love analysis

Edgar Allen Poe’s “Eleonora” and “The Oval Portrait” both show examples of the lost love archetype. The lost love archetype is when someone loses someone or something they love and find this exact love in another object or person. In “Eleonora”, Poe speaks of a youth that is in love with his cousin Eleonora. The two lovers spent most of their youth together. They walked through the valley in which they lived for fifteen …

…subdued and appalled me”(1480). These lines show how the person in the story fell in love with the so-called lost love and how he lost her. In most of Poe’s work he falls in with a woman who reminds him of a previous love in his life. In this story it is not as living person it is a painting and the love of the painting replaces the bride he lost and once loved.