Keats Odes Flashcards
What is an ode
An elaborately formal lyric poem, often in the form of a lengthy ceremonious address to a person or abstract entity, always serious and elevated in tone - Oxford Dicitioanry
Summary of Ode to a Nightingale
Speaker feels disorienatated listening to song of nightingale - joins Nightingale world via poetry- interupted when the nightingale flies away and leaves him -imagination not stong enough to create reality
what is the stanza form of ode to a Nightingale
8 separate stanzas of 10 lines
What is the rhyme scheme in ode to a nightingale
Most basis of his odes
ABABCDECDE
what are the great odes
6 odes composed in the summer and autumn of 1819
What kind of ode is ode to a nightingale
a Horatian ode
Themes of ode to a nightingale
Man and the natural world
Imagination
Mortality
When does the fantacy of ode to a nightingale begin
In stanza 4 when the speaker escapes to the forest on the wings of poetry
How does the speaker show his confusion over what is real at the end of ode to a nightingale
asks 2 rhetorical questions
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
How long did it take to write ode to a nightingale
written easily and quickly and completed in 2/3 hours
What is interesting about Keats writing of Ode to a nightingale
Unlike later poets or some of him contemporaries (Coleridge) he did not have to take drugs to expereice mind altering visions that result in a change of perspective - testament to the power of his imagintion
When Keates wrote ode to a nightingale why was death such a common theme
At the time that Keats completed the poem (May 1819), death and its meaning were his constant companions; for he was suffering from tuberculosis, the disease that claimed the life of his brother on December 1, 1818. In line 26 of the poem, Keats appears to refer to his brother when he writes that “youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies.”
what metaphor does Keats use to compare poetry to a bird
on the viewless wings of Poesy (poetry)
lots of onomatopoeia in the poem ,where and what effect in ode to a nightingale
From first 2 lines
he harsh ‘t’ and ‘k’ of ‘heart aches’ and heavy ‘d’ and ‘p’ sounds at the beginning of the ode suggest the weightiness of Keats’ dreary mood.
Fitting technique for a poem inspired by bird song
What does the ode form help convey in ode to a nightingale
he ode is structured around the contrast between the poet, who is earthbound, and the bird, which is free.
A further structural contrast is between the mortal world, marked by sorrow and transience, and the world of the nightingale, which is set apart by its joy and immortality.
What is the fundimental paradox in ode to a nightingale
On the one hand the nightingale’s song is seen as offering relief from the day-to-day pains of living – ‘the weariness, the fever and the fret’; on the other hand the ‘immortality’ of the bird and the eternal nature of its song makes Keats painfully aware of human transience and the fragility of his own life.
What was was happening until Keats was 20 (he died at age 25)
Britain was at war with France
What career did Keats have before poetry
he was an apprentice surgeon- started training in medicine at age 16
Overall which is seen as one of Keats most simple odes
To Autumn
Summary of To Autumn
Richly pictoral description of summers end
Key themes of To Autumn
Nature
Time
Awe and Amazment
Mortality
How many lines per stanza are there in To Autumn
11
what is the tone of To Autumn
celebratory -relishing autumn but also reflects the transitory nature of life
What happens in the three stanzas of to autumn
1-pre harvest
2- ripeness of the harvest
3 post harvest
