This is
a question relevant not only to "" but to other works of Poe and to much of Romantic
and modernist literature overall.
Beginning with the Romantic period, writers
began self-consciously to explore the relationship between illusion and reality in unprecedented
ways. Poems and stories began to be written where there was a deliberate emphasis upon
irrational states of mind and the question of what part of reality is a
projection of one's psyche, of one's thought, as opposed to existing
objectively in the external world. Though Poe is not generally classified as a Romantic writer,
his writing is nonetheless influenced by the trends of the era.
Think of the
oddities in "The Raven" and what they suggest about the mental state of the speaker.
He tells us he is "nearly napping," and this indicates the unusual way we tend to
think and feel when we're falling asleep, in which ideas run together and are freely associated
in a manner that's different from both our normal waking state...
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