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I need to know what porphyrogene means in Poe's story Fall of the house of Usher it is located in the poem stanza3 in () plz e-mail me if you know.
-- Anonymous, November 16, 2000
Sean,Edgar Poe's use of this word (Porphyrogene) in the poem "The Haunted Palace", was intended to be suggestive of royal issue or, perhaps, the progeny of a sovereign monarch. Strictly speaking, that portion of the word, Porphyro, recalls the poem "The Eve of St. Agnes" written in 1819 by John Keats.
Keats' poem deals with a Shakespearean like drama reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet where a young woman, Madeline, falls in love with Porphyro, a young man of nobility or, at the least, some high position in the aristocracy that is suggested by the origins of his name. The word Porphyro is Greek for purple, a color traditionally recognized in the Victorian era as a color reserved for royalty. Porphyro, then, used with the suffix gene or gen, would then suggest a descendant or an offspring of royalty. Robert Frost also used a variant of this name in his 1842 poem "Porphyria's Lover."
Regards,
-- Anonymous, November 17, 2000
Sean,Please accept my sincere apologies. That was Robert Browning that wrote "Porphyria's Lover", not Robert Frost.
Regards,
-- Anonymous, November 17, 2000