The first major literary element used in Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" is genre. The poem is written in the form that uses many of the conventions of the traditional ballad, including simple language, narrative content, frequent repetition, and a setting in a distant, romanticized past, removed from everyday life, as we see in the opening:
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea ...
The next major literary element found in the poem is stanzaic form. The poem is divided into six stanzas, ranging from six to eight lines in length. Rather than have a completely regular pattern of rhyme, Poe repeats a small group of rhyming words at the ends of three or four lines in each stanza. These words are: Lee, we, sea, and me. The meter of the poem is a mixture of iambs and anapests.
The next major literary element is a combination of hyperbole and metaphor, in which religious imagery is evoked by the use of images of seraphs, angels, demons, and Heaven in the description of their relationship.
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