a way of “‘de-notic[ing] us.’” So defacement is understood “as an act whose uncanny capacitaty to animate dead matter, by magically fusing the representation with what it represents, is already inscribed in the nature of the statue itself” (52). The necessity of defacement is already built into the statue. When the Raven alights upon the bust of Pallas, the contrast of the very white goddess and the very black bird must alert the savvy reader to the related myth in Metamorphoses. In his “Philosophy of Composition,” Poe mentions that the first reason in choosing Pallas is that it is “most keeping with the scholarship of the lover” (561).
……The story of Apollo’s Raven also has with it a theme of defacement. First, the Raven is introduced as formerly white (Ovid II.539). The unspoken knowledge inherent in this statement is the common experience with the Raven as a black bird. Second, Apollo takes pleasure in Coronis of Larissa “just as long/ As she was chaste, or, anyway, undiscovered” (II.549-550). Apollo can accept the potential that Coronis is unchaste as long as he is not confronted with the issue. Furthermore, a crow tells the raven her story concerning knowledge that Pallas would just have rather not known (II.553-560). The accepted knowledge is that the gods are just and favor truth. The public secret, however, is that the gods prefer to be ignorant when it is to their advantage to be so. When Apollo kills Coronis, her blood stains her white skin (II.610). The stain against her chastity is signified in the blood that Apollo sheds when defacing her body in his anger. However, in killing her, and learning that she is pregnant with his son, Apollo realizes the rashness of his action, but too late (II.614). Through this defacement, Apollo realizes a powerful attachment that he has with her. This attachment supports Taussig’s point that “acts of desecration seem to create sacredness” (51). In the narration, Apollo is never so close to Coronis as when he is holding her lifeless body and removing their son from her womb (II.620-624). All of this transpires because the once white raven does not heed the crow’s advice concerning her ordeal with Pallas. However, without both birds performing what Taussig calls (an appropriation from Hegel), “the labor of the negative” (1): that labor that begs the revelation (necessarily a manifestation) of the public secret.
……The labor of the negative in “The Raven” begins with the Raven perching on a bust of Pallas. It is important to note that the narrator says “a bust,” and not “my bust” or “the bust.” This implied insignificance of the bust amplifies the effect of the perching. The bust must be invisible before the Raven perches upon it and visible only when the Raven introduces it by disregarding, for a second time, the sacredness of Pallas. It is only through this sacrilege that Pallas becomes significant to this story. As Poe suggests, the connection between Pallas and the Raven is not lost on the narrator, and for him, Pallas once again has a place of prominence; she is made sacred to the narrator because of the Raven’s sacrilege. Furthermore, the marble statue is contrasted against the black Raven that should be white. In Ovid’s story, chastity is a subtle, yet significant theme. Now, in “The Raven” the virgin goddess is mute and bodiless. She is only given a voice when the bird, cursed for talking too much (Ovid II.543-545) allows her a position in the poem. Likewise, the deceased woman, Lenore, whose memory is actively purged (at least the attempt is being made), is voiceless in death, but her memory and her name are continually mentioned throughout the course of the poem. This contrast of the voiceless Pallas and Lenore with the talkative Raven suggest something darker than what the narrator will let on.
……Lenore is mentioned by name in four stanzas. She is associated with angels three times between the four stanzas (11, 94, 95). She is called “lost” twice (10, 83). The assertion of an angelic nature may actually suggest against an actual angelic nature. Furthermore, by the end of the poem, the narrator is mad. He is completely unreliable for plain truth. Moreover, according to Cassell’s Dictionary of Classical Mythology, the name Pallas may mean “maiden” and is an alternate name for Athena, the virgin goddess of war (580). All we see of Pallas in this poem is her head (the bust). This bust is, as already explained, defaced by the disregard of the Raven that land’s on the head to say “Nevermore.” If a parallel between Coronis, by way of Pallas, and Lenore is possible, inasmuch as Lenore is “lost,” the defacement of Pallas is an objectification of Lenore’s loss of maidenhead. There can be no greater defacement of Pallas, who is identified by her virginity, and no greater defacement for the “sainted maiden” (Poe 94), Lenore, than a loss of virginity.
……If Lenore parallels Coronis through Pallas, the narrator parallels Apollo. Apollo, unlike Pallas, is referenced, though without a name, which is appropriate since the narrator has no name.
“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—so, when Hope he would adjure,
Stern despair returned, instead of the sweet Hope he dared adjure—
That sad answer, “Nevermore!” (61-66)
These verses closely relate to Ovid’s story concerning Apollo’s reaction to the impurity and death of Coronis. First of all, the Raven mercilessly uncovers Coronis’ infidelity; that, in turn, destroys the relationship between Apollo and Coronis. Apollo then shoots Coronis, but upon learning of her pregnancy attempts to revive her: “He lifts the fallen girl, as if caressing/ Might bring her back to life; he tries to conquer/ Her fate beyond all hope of healing” (II.617-620). After this, Apollo curses the Raven that he may nevermore be with the white birds (II.630). The images of the poem present two problems. First, that Lenore may not be as saintly or maidenly as the narrator would suggest. Second, the suggestion is that the narrator has killed Lenore out of jealousy. Apollo is not so concerned about Coronis’ chastity – he has sexual relations with her – as he is her fidelity. His loss of her is a loss of love. Likewise, Lenore’s loss of virginity is more critical to the narrator as a loss of her love for him. The narrator is obsessive about the memory of Lenore, and his books – so much so that he does not even tend to his fire properly, but lets the embers spill over onto the floor (8). This obsession is emphasized in his repeated assertions of Lenore’s sainthood and maidenhood.
……This bilateral transgression is necessary to provide the impetus for defacement, if defacement is deliberate. Furthermore, this transgression is necessary for imposing the fear of the afterlife in the narrator (perhaps, for anybody). Perhaps the greatest fear of afterlife is that such life will be torturous – hellish. In prevailing Christian thought, of which Poe is well aware, retribution is the ultimate end of those who die in their transgressions, or sin. Conversely, those under grace should look forward to an eternal reward. The dilemma is that the afterlife is always before a person, and as it is not yet experienced, it is necessarily uncertain – a matter of faith. The secret is that many (perhaps all) fear that he or she may somehow deserve a torturous afterlife, or not deserve a blissful afterlife. So, as Taussig says, “secrecy is intertwined with taboo, and hence with transgression, so as to create a powerful yet invisible presence; indeed, the presence of presence itself, essential to religion” (209). The taboo is, do not eat the fruit. The transgression occurs when Adam and Eve do eat the fruit, hence creating the presence of death that is already present in its initial proclamation: “in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:17). For the new humans, and for those who likewise fear death, death is not a cessation, but a judgment. If death is a judgment of a transgression, how terrible is the result? For the narrator and Lenore, the transgression forces the climactic antepenultimate stanza. If Lenore has sinned, she is damned. If the narrator has sinned, he too is damned. There is no “balm in Gilead” (89) for the narrator, so is it possible that the “distant Aidann” (98) is part of a perverse fantasy that he has created to reconcile an ultimate meeting for the two lovers? If, after all, she has committed a transgression, they just as well may suffer in Hell together. This option might be tenable, however the images of the poem, spoken through the voice of an insane, and therefore unreliable narrator, suggest the narrator’s conclusions. The easiest conclusion to draw is that Lenore is saintly, and that the narrator is just as saintly, and therefore should live in Paradise with her. Upon looking into Ovid and attempting to interpret through the narrator’s insane perspective (for instance, the self-aggrandizing parallel between himself and Apollo), Lenore may have been a promiscuous woman who is killed be her lover out of passion in order that they may live together in Hell. As a godlike character, in his self-perception, he has the right to execute judgment upon Lenore. So, in either case, the narrator has tried to defeat his fear of death by assuming the togetherness of he and Lenore in the afterlife.
……Once this tension between justification and judgment builds to its peak, the Raven can speak the climactic word of the antepenultimate stanza. But how does the Raven communicate? Part of the practical reason, as Poe writes in “Philosophy of Composition,” for using a Raven is for its ability to speak. But he likens the Raven’s ability to that of a parrot – a mimicker, not a rational creature (556). The narrator even remarks that this word is most likely “caught from some unhappy master.” However, the narrator, especially at the climax, treats the Raven’s word with immense weight. It is the narrator that has allowed the Raven the ability to cross over from speech to communication. This crossover occurs in the very first reaction to the Raven’s speech: “Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly/ Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore” (49-50). First, the narrator affords that the bird’s answer is “discourse,” implying that what the bird has to say actually has some rationality behind it. And, though it may be, in part, a metrical devise, if the critic believes that Poe chooses his words carefully, it is irresponsible not to consider that the narrator says “little” and not “no.” This treatment of the Raven begins to illustrate the madness in the narrator – at which is already hinted by the admission that he talks to himself (i.e. “‘Tis some visitor,’ I muttered” [5]) – that builds throughout the poem. The madness of the narrator contrasts the perfect sense of the Raven. It is the narrator that speaks the long and beautiful verses that are wrapped-up in madness and pointed images. The bird speaks only one word, and only when prompted. Yet, it is the promptings of the maddened narrator that afford sense and discourse to what the bird speaks. Consider that the first answer, the response of a name, is coincidental (48), it is still the narrator who gives meaning to the Raven’s speech. It is completely appropriate to ask a stranger for a name, but why inquire of a bird? When the Raven responds to his offhand comment (60) the narrator actually assumes that the word has meaning (72). Furthermore, the narrator calls this word “his only stock and store,” so it would seem logical to ask amusing questions as if this visitation is a game: “will I have to pay my taxes?” “Nevermore!” Instead, the narrator is so trapped in his obsession for Lenore that he appears unable to ask questions that will lead to anything but despair. By taking away Lenore’s voice in murderous obsession, he has given the voice to the Raven that is necessary for keeping him in madness and despair for his deed.
……At the last, the Raven speaks: “Nevermore” (96). The narrator has, up to this point, put on a mask of deception. He deceives the reader into thinking that he and Lenore should be united because she is saintly, and he gives no overt reason why the reader should dislike him. He even tries to deceive the savvy reader who may make the connection between Pallas, Coronis and Lenore, and between Apollo and the narrator. Of course, justifying murder with fornication is inequitable, and his story breaks down at this point. However, it is not until the Raven’s last utterance that his ideology is defaced, and he is confronted with the reality of his judgment, the reality that Lenore may be innocent, the reality that despite his best efforts, the afterlife is more fearsome than death. In the end, he is more like Apollo than what he would wish; Like Apollo, he can never visit his love.
……It is this defacement of death through the labor of the negative that allows the presence of the fear of afterlife to take hold of the mind once the transgression has been unearthed. In most of Poe’s poetry, the defacement, for Taussig’s explanation, is incomplete. The Raven, however, when compared against other related texts illustrates, quite well, the value of discovering defacement in literature. Taussig’s book is an anthropological study concerning various societies and traditions around the earth. His work is one of explaining mimetic principles of the sacrosanct in society and culture, and why people react such as they do when that monument, however forgotten or public it may be, is destroyed or defaced. In much the same way, Gothic literature, particularly American Gothic, is an exposition of the human condition in extreme and supernatural conditions. The American Gothic affords the character studies requisite for the sociological constructs. It combines the inversion of the natural, exposing itself to the very determined probe of terror, and includes people (who are often just as inverted, or perverted) to react to such situations. The inversion of nature, for instance, from a passive set of trees to an aggressive, forested wilderness by the simple setting of the sun begs to be explored in terms of defacement. What does the public know about the forest that they will not talk about? What deep-seeded sins (transgressions) lurk in the lore of those boughs? What hides in the darkness that reacts against a humanity that has always been at odds with it? Defacement is an inherent motif in any work that distorts or magnifies reality. Furthermore, it may allow the critic to explore sociological meaning (i.e. people fear the afterlife more than death) in a controlled environment, unlike the violent and/or traumatic situations that Taussig describes.
Works Cited
March, Jeremy. “Pallas” Cassell’s Dictionary of Classical Mythology. 2001 ed.
Ovid. Metamorpheses. Trans. Rolfe Humphries. Indiana University Press. Bloomington, IN:
……1955. 45-48.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “Lake: To-, The.” The Portable Poe. Ed. Philip Van Doren Stern. Penguin.
……New York: 1977, 602.
---. “Philosophy of Composition, The.” The Portable Poe. Ed. Philip Van Doren Stern. Penguin.
……New York: 1977, 549-565.
---. “Raven, The.” The Portable Poe. Ed. Philip Van Doren Stern. Penguin. New York: 1977,
……617-623.
---. “Silence—A Fable.” The Portable Poe. Ed. Philip Van Doren Stern. Penguin. New York:
……1977, 588-594.
---. “Sleeper, The.” The Portable Poe. Ed. Philip Van Doren Stern. Penguin. New York: 1977,
……609-611.
Taussig, Michael. Defacement. Stanford University Press. Stanford, CA: 1999.
Selected Bibliography
Freedman, William. “Poe’s ‘The Raven.’” Explicator- (Expl). 1999 Spring; 57(3): 146-48.
Godden, Richard. “Poe and the Poetics of Opacity: Or, Another Way of Looking at That Black
……Bird.” ELH- (ELH). 2000 Winter; 67(4): 993-1009.
Kopley, Richard & Kevin Hayes. Two Verse Masterworks: 'The Raven' and 'Ulalume'. 191-204
……IN Hayes,-Kevin-J. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Edgar ……Allan Poe. Cambridge,
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Link, Franz. Edgar Allan Poe: Romantik und Moderne. 51-67 IN Alexander,-Vera (ed. and
……introd.); Fludernik,-Monika (ed. and introd.). Romantik. Trier, Germany : Wissenschaftlicher, 2000. 249 pp.
Rachman, Stephen. “Subterranean Homesick Poe: Lou Reed's The Raven.” Edgar-Allan-Poe-
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Stevenson, Frank W. “Resonant Noise: Poe's Pit and Deleuze's Pendulum.” Concentric:-Literary-
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