20 pages • 40 minutes read
Edgar Allan PoeA Dream Within a Dream
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1849A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form & Meter
“A Dream Within a Dream” is a short lyric poem told in the first person by a speaker. The poem is divided into two stanzas. The first stanza has 11 lines, and the second has 13 lines. The rhyme scheme of the poem is as follows:
AAA BB CC DD EE
FF GG HHH II JJ KK
The meter of the poem shifts and changes constantly, like a dream. For the most part, it’s in iambic trimeter. This is a line of three metrical feet. An iamb is a foot with an unstressed then stressed beat. Some lines contain anapests—or feet with three beats, two unstressed and one stressed—at the beginning of the line. The first line starts with an anapest: “Take this kiss upon thy brow” (Line 1). The use of the anapests at the start of some lines creates a monotonous, hypnotic effect broken by the intermittent lines of pure iambs. Poe uses iambic tetrameter (a line with four feet) in line 11 just before he slips into the dream in the second stanza. Iambic tetrameter is usually used for love poems, so this line is jarring and helps represent the broken promise of love.
The poem is mainly composed of couplets or two lines with the same end rhyme. There are two tercets—or a group of three lines—which, in this case, also end with the same repeated end rhyme on each line.
Repetition
Repetition is the use of the same line or words in a line several times over a poem. Later literary critics often criticize Poe for his dogged use of repetition. He indeed uses it to mixed effect in his entire body of poetry but arguably uses it best in “The Raven.” In the “Philosophy of Composition,” he explains that he uses repetition to create a “sense of identity” (Poe, 6) throughout a poem.
Throughout “A Dream Within a Dream,” Poe uses the end rhyme “deem / seem / dream” to create a feeling of déjà vu. The repetition of these words at the end of the line and throughout the poem feels too familiar and claustrophobic, like you have been to the same place over and over again.
Poe also uses anaphora—the repetition of the same phrase at the start of a line—to pose his rhetorical questions about the nature of reality. In this case, anaphora works as a philosophical device to chain one question to the next.
Personification
Personification is the attribution of human characteristics to a non-human object or idea. In the poem, hope “has flown away” (Line 6) which gives this abstract idea a human-mythic quality, personifying it like a Classical god. This line can be read as an inverse of the Pandora myth; hope is the only goddess left in the jar after all the evils fled from it into the world. Now that hope has fled from Poe’s speaker, who is left with nothing.
Related Titles
By Edgar Allan Poe
