bright star Flashcards
synopsis of bright star
a sonnet in which a speaker looks up and addresses the North star which appears unchanging. he begins bywishing that he were as ‘steadfast’ as the star but then says he does not want tobe in ‘lone splendour’ detached from the world and its beauty. instead he says he wants to be steadfast in the sense of being close to his beloved and never leave her
what is the critical intepretation of who the ‘fair love’ is?
Keats’ biographer Robert gittings: believes it was Isabella Jones (with whom keats supposedly had an affair)
Other critics: believe it was Fanny Brawne
critical letter used to support the idea that ‘my fair love is Fanny Brawne’ (message,who to who and what year)
Keats to Fanny in 1819:
‘i will imagine you venus tonight and pray, ray to your star like a Heothen. Yours ever, fair star’
Keats letter to his brother Tom in 1818 describing Windermere
the two views we have had of [the lake] are of the most noble tenderness they can never fade away- they make one forget the divisions of life; age, youth, poverty and riches and redefine ones sensual vision into a sort of north star which can never cease to be open lidde and steadfast over the wonders of the great power
language key points
-Thematic Volta at the end of the octave- unusual as in a shakesperian sonnet the volta (at least structurally) is located at the end of line 12
-‘swoon to death’ means sexual intercourse- ‘swoon’ used by keats in Endymion as sex
‘death’ 16th cent. poets typically referred to sex as ‘little death’
-jux between the relgious imagery of the first two quatrains and the sesquet (preistlike, eremite vs ripening breast, swoon to death)
describe the change that is brought about by the volta
volta appears after the ocatave- signalled by the emphatic word ‘no’
The purity and steadfastness of the star image turns into the warm sensuousness of physical love with images of ‘love’s ripening breast’ rising and falling
key phonetic points
-line 2: assonace of o/u ‘not’ ‘lone’ ‘splendour’ ‘aloft’
-consonance of the bilabial voiced and unvoiced plosives -> show the bountiful nature of the breasts
‘pillowed’, ‘ripening’ ‘breast’
-consonace of the unvoiced labialdental frictive and sibilance after the volta ‘soft swell… fall’ ,sweet unrest’
themes 3
1) the discontinuity between man and nature
2) longing for identification
3) conflict between the ‘still steadfast, still unchangeable’ and the restlessness of romantic passion.
explain the allusion to shakespeare
in Julius Caesar Shakespeare uses an image of the northern star as unjversal fixedness by likening Julius caesar to it : ‘But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumber’d sparks;
They are all fire and every one doth shine;
But there’s but one in all doth hold his place. ‘
