"The Raven"
Oscar Cargill, "A New Source for 'The Raven,'" American Literature 8.3 (November 1936): 291-94.
6 images
Details
Title
Oscar Cargill, "A New Source for 'The Raven,'" American Literature 8.3 (November 1936): 291-94.
6 images
6 images
Creator
Oscar Cargill
Contributor
Thomas Ollive Mabbott
Format
Pamphlet, periodical (excerpt)
Description
Oscar Cargill's brief article proposing that a translation of August Bürger's poem "Ellenore" in William Taylor's three-volume Historic Survey of German Poetry (1828-1830) inspired Poe's "The Raven," particularly the ingenious rhyming of "Lenore" and "Nevermore." Cargill traces this rhyme to Taylor's translation of Bürger's poem, where the name "Ellenore" (also said by Cargill to be a source for Poe's tale "Eleonora") is rhymed with "no more." There is even a reference to "ravens" in the poem. The article was printed as a stand-alone pamphlet with its own title page, a common practice for established scholars of another era. Cargill has signed the title page "in admiration"; Mabbott has noted that he did "not yet need" the article in 1959. Neither Cargill's article nor Taylor are accounted for in Mabbott's edition.
Relation
Thomas Ollive Mabbott's Research Files for the Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe.
Source
Papers of Thomas Ollive Mabbott, Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries; “The Raven,” in Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. I: Poems, ed. T.O. Mabbott (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), 350-374.