LONELINESS IN EDGAR ALLAN POE’S SELECTED POEMS: STRUCTURALISM APPROACH = LONELINESS IN EDGAR ALLAN POE’S SELECTED POEMS: STRUCTURALISM APPROACH

This study examines at Edgar Allan Poe's poems Alone, A Dream Within a Dream, Lenore, and Eldorado through the prism of structuralism theory, focusing on the fundamental subject of loneliness in each. The study uses structural analysis to investigate how loneliness carefully pins into the protagonists' psychological frameworks, revealing their motivations, conflicts, and intense feelings of isolation.
Alone clearly shows the speaker's lifelong isolation from others, finding safety in solitude in an ignorant world, using literary devices like personification and alliteration to emphasise emotional suffering. In A Dream Within a Dream, Poe explores the sorrow of loss and the briefness of reality, as memories fade like grains of sand, pointing out the futility of grasping brief dreams through metaphor and symbolism. Lenore explores into existential loneliness after a loved one's death, employing emotional imagery and symbolism to explore the personal and group impacts of loss. Finally, Eldorado metaphorically portrays the loneliness that comes with pursuing unreachable ambitions, focused on a knight's solitary quest for a mythical city of wealth, expressing themes of existential solitude and the never-ending human need for fulfilment. This abstract describes how Poe's poems closely intertwine structural elements with themes of loneliness, providing important insights into human psychology and the complexities of isolation within literary narratives.