how is edgar allen poes life reflected in the rave nand annabel lee?

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2003

Answers

in the raven edgar was expressing how depressed he was after the death of his wife lenore and how he dreamed of her coming back and was no longer happy with out her.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2003

The first answer is very wrong. Even Annabel lee the one written after Virginia's(his only wife)death is at best only partly about her.

The answer you need is Poe's dual creative dipping into his general life experience(several types of female losses)and his bonding with a melancholic Muse. He loves the Muse but hates the reality which finally overcomes all his efforts to make something out of what is in essence loss and death- weighing heavily on his attempts to get on with life. But he can't get on because memory AND the soul of his art is fixed on things taken by death and turned into ghostly oppression.

More to it than that, but you can see it needs some good knowledge of his life and poetic statements. Try "The Lake" and "A Paean" as art-affirming precursors to the descent into despair in "The Raven" and the finality of useless revolt in "Annabel Lee".

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2003