How Does Edgar Allan Poe Use Allegory In Poe's The Haunted Palace

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Haunted Palace” was written in 1839 and originally published in Baltimore Museum magazine. It is forty-eight lines long, divided into six stanzas, and follows an ABAB rhyme scheme. It uses contrasting imageries, glorious and gloomy, to emphasize a sense of loss for something once-great. It also uses allegory to compare the subject of the poem, a haunted palace, with a man, possibly himself. This poem describes a palace, once-great, fallen into disrepair. The palace, once vibrant, ages into an abandoned desolate place, haunted by “evil things in robes of sorrow” (line 33). This poem is allegory for the descent of a man, possibly Poe himself. That this poem is an allegory for a man is well supported in numerous texts, not the least of these being The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature: 9th Edition (685), as well as by a careful examination of the text. Combining the theme of descent and decline with what is known of Poe himself, one can conclude: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Haunted Palace” is an allegory that alludes to his own perceived decay and descent into madness. (How does “The Haunted Palace” use allegory to convey that the poem is actually about a man?) “The Haunted Palace” uses allegory to convey that the poem is about a man by using images that parallel parts of a man. The poem uses many

The possibility that these substances furthered his despair cannot be discounted. His dry writing spell, as well as his predilection for intoxicants, could have caused him to seek solace in opium and alcohol, which would have only exacerbated his depression and sent him further into