Amanda Grogan
ENG 248
June 4, 2010
Writing Assignment 2
Poe-lagiarizing
In 1885 a literary critic, John Henry Ingram, claimed Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven was the most influential lyric poem in the world. His reasoning for giving The Raven honorary label was the multiple editions and translations made for the poem. Within Outsourcing “The Raven”: Retroactive Origins, Eliza Richards agrees that even to this day The Raven holds its title of “Most Popular”. She argues not only has it been printed over and again throughout the past hundred plus years, it also has been used in popular T.V. series, The Simpsons, and in the music of Lou Reed. Outsourcing “The Raven”: Retroactive Origins inquires into the reason for the popularity of the poem. According to Richards, the popularity builds off of the speculation of the origins of the poem. Both Ingram and Richards acknowledge that there are many who think The Raven was plagiarized. Ingram claims that the popularity of The Raven spawned the “continuous series of fabrications” of the origin of the poem. However, Richards believes that the poem encourages speculation and the accusations feed into the popularity of it. Poe’s The Philosophy of Composition uses The Raven as the example of how to write poetry. In his example he encourages the reader to think “backwards” towards the “moment of the poem’s inception”. Richards claims the question of the origin of the poem was intentional to guarantee its “survival and transmission”.
The fame of The Raven was instantaneous. After only a month of being published, The Raven could be found in newspapers all over the East coast and within a year it had journeyed over seas. The fame of the poem was soon followed by the question of its origin. Before the poem’s publication, Poe had written two separate criticisms of Elizabeth Barrett’s Lady Geraldine’s Courtship and Charles Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge. Poe’s articles of criticism clearly showed that both of these literary works influenced his writing of The Raven. Barrett’s poem provided inspiration with a solitary line “…murmurous stir uncertain…purple curtain” and Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge gave Poe the desire to create a more prophetic raven. Poe welcomed the accusation that he had taken from both of these works and he claimed that his “palpable imitation” of these works could be considered blatant improvement. The Raven resembled many other American poems that had been in the newspapers. Thomas Holley Chives asserted that Poe had stolen the structure and theme from his poem To Allegra Florence in Heaven. With the same “ing” disyllabic endings, exactly twice the syllables in each line, and the theme of death and a dearly loved one Chives’ poem definitely resembled The Raven. One of Poe’s friends, Henry Hirst, said that Poe stole his choice of words from his poem To a Ruined Fountain in a Gercian Picture, which had lines with “never-dying raven” and “nameless even”. Poe, again, had no worry over these allegations saying that Hirst’s work was fair game for theft. There were claims of Poe’s literary theft from all over the world including China, Italy, and Persia. Poe, without being specific, admitted to “deliberate literary theft” in his unfinished manuscript A Reviewer Reviewed. Richards looked back on The Raven and pointed out the stanza where Poe writes about “borrowed” words of the “forgotten lore”. She suggests that Poe is alludes to his plagiarism within the very poem that originality was so challenged. Richards doesn’t deal with the morality of the plagiarism; she only comments on the effect these claims had on the popularity of the poem.
There were claims against the originality of The Raven other than the belief that Poe stole from existing literature. Richards tells her readers that those who weren’t claiming theft were saying that they had helped write the poem. According to Colonel Du Solle, Poe’s mother-in-law told him that Poe had brought every stanza to a wine cellar to be reviewed by the workers for suggestions. These revisions were considered and for the most part used in the final product. Francis Gerry Fair Field was not so convinced by Du Solle’s story. Instead he believed that Poe wrote the poem while he was worried about his sick wife and submitted it to his mother-in-law for her help.
Richards concludes that deciphering the plausible accusations from the false claims. After looking at these claims, Poe critics tend to side with Poe and criticize the allegations more intensely.
Outsourcing “The Raven”: Retroactive Origins provided a very interesting account of the story behind Poe’s famous poem. For anyone ignorant of the works of Poe the popularity of The Raven presented by Richards would be astounding. The reason for the notoriety of the Poem given by Richards was even more intriguing. Even if you’re an American who has never read Poe, you probably have at least been told that he was a great American writer. It is interesting that one of the most famous writers in our history was known for plagiarizing. Even while he was alive there were stories of plagiarism that followed Poe, but he was still respected and admired.
It’s noticeable that Poe’s stolen pieces of literature used in The Raven aren’t the only great parts of the poem. Poe may have taken pieces of other poems and got inspiration from other works, but he added his own flair to his poem. Poetry is a form of art and artists steal pieces of other works to create their own design. It’s original because they looked at the same object in a different context. Andy Warhol created a famous Marlin Monroe composition from an existing picture. He multiplied the image and put bright primary colors to the black and white photo, and then it became his own. Poe took the same concept to his poetry.
Poe seems like man with an ego, so picturing him submitting his work to a bunch of winery workers for revision is laughable. Speaking from speculation, Poe was a brilliant writer and probably only submitted his work for grammar checks by professionals or family. Fairfield suggested that Poe might have given his writing to his mother-in-law and that sounds more probable. People back then usually let family look at their writing before they let the community see it.
Some of the accusations of plagiarism and collaboration brought against Edgar Allen Poe combined his own admission to stealing from other works during his career point to the definite possibility that The Raven wasn’t completely original. However, there are plenty of accusations that seem unfounded. Either way, Richard’s idea that the allegations increased the popularity of the poem is well founded. Instead of just being a piece of literature from the eighteen hundreds it is legendary from the scandal stories behind it. It’s safe to say that everybody likes a good scandal.