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Edgar Allan Poe and John Milton: "The Nativity Ode" as source for "The Bells."

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From: ANQ
Date: 19980322
Author:Britton, Wesley

The first stanza of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells" has several similarities to the 13th stanza of John Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity." Poe imitated Milton's portrayal of nature's response to human actions, and there are further echoes of diction, patterns and images, such as Poe's oblique references to birth and Christmas.

Floyd Stovall notes in The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe that the origins and evolution of Poe's "The Bells" have always been "of special interest" (276). To date, the most convincing scholarship points to the "cradle to grave" pattern of Schiller's "Des Lied ...

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