Romantic Poetry

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Romantic Poetry

• John Keats

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Outline

• John Keats the odes
• Ode on a Grecian Urn
• Notes
• To Autumn

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John Keats

• October 31, 1795-February 23, 1821 died at the
  age of 25 of tuberculosis . Published only 54
  poems.
• Originally a surgeon (apothecary-surgeon) and
  changed his mind in 1813-1814.
• Literary Creation 1816 1821 love with Fanny
  Browne 1818-? the odes 1819 poverty
• 1820 symptoms of TB
• 1821 -- "Here lies one whose name was writ in
  water."
• Major Ideas Life as the Vale of soul-making.
  Shakespeare with negative capability (like a
  chameleonimaginative identification with the
  other).

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Keats Great Odes

• 4. Ode on Melancholy
• She dwells with BeautyBeauty that must die   
• And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
• Bidding adieu and aching Pleasure nigh,   
• Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips

• Ode to Psyche
• --the goddess Psyche in the arms of Cupid
• Ode on a Grecian Urn art
• 3. Ode to a Nightingale --art
• 5. Ode on Indolence
• 6. 'To Autumn a finale

• Journey to (or Quest) artistic eternity and
  transcendence and return to the mortal world

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Ode on a Grecian Urn

1. Pay attention to a) the form of address
   (apostrophe) and the object of address in
   different stanzas, which imply the speakers
   different relations with the urn
2. Pay attention to the use of metaphors in
   calling/describing the urn
3. The two sides of the urn their differences and
   similarities
4. The closing lineshow to interpret them.

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STANZA I
Bluemetaphor Orange sound Underline--
rhetoric skills questions

• Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
• Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
• Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
• A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme
• What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
• Of deities or mortals, or of both,
• In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? (1)
• What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
• What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
• What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

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STANZA II
Bluemetaphor Orange sound Underline--
rhetoric skills Imperative, concession,
repetition

• Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
• Are sweeter therefore, ye soft pipes, play on
• Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
• Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone
• Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not
  leave
• Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare
• Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
• Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve
• She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
• For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

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STANZA III
Bluemetaphor Orange sound Underline--
rhetoric skills Exclamation repetition

• Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
• Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu
• And, happy melodist, unwearied,
• For ever piping songs for ever new
• More happy love! more happy, happy love!
• For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
• For ever panting, and for ever young
• All breathing human passion far above,
• That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
• A burning forehead, and a parching
  tongue.              

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STANZA IV
Bluesubjects Orange sound Underline--
rhetoric skills Exclamation repetition

• Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
• To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
• Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
• And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
• What little town by river or sea shore,
• Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
• Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
• And, little town, thy streets for evermore
• Will silent be and not a soul to tell
• Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

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STANZA V
Bluemetaphor Orange sound Underline--
rhetoric skills Exclamation repetition

• O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
• Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
• With forest branches and the trodden weed
• Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
• As doth eternity Cold Pastoral!
• When old age shall this generation waste,
• Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
• Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
• "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all
• Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

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Ode on a Grecian Urn

• Using apostrophe to address and speak to the Urn
  in order to enter its realm (the realm of art
  and permanence)
• The Emphathic(???/Ekphrastic (??/????) Process
• 1) approach question? understanding ?
  confirmation ?
• 2) differentiation between the human and the
  artistic
• A Creative Process
• After all, the urn is just an ancient utensil
  Keats creates its artistic meanings by teasing
  out the dualities between (time and
  timelessness/frozen moments, sound and silence,
  thinking and thoughtlessness, the static and the
  eternal)

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Note (1)

• Tempe and Arcady considered as heavenly paradise
  in Greece, frequently mentioned in pastoral
  poems symbol of artistic realm.
• Sylvan of the forest shady

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Note (2)

• Ekphrasis poetic writing concerning itself with
  the visual arts, artistic objects, and/or highly
  visual scenes (source)
• Examples Musee des beaux arts Ozymandias My
  Last Duchess
• Issues
• art and life
• different languages of art (an inter-art
  approach) temporal/kinetic arts (verbal, filmic)
  art vs. static (visual vs. plastic)
• Possibilities of re-creation with different
  messages.

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Ode on a Grecian Urn as an Ekphrastic poem

• Keats first appreciates the values of plastic art
  which eternalizes one (frozen) moment
• With the reading of the funeral procession, he
  places it back to the temporal flow.
• There is then a contrast between the urns beauty
  and truth, and those of humans mortal world.

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TO AUTUMN (1819)

• Pay attention to
• How autumn is presented personified and
  addressed to.
• Different focuses of ideas and image patterns of
  the three stanzas
• How the stanzas develop

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TO AUTUMN (1819)

• Underline subject verb orange- alliteration ,
  rhyme and other recurrent sounds (e.g. f, m,
  o and s). Tactile images of fruition
  (softness and fullness)--boldface
•                                             1.
•     SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,    
      Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun    
  Conspiring with him how to load and bless      
    With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves
  run     To bend with apples the mossd
  cottage-trees,         And fill all fruit with
  ripeness to the core             To swell the
  gourd, and plump the hazel shells     With a
  sweet kernel to set budding more,         And
  still more, later flowers for the bees,        
  Until they think warm days will never cease,    
          For Summer has oer-brimmd their clammy
  cells. 

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Underline object/possessive pronoun verb
(inactive, or passive) orange- alliteration,
rhyme and other recurrent sounds (e.g. th,
wi, ft/st and u/au). Action images of
rest (sleep, drowsed, spare the hook, keep
steady, watch)--boldface

•     2.
• Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?      
    Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find    
  Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,      
    Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind  
    Or on a half-reapd furrow sound asleep,      
    Drowsd with the fume of poppies, while thy
  hook           Spares the next swath and all
  its twined flowers     And sometimes like a
  gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden
  head across a brook         Or by a
  cyder-press, with patient look,             Thou
  watchest the last oozings hours by hours.     

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Underline subject (thou) verb (singing, or
passive) orange- alliteration, rhyme and
alteration of long and short sounds (e.g.
ourn/ong, oo, t and oft). Audio images of
singing (mourn, bleat, whistle and
twitter)--boldface

•       3.
•     Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are
  they?         Think not of them, thou hast thy
  music too,     While barred clouds bloom the
  soft-dying day,         And touch the stubble
  plains with rosy hue     Then in a wailful
  choir the small gnats mourn         Among the
  river sallows, borne aloft             Or
  sinking as the light wind lives or dies     And
  full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn  
        Hedge-crickets sing and now with treble
  soft         The red-breast whistles from a
  garden-croft            And gathering swallows
  twitter in the skies.

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TO AUTUMN (1819)

(1) Early autumn (2) mid-autumn (3) Late autumn
Autumn observed as an active agent of fruition Autumn spoken to as one relaxed in post-harvest handling Autumn gone, its music confirmed
Tactile images Visual and figural images Audio images