Ashley Everidge Dr. Grant Literary Criticism- Final Essay 1 December 2014 Loving and Dying with the Critics: A Literary Criticism Reception History of “Annabel Lee”
Literary criticism can serve as a facilitator to encourage the reading of a particular text, but more importantly serves as an encourager of close reading. Throughout the process of close reading, one may find and compile evidence to prove a work’s importance, or lack thereof, in the field of literature. The specific viewpoint of a piece of criticism sometimes depends on the type of criticism presented and how well the text does or does not follow what the specific school believes to be “good” literature. In reading literary criticism on “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, discoveries can be made about various interpretations of the text, as well as opinions that individuals and schools of criticism have about this poem. Each presents different points about “Annabel Lee,” including ideas about its effectiveness and coherence as a work of literature. The first piece of criticism was written by M ͣ Luz García Parra entitled “Poe: The Concept of Poetry and Poetic Practice with Reference to the Relationship between The Poetic Principle and Annabel Lee.” This piece is a conglomeration of criticism on Poe’s poetry, as well as his general ideas about poetry found in The Poetic Principle. (Though both are contained in the article, for the purposes of this paper, only those interpretations directly related to “Annabel Lee” will be included.) García Parra focuses primarily on the structure of the poem, describing “Annabel Lee” as something “sprung from a deep passion, but it is first and foremost an artistic
work” (57). She discusses the poem’s musicality, rhyme scheme, meter, line length, and enjambment. She also addresses figurative language, repetition of words and phrases, and elevated language. Most of these features are used to shed a positive light on the poem because they are used effectively in the poem, according to García Parra, who speaks highly of the particular text: “Only when a craftsman of poetry employs all the linguistic devices of the language, and then displays such skill that the assembly of the components is so perfect that we cannot see the separate units forming it, but only the beauty of the overall effect, can we talk of poetry” (63). García Parra presents a formalist approach in her critique, which can be seen in the fact that she spends so much time speaking about the poem itself. She uses structural aspects to describe its beauty, effectiveness, and overall importance as a piece of literature. It is true that she does include some of Poe’s own views in her interpretation, such as how he upheld his ideas on line length, but she validates each of these points through investigation of the structure of “Annabel Lee” (García Parra 54). García Parra uses these ideas found in formalism to praise the poem and what it stands for. She concludes that the “method to poetic creation” has been the greatest contributing factor to Poe’s writing (64). Additionally, she considers his poetry to be successful because it is versatile, while still maintaining beauty and lyrical consistency, along with true and thoughtful feelings (64). A similar style of criticism with a different message, “The English Professor’s Dilemma” written by Wallace C. Brown, contains personal insight from being a professor of English. Brown uses this biographical standpoint to illustrate the issues he finds while being in the classroom and attempting to teach literary criticism, as well as literature in general. He uses Poe as an example to the anomaly he finds in teaching; many of the texts taught are taught with a
historical viewpoint “at the expense of “literary” criticism” (Brown 379). Though he makes strong statements about how many critics place Poe’s life and influence on poetry as superior to his own poetry, Brown decides to step back and to look strictly at the poem “Annabel Lee” as a work in and of itself. In this way, he is able to clearly see if this poem is “important at all” (Brown 379). After investigating the poem, Brown finds that the poem does not contain unity because its stanza breaks seemed random and the arrangement was “haphazard and uncertain” (381). Another criticism of the poem is that the “references are…unidentifiable [and] their meaning is lost” (Brown 381). The last reason Brown gives for the lack of greatness in this poem is the unsuccessful mood portrayed. He states that the words found in “Annabel Lee” create a “denotative level of meaning” and that there is too much in the story that is unclear (382). Overall, Brown believes this poem is unsuccessful and “little more than [a] museum [piece]” (385). Brown’s reasoning for his critique is not because he focuses on the author or the historical time, but because he analyzes the poem itself, including word choice and structure, in order to find that it is not productive in producing meaning. Brown believes formalist criticism is the most important kind when attempting to place importance of a work because he makes it the focus of his own critique. In his interpretation, Brown considers the story to be one of “triumph of love over death,” but does not say much more about interpretation because he finds the poem to have a lack of symbols and too vague to truly apply to a distinct meaning (380). Because of this essential dearth of meaning, he finds the poem to be less effective than most and he states his criticism clearly in this essay. In a response to Brown’s article, a man by the name of Bradford A. Booth expresses his opinions on “Annabel Lee” and Brown’s statements about the poem. Booth dislikes Brown’s
harsh criticism and, in a way, asks him to reconsider his views. For one, Booth states that an “autobiographical allusion” is not a weakness because other great works present misunderstood allusions too, which may be viewed as ambiguous aspects, but are still considered great works (17). Booth continues to look into the two possible women who were Poe’s Annabel Lee: Virginia Clemm Poe and Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton. He presents cases for each of these based on passages from the poem, though there are contradictions for both women to be the true Annabel. This is why Booth claims “that Poe was writing a ballad, not his autobiography” (1819). In lieu of Annabel Lee’s true identity being proven and the importance that holds, Booth simply reflects on the acceptance to use personal undertones to create a story with a larger meaning, which is what he felt Poe was doing. Though Booth seems to be presenting a biographical view of the poem because of his mention of both Virginia and Sarah as possibly being the real Annabel Lee, he uses these to insert a philosophical view on love and how it is depicted. He believes the larger purpose of this particular work by Poe is not to know for sure who Poe is referring to when he says Annabel, but rather to “reinforce a conception of the strength of earthly love,” which presents a philosophical idea. This is the interpretation that paves the way for this response to be an example of the philosophical form of criticism (Booth 19). He also disagrees with Brown’s distaste for the poem, and instead seems to find it to be well written and thorough enough to create the perfect “emotional texture” (Booth 17). His praise for the text and its combination of ambiguity, as well as its ballad feel, displays his endorsement of the poem. An additional critique on “Annabel Lee” can be found in “Poetics and Ideology in Fernando Pessoa’s Translations of Edgar Allan Poe” by Margarida Vale de Gato. In this essay, Vale de Gato speaks about the effectiveness of the translations of “Annabel Lee” as translated by
Pessoa. Vale de Gato states that one of the reasons he feels that Pessoa decided to translate this poem was so that Pessoa could “inscribe his utopian ideology” into the poem (122). As he continues in the essay, Vale de Gato explores the changes made to the translated version of the poem, such as the lack of the words “Annabel Lee” in the poem, aside from their use in the title. Because of the inability to translate foreign names easily, he argues that the “settings and particularly the characters acquire a more abstract quality” (Vale de Gato 123). Pessoa also differs from Poe in the idea that he believes more in rhythm of thinking than in musicality itself; Pessoa does not need pleasurable sound or content such as the ones Poe attempted to achieve (124). Additionally, Vale de Gato also points out that there may be areas in the poem where the story is skewed more toward a single interpretation in Pessoa’s translation compared to Poe’s version (128). Vale de Gato seems to be making his argument from a structuralist critical perspective. Reasons behind this lie in the idea of semiotics and the never-ending flow of interpretations. Words only stand in for other words and a final meaning can never come to flourish. Though Pessoa’s translation may tell a similar story to Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” it will never truly say what Poe has written in English words. Words are arbitrary and cannot lead to a final meaning, and Vale de Gato sees this as the issue with translations of poetry. He is not a fan of Pessoa’s translation and criticizes it because of Pessoa’s selfish uses to attempt to change Portuguese poetry and to “[prepare] his audience for the nationalist echoes of the maritime ballad” (Vale de Gato 128). Vale de Gato does not state his views on “Annabel Lee,” but his defense of the change in meaning after translation leads one to believe that he was fond of the poem and felt it should maintain its purest form and connotation.
From a similar perspective, Robert Albrecht writes about translation in his “Song of the Poet: Lost in Translation or Re-discovered in a new Form?” In his paper, Albrecht writes about his experience of putting poems to music and how it has an influence on the original text. He speaks about decisions of “words, grammar, and tone” that must be made during the translation process (Albrecht 177). Albrecht describes the changes made while turning poems into songs as “the creation of new maps of [an] original territory” (178). One section of the paper places emphases on changing literacy to orality; here Albrecht discusses how he creates a tension in music between minor and major keys of music, as well as the harp versus the accordion to create the full give and take of the “love/ death disequilibrium of the poem” (182). There is also importance given to the idea that meaning is also settled “within the context in which [words] are produced, shared, and experienced” (Albrecht 184). This essay highlights many aspects of translating and the importance, as well as difficulty, it may hold. Because Albrecht’s essay pays special attention to the importance of words, how they are used and why certain ones are chosen, his essay exhibits structuralist characteristics. Nothing is said about the meaning of “Annabel Lee” based upon Poe’s life or any outside factors; language is the primary source for meaning. Though exact translations are impossible, Albrecht displays how certain choices should be made to enable an easier transition from one means to another, in this case a poem to a song, to create the best possible translation, though it will still be an “inferior adaptation” (187). Albrecht finds the poem to have a “gentle quality as a love poem with the macabre undercurrents” of a “bittersweet brooding” (181-82). He praises the poem by not wanting to change it drastically and even feels as though he has “respected the [poet’s] intentions,” in his translation (Albrecht 188). Furthermore, Albrecht also believes that “Poe understood” the perks of creating songs from poems in order to “establish a context, a sonic
environment, a mood, in which the words can more readily work their way down into the deeper parts of our being” (188). In these ways, Albrecht shows his approval of “Annabel Lee” and of Poe as a poet in general. The last piece of criticism is “Inspiring Death: Poe’s Poetic Aesthetics, “Annabel Lee,” and the Communities of Mourning in Nineteenth-Century America” by Adam Bradford. This piece discusses lives of those living in the time period in which Poe lived. Bradford argues against psychological theories that state “Poe’s literature served as a screen for a disturbed psyche” by explaining that all individuals in this time period were in a state of mourning and darkness (73). He also argues that the “nineteenth-century culture of mourning and memorializing” gave Poe his muse (Bradford 73). Bradford continues by listing and explaining types of talismans used by people during times of mourning in this time in history. These “objects became a means for not only countering grief, but for reinscribing the social bonds that were necessary to form and perpetuate communities” (Bradford 76). The mourning objects he discusses include locks of hair, mourning portraits of those who are deceased, and mourning quilts. Bradford speaks of each of these items and gives examples, including Poe’s picture of Virginia (79). This culture also influenced Poe’s The Poetic Principle by creating a need for beauty and a ‘pleasurable sadness’ (Bradford 84). Bradford also comments on Poe’s “notorious editor and biographer, Rufus Griswold[’s]” opinions and comments of “Annabel Lee” (86). Bradford’s criticism is full of cultural perspective, so making him easily a critic of a historical nature. He uses the stage of Poe’s prime to analyze events in history, specifically the “[engulfment] in the rituals and practices that surrounded the memorializing of [the] dead” occurring in Richmond (Bradford 72). This pinpoints a whole time period and location as the reasons behind Poe’s “’death-obsessed’ body of poetry,” not specifically his losses of family
while a child (Bradford 76). The descriptions of the talismans used explains why Poe had one of his own, as well as why his poetry articulated death and mourning as openly as it did. Bradford seems to endorse Poe and “Annabel Lee,” and does not want individuals to believe Poe was a madman or disturbed. He may be instead leaning toward the idea that if anyone was insane, it was the entire town. However, Bradford thinks this text is Poe’s way of “[entering] into a dialogue with such a culture” as the one he was living in (85). “Annabel Lee” represents an “expression of intense grief,” as well as something that is “capable of instantiating a powerful sense of empathetic community for those whose grief was so intense, so raw, that more ‘conventional’ means of consolation were…a prelude to a more complete and successful process of mourning” (Bradford 89). Each of these critique essays offers different perspectives, even if they come from the same school of criticism. Most of the papers mentioned above are positive and open to “Annabel Lee” as a “good” poem, and some even shed light on Poe as an effective poet. Each approach mentioned— Structuralist, Formalist, Philosophical, and Historical— offer insight to what “Annabel Lee” holds from various perspectives and uses different types of evidence to back up the points made. Overall, there were great points made by each of the critiques that were all backed up by evidence, which was found through close investigation of the text and sometimes other factors, too. However, the points made from each writer vary greatly, depending on which school of criticism he or she chose to make their lens for writing. Many of them agree that “Annabel Lee” does its job as far as its role as a piece of “good” poetry and literature. Though these criticisms are just a few of the perspectives, it seems as though “Annabel Lee” is a success in numerous contexts.
Works Cited Albrecht, Robert. "Song Of The Poet: Lost In Translation Or Re-Discovered In A New Form?." ETC: A Review of General Semantics 67.2 (2010): 177-190. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 20 Nov. 2014. Booth, Bradford A. "The Identity of Annabel Lee." College English 7.1 (1945): 17-19. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. Bradford, Adam. "Inspiring Death: Poe's Poetic Aesthetics, 'Annabel Lee,' and the Communities of Mourning in Nineteenth-Century America." Edgar Allan Poe Review 12.1 (2011): 72100. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. Brown, Wallace C. "The English Professor's Dilemma." College English 5.7 (1944): 379-385. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. García Parra, Ma Luz. "Poe: The Concept of Poetry and Poetic Practice With Reference to the Relationship between The Poetic Principle And Annabel Lee." Revista Alicantina De Estudios Ingleses 13.(2000): 53-65. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. Vale de Gato, Margarida. "Poetics And Ideology In Fernando Pessoa's Translations Of Edgar Allan Poe." Edgar Allan Poe Review 11.1 (2010): 121-130. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.
