Ode to a Nightingale: Imagination

Question 1

Context: Negative Capability. (a classical critical invocation)
He lets his imagination lead him, it is an almost passive process of giving his mind up to his imagination in order to achieve what sedation cannot; removal from grim reality
Quotes from text
Critic

Answer 1

“capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts”
“Thoroughfare for all thoughts”
“Half knowledge”

2–>3 “Fade”
7–>8 “Forlorn”
While some critics believe associative= chaotic, Lau believes it creates a mood of openness which is one of best things about it

Question 2

The powers of the imagination over the brain

Answer 2

“I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the wings of viewless Poesy
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards”

Question 3

The brain’s dullness

Answer 3

Thudding D, “drunk”/ “sunk”, “heart aches”/ “some dull opiate”

Question 4

Elevation of poetic imagination

Answer 4

First stanza quote from “Light winged

Question 5

Imagination lets self free from humanity and immerses in the senses

Answer 5

“I cannot see what flowers are at my feet
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs
But, in embalmed darkness…[he must] guess”
surrounded from all angles, senses, synesthesia

Question 6

But because Keat’s imagination is so free, even when imaginings indulge in nature, his own humanity is there as well. proto-freudian the dominance of the unconscious
Critic

Answer 6

“hangs upon the boughs” “embalmed darkness”
Violet, musk-rose, eglantine: 2.1 Midsummer (much has been made by critics as pertaining to the fairy state)
“Though wast not born for death immortal bird,
No hungry generations tread thee down”
Kappel: removed from temporality; without awareness of time or mortality

Question 7

Submitting to the imagination leaves one between reality and a dreamlike state, between

Answer 7

“was it a vision or a waking dream?
…Do I wake or sleep?”
“Fancy cannot cheat so well
as she is fam’d to do”