Juncu Maria Mihaela

2 year MA, English Language and Literatue

nd

The Raven
A Structuralist Analysis
1. Based on general structuralist ideas
2. Based on N. Fryes Archetypal Criticism
1. Based on general structuralist ideas
the typical structuralist process of moving from the particular to the general, placing the
individual work within a wider structural context. The wider structure might also be found in,
for instance, the whole corpus of an author's work (Barry 39) a network of intertextual
connections (41)

The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher

Ulalume and Annabel Lee

culture is made up of many structural networks which carry significance and can be
shown to operate in a systematic way. These networks operate through 'codes' as a system of
signs; they can make statements, just as language does, and they can be read or decoded by
the structuralist or semiotician.
it is nevertheless essentially structuralist in its attempt to reduce the immense complexity
and diversity possible in fiction to the operation of five codes The five codes identified by
Barthes in S/Z are (Barry 40-42):
1. The proairetic code This code provides indications of actions ( I stood repeating; Back
into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning; In there stepped a stately
raven of the saintly days of yore)
2. The hermeneutic code This code poses questions or enigmas which provide narrative
suspense (While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. makes the reader wonder
who is at the door; Nevermore- makes the reader wonder what the raven means by
repeating it, the hidden message behind this one word)
3. The cultural code This code contains references out beyond the text to what is regarded as
common knowledge (the image of the raven, which immediately turns the readers thoughts
towards death, decay, greed; the image of the bust of Pallas, which clearly leads the reader to
think of the Greek divinity, the goddess of wisdom, a symbol of reason ,sense, discretion)
4. The semic code This is also called the connotative code. It is linked to theme, and this code
(says Scholes in the book mentioned above) when organised around a particular proper name
constitutes a'character'.

5. The symbolic code This code is also linked to theme, but on a larger scale, so to speak. It
consists of contrasts and pairings related to the most basic binary polarities - male and
female, night and day, good and evil, life and art, and so on (there are two conflicting
worlds in The Raven that of light/darkness; the light is represented by: the radiant maiden
Lenor, the white bust of Pallas, the lamplight that illuminates the protagonists chamber, the
sole haven from the outer darkness; the darkness is represented by: the raven, the dying
embers, the shadow cast by the raven, the darkness of the night and of the Plutonian shore,
the omen of the ravens words Nevermore).
2. Based on N. Fryes Archetypal Criticism
Total literary history moves from the primitive to the sophisticated, and here we glimpse the
possibility of seeing literature as a complication of a relatively restricted and simple group of
formulas that can be studied in primitive culture. If so, then the search for archetypes is a
kind of literary anthropology, concerned with the way that literature is informed by preliterary categories such as ritual, myth and folktale. (Frye 506-507)
Literature: spread out in conceptual space from some unseen center (Frye 507)

Raven: mythology and folktale

Some arts move in time, like music; others are presented in space, like painting. In both
cases the organizing principle is recurrence, which is called rhythm when it is temporal and
pattern when it is spatial. (Frye 508)

Recurrence in The Raven

Patterns of imagery, on the other hand, or fragments of significance, are oracular in origin,
and derive from the epiphanic moment, the flash of instantaneous comprehension with no
direct reference to time (Frye 509)
After he has understood their structure, then he can descend from archetypes to genres, and
see how the lyric emerges from the epiphanic or fragmented side (Frye 511).

Here the epiphany is the protagonists realization that there is no life after death, and that
he will never reunite with his Lenore.

The Raven = the trickster - an archetype

Carl Jung was the one who established the trickster as an archetype. The trickster is the one
who makes us laugh, but he also makes us cry, because he has the power to reveal the human
drives and urges, emphasizing the human vulnerability, torturing us by revealing the hurtful
truth. In the same way, Poes Raven revealed the hurtful truth to the protagonist, crushing his
hopes and desires by showing him what lies beyond death.