SOURCE: Jones, Howard Mumford. “Poe, ‘The Raven,’ and the Anonymous Young Man.” Western Humanities Review 9, no. 2 (spring 1955): 127-38.

In the following essay, Jones explores the archetype of the “Anonymous Young Man” of nineteenth-century literature as it appears in “The Raven.”

Mr. Van Wyck Brooks in an early book once referred disrespectfully to the “Yard of Poets” which used to adorn American schoolrooms. This was a series of photographs or engravings, in a single frame, of our nineteenth-century literary worthies, beginning with Bryant on the left and extending through Whitman on the right. Most of the poets wore beards and, said Mr. Brooks, nothing made one feel so like a prodigal as contemplating the hirsute majesty of these sons of the American Muse.

Most of the bearded writers have fallen in our esteem either absolutely or because contemporary interest centers upon figures never appearing in that sacred row—Melville...