“The Raven” is a work in the Gothic fiction genre, a genre to which Poe contributed greatly over the course of his career. All the typical qualities of Gothic fiction are on full display in “The Raven,” from the bleak setting in the narrator’s chambers on a “midnight dreary” to the uneasy and borderline frightening presence of the mysterious and clearly supernatural Raven.
Works of Gothic fiction often take place at night, a time when the line between reality and the dreamy world of the subconscious may be blurred and a writer may more easily introduce fantastical elements. The revelation of the narrator’s madness and grief also reflects the Gothic genre’s tendency to involve insane or somehow mentally unwell characters. Even the source of the narrator’s grief, the lost Lenore, reflects a common quality in Gothic fiction: the use of a lost love, or a doomed love, as a primary plot device.
