Summary Of Edgar Allan Poe's A Dream Within A Dream

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In the poem "A Dream Within a Dream", the poet, Edgar Poe plays the role as a speaker. He wrote this poem during an uncertain time in his life where he questioned whether reality is absolute or a dream within a dream, hence the title of the poem. This piece along with others Poe wrote, was written during the Gothic period and part of the dark romanticism genre. This poem is Poe himself, pouring his confusion and pain of a particular time of his life through works of literary style and themes to convey if life is in fact "A Dream Within a Dream." According to Readings on Edgar Allan Poe, the book explained Poe was invariably known for his tales of mystery and macabre. His best known poems were generally Gothic and dealt with …show more content…

The Romantic era began in Germany, moved through all of Europe and Russia, and, simultaneously changed American literature in the United States. As a result, writers including Poe were influenced and adopted the era into their writings. "The most dominant characteristic of authors during the Romantic movement was the rejection of the rational and the intellectual in favor of the intuitive and the emotional"(Minor). "A Dream Within a Dream" is one example of the works produced that was greatly influenced by the Romantic period due to the emotionally driven plot that describes Edgar Poe 's agony of his …show more content…

The opening stanza begins with a triplet, then shifts to couplets. The poem has iambic rhythm and has 24 lines, divided into two stanzas. In the first stanza, Edgar Poe starts off the poem parting from his lover; his wife, Virginia Clem, who was dying from tuberculosis. He says, "Take this kiss upon the brow!/And, in parting from you now" (1-2). Poe voices this in a demanding tone as he already accepted the unfortunate fate of his wife. As a result of the outcome of his wife 's death, Poe wondered if reality is factual. In order to convey his confusion with reality, Poe uses alliteration in lines 4 and 5 when he says "You are not wrong, who deem/That my days have been a dream." After saying goodbye to his wife, Edgar Poe was skeptic about the ability to know things for certain. He argued that life is one vast illusion so in the last two lines in the first stanza, Poe stated, "All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a

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