Meaningful Setting

Edgar Allen Poe’s tale of Ligeia took place in a large, old decaying city near the Rhine. The Rhine is one of the largest and most important rivers in Europe. The setting is significantly important for the reason that the Rhine is as important to Europe as Ligeia to the narrator. After the death of Ligeia the narrator is overcome by grief. He then moves to an isolated area in England where he purchased an abbey. He refurbishes the abbey due to its condition. The area in which the abbey is located is significant since it is an isolated area, which is similar to the feeling of the narrator. Poe writes, “The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored memories connected with both, had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country. Yet although the external abbey, with its verdant decay hanging about it, suffered but little alteration, I gave way, with a child-like perversity, and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a display of more than regal magnificence within.”