Critics consider Lenore, the narrator’s lost love, to be a representation of Poe’s own deceased wife Virginia. While Lenore never actually appears in the poem and nothing is revealed about her other than her status as the narrator’s beloved, her presence looms over the text, as the narrator cannot prevent himself grieving her passing and wondering if he might be able to see her again.
Lenore Quotes in The Raven
The The Raven quotes below are all either spoken by Lenore or refer to Lenore. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Signet Classics edition of The Raven published in 2008.
The Raven
Quotes
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…
Related Characters:
The narrator (speaker), Lenore
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”
Related Characters:
The narrator (speaker), Lenore
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Raven LitChart as a printable PDF.
Lenore Character Timeline in The Raven
The timeline below shows where the character Lenore appears in The Raven. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Raven
...wishes for the night to pass so that he might escape from his sorrow over Lenore, his dead beloved. To distract himself from thinking about her, he says, he has been...
(full context)
...“Seraphim,” or angels, sent from God to help him recover from his grief over losing Lenore. He wonders if he might be able to “quaff this kind nepenthe” — to forget...
(full context)