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.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Amoretti LXXV” by Edmund Spenser (1595)
Spenser’s sonnet 75 is the perfect example of a Spenserian sonnet. It is part of a sonnet cycle titled Amoretti, written to court his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle. This Renaissance poem shares themes of immortal love with “A Dream Within a Dream.” However, in this poem, the speaker writes about his love to give her immortality after the name washes away in the sand. This contrasts the immortal but broken love of Poe’s verse.
“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1816)
This poem is an earlier example of a Romantic poem written about a dream, or dream as a metaphor for imagination. Coleridge wrote the poem based on an opium dream he had in his youth and reworked it throughout his life. The poem features an exotic and orientalist journey with some otherworldly qualities. It was initially written in 1797 but was published after some revision in 1816, at the request of Lord Byron. Because Coleridge focused on the supernatural and the psychological in his poems, he influenced Poe’s writing.
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
“The Raven” made Poe famous and is still one of his most beloved poems today, perfectly capturing his poetic philosophy and ethos. It shares themes of futility, lost love, active imagination, and deep emotion with “A Dream Within a Dream.” “The Raven” uses repetition and the loss of love to create a haunting tale that occupies a space somewhere between Poe’s short stories and his poetry.
Further Literary Resources
“The Philosophy of Composition” by Edgar Allan Poe (1846)
This essay is an in-depth and methodical account of how he wrote “The Raven.” The essay also gives a brief outline of his ideas on composition, such as the “unity of effect,” or the idea that a story should be read in one sitting to be effective. Poe argues in favor of his favorite poetic devices like repetition, and he explains his ideal poetic subject: The death of a beautiful woman. The poem is also dedicated to Charles Dickens, whose pet raven Grip may have inspired “The Raven.”
“The Poetic Principle” by Edgar Allan Poe (1850)
This essay was rewritten from a speech given during his life at a Lyceum in Rhode Island and was published posthumously. It provides an in-depth expansion on Poe’s poetic ideas as a follow-up to “The Philosophy of Composition.” It is his complete literary theory and an early example of theory designed to study literature. In this essay, Poe explains why he believes short poems are the only true poems, an assertion which can be jarring for fans of epic poetry. He also argues against didacticism; instead, he asserts that poetry is pure art, and poets should strive to represent Beauty.
Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era edited by Christopher John Murray (2013)
This two-volume book of 850 essays is an extensive guide for all themes and concepts related to the Romantic era of literature. It also contains information on Romantic art and music, which serve as companions to Romantic literature. Though the book chiefly focuses on the Romantic period in England and Europe, it can be used to research universal themes from this movement.
Listen to Poem
Director and animator Arron Quinn creates an animated interpretation of Poe’s “Dream Within a Dream,” available on YouTube.
Related Titles
By Edgar Allan Poe
