"The Raven" in BJUP American Lit book........

[Janie]

In verse 14 of "The Raven," BJUP version changed "seraphim" from the original to "angels."

 

Original: "Swung by seraphim whose faint foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor."

BJUP: "Swung by angels whose faint foot-falls..."

 

Anyone want to venture why BJUP changed the word?

 

Thanks!

[In The Great White North]

dumbing down?

 

It loses the alliteration though.

[PeterPan]

No clue, but why don't you call them and ask?

[katemary63]

Weird!

[Janie]

With a hasty search, I found this below that I excerpted from info at this link. Note the highlighted (mine) sentences.

 

Thanks, everyone!

 

 

“The American Review: A Whig Journal†was a creditable magazine for the time, double-columned, printed on good paper with clear type, and illustrated by mezzotint portraits. Amid much matter below the present standard, it contained some that any editor would be glad to receive. The initial volume, for 1845, has articles by Horace Greeley, Donald Mitchell, Walter Whitman, Marsh, Tuckerman, and Whipple. Ralph Hoyt’s quaint poem, “Old,†appeared in this volume. And here are three lyrics by Poe: “The City in the Sea,†“The Valley of Unrest,†and

The Raven

. Two of these were build up, — such was his way, — from earlier studies, but the last-named came out as if freshly composed, and almost as we have it now. The statement that it was not afterward revised is erroneous. Eleven trifling changes from the magazine-text appear in

The Raven and Other Poems

, 1845, a book which the poet shortly felt encouraged to offer the public. These are mostly changes of punctuation, or of single words, the latter kind made to heighten the effect of alliteration. In Mr. Lang’s pretty edition of Poe’s verse, brought out in the “Parchment Library,†he has shown the instinct of a scholar, and has done wisely, in going back to the text of the volume just mentioned, as given in the London issue of 1846. The “standard†Griswold collection of the poet’s works abounds with errors. These have been repeated by later editors, who also have made new errors of their own.

But the text of

The Raven

, owing to the requests made to the author for manuscript copies, was still farther revised by him; in fact, he printed it in Richmond, just before his death, with the poetic substitution of “seraphim whose foot-falls†for “angels whose faint foot-falls,†in the fourteenth stanza.

Our present text, therefore, while substantially

[column 2:]

that of 1845, is somewhat modified by the poet’s later reading, and is, I think, the most correct and effective version of this single poem. The most radical change from the earliest version appeared, however, in the volume of 1845; the eleventh stanza originally having contained these lines, faulty in rhyme and otherwise a blemish on the poem:

 

 

 

“Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful Disaster

 

Followed fast and followed faster — so, when Hope he would adjure,

 

Stern Despair returned, instead of the sweet Hope he dared adjure —

 

That sad answer, ‘Nevermore!’ â€

It would be well if other, and famous, poets could be as sure of making their changes always improvements. Poe constantly rehandled his scanty show of verse, and usually bettered it.

The Raven

was the first of the few poems which he nearly brought to completion before printing. It may be that those who care for poetry lost little by his death. Fluent in prose, he never wrote verse for the sake of making a poem. When a refrain or image haunted him, the lyric that resulted was the inspiration, as he himself said, of a passion, not of a purpose. This was at intervals so rare as almost to justify the Fairfield theory that each was the product of a nervous crisis.

 

[PeterPan]

I wondered if that would turn out to be the case! In Bible classes in college they explained to us that textual variations, due to loss of manuscripts, editing changes, etc. are much more common in literature than we realize. Everyone thinks of it only with ancient documents like the Bible (compiled over time, so many versions and texts), but it's true with other literature as well. Well glad you sorted it out! :)