The Refrain in Poe's Poetry

DGAR ALLAN POE'S use of the refrain constitutes a valuable index to his literary practice and to the relation between his practice and theory. An examination of the refrain in his poetry can be helpful in clarifying the disparity between his merits and the frequent puerility of even his best poems. Before turning to his work, however, it is perhaps necessary to distinguish the refrain as a literary device from such related devices as simple repetition, incremental repetition, and parallel structure by limiting it to thematic, patterned repetition.1 Poe's poetry abounds in all these devices, and sometimes they seem to blur into one another. But refrain can usually be isolated on the basis of its thematic character, whether it consists of the repetition of a single word or of a unit as large as a stanza. Poe's most complete discussion of the refrain occurs, unfortunately, in a work which critics have viewed with great suspicion. But whatever The Philosophy of Composition (I846) may or may not reveal about the composition of The Raven, it probably sets forth accurately some of Poe's opinions on aesthetic and technical matters. Certainly there is no reason to question his remarks on the general nature of the refrain, since they clearly describe the theory of the refrain which he practiced in his later poems. To facilitate the examination of this theory, the crucial passage is quoted in full

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