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Not What You Meant?  There are 20 definitions for Annabel.


Annabel Lee Study Guide

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by Edgar Allan Poe
About 44 pages (13,309 words)
Annabel Lee Summary

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Themes

Memory and Reminiscing

Readers are urged by the tone and setting of this poem to question how well the speaker actually remembers his relationship with his dead lover. From the very first line, the speaker admits that he is talking about things that happened "many and many years ago." Repeating the word "many" emphasizes the amount of time that has passed since Annabel Lee's death. This encourages readers' suspicions, since memories, especially extremely pleasant memories, are often idealized versions of reality. In the third stanza, the poem makes a point of mentioning once more that there is a considerable distance of time between the events being described and the speaker as he is recalling them. It becomes even more difficult to believe that his brief, youthful love affair could have been as pure and beautiful.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 870 words. This study guide contains 13,309 words (approx. 44 pages at 300 words per page).

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Annabel Lee from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.

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