Ode on Melancholy Flashcards
Form
Ode form - poem of praise
“Ode on Melancholy”
Melancholy - an emotion of deep, reflexive and serious contemplation
- Romantic to be praising all emotions even negative ones
“No, no, go not to Lethe”
Repetition of a series of negatives
“Lethe” - In Greek mythology this is a river in the underworld which makes people experience complete forgetfulness
Speaker is asking to not try and forget your memories (and the good times
- Good emotions can be dulled as well as the bad
- Do not look for oblivion
- Keats wants speaker to live happily
“Wolfs bane”
“Nightshade”
“Prosperpine”
“Rosary of yew berries”
Wolfs bane - A poisonous flower
Nightshade - poisonous plant
Yew berries - Poisonous berries
Keats is asking for the reader to not attempt to reach oblivion/ death through poisonous plants as melancholy is an aspect of life
Do not pray for oblivion, “Rosary of yew berries”
“Beetle” “Death-moth” “Downy owl”
Traditional symbols of death
“Your mournful Psyche”
Psyche - A mythological figure, Lover of Eros and Goddess of the Soul
- Do not let death become something you want to love / death to be a part of your soul
“For shade to shade will come too drowsily”
Metaphor for the feeling of melancholy
- Thoughts of death and oblivion
“And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul”
Message that you need to not focus on thoughts of oblivion as this will overwhelm your soul - Not food for other emotions
- Suffering will begin to overwhelm your soul
“Fall from heaven like a weeping cloud”
Simile - Melancholy as a state like depression/ low mood
Personification of the cloud
- Contradictory image between heaven and the weeping cloud (Negative capabilities)
- Benefits of melancholy, freeing experience of allowing yourself to feel melancholy
“Droop headed flowers”
- Spring
- Suggestion of melancholy allowing for growth - enriching elements
“And hides the green hill in an April shroud”
- idea that you may not be able to see the growth through melancholy
- Spring - suggestions of rebirth
- Easter imagery?
“Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose”
- Gustatory image (taste)
- Idyllic image of purity (Romantic) - idea of turning nature into medicin
“Rainbow of the salt sand wave”
- Olfactory, gustatory and visual imagery
- Synesthesia- Creates an image of overwhelming natural beauty
“Rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave”
“Rich” - Gustatory image
“Soft” - Tactile image
- Presents anger as an emotion that needs to be expressed
- However, this anger also needs to be balanced with tenderness
“She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die”
- Personification of melancholy - beauty as mortal, finite and transient
- Human life deeply involves beauty (Romantic)
“And joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding Adieu”
Personification of joy
- There is always joy alongside loss - a human experience
- Joy as both transient and transcendent
“Turning to poison while the bee mouth sips”
- Idea that an overindulgence in pleasure can be life destroying (Substance abuse, opium, sex)
- Nectar - life enhancing
- Transformative image
“Temple of delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine”
Classical imagery
- Melancholy as connected to delight
“Sovran shrine” - place of worship for melancholy - idea that you’re only able to have delight without melancholy
“Palate fine”
- A sensitive person, someone that experiences delight will also experience melancholy
- Image of the body
“Cloud trophies hung”
- Spiritual image
A sensitive person may be overtaken by melancholy
- Difficulty of the state of melancholy
- Frightening image
Warning tone?
