Ode To A Nightingale And Keats Analysis

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The 18th century period produced a new wave of writers that revelled in and celebrated self-expression and individualism. It was significant as it moved away from the ‘ordered rationality of the Enlightenment as mechanical, impersonal and artificial, and turned to the emotional directness of personal experience and the boundlessness of individual imagination’ . The romantic poets placed great emphasis on the warm emotions that should inspire writers, as opposed to cold logic that their predecessors possessed. Romantic writers of this period appeared to emphasise the practise of emotion over reason; and reject the restrained order that was valued …show more content…
His poetry illustrates his desires to represent objects outside of himself, and was very focused on losing his own identity when he is writing. He liked to portray things in their truest forms, all experiences appear to be a mixture of inseparable yet irreconcilable differences, Keats finds melancholy in delight and pain. This is shown through the Odes, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’. ‘In Ode to a Nightingale’, there is a languid feel to the poem, and is full of lively oscillations in tone and mood. The narrator is pulled in conflicting directions: now towards death, now towards the sensuous pleasures of this world, now towards transcendence of the everyday. Keats feels weighed down by melancholy, as is presented in the first stanza of the poem, ‘My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains…’ This open admittance of unashamed sadness is accompanied with the speaker’s admiration for the magnificent nightingale. The speaker enjoys the sounds of summer that the nightingale is responsible for, and Keats enjoys it. However it is not enough to move away his melancholic sadness, and the speaker wishes to use alcohol as a use of escapism. Keats uses this as a mode to move away from using …show more content…
Keats had a love and dedication for art, and this is portrayed through his odes, in particular ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. The poem begins quietly, and its subject is stillness. Keats, very much the self-conscious poet, is looking at a work of art which can outdo poetry itself. The poet is contemplating upon two lovers who are frozen in time, and that will never progress. Keats rectifies this, however, as he consoles readers with the idea that the love they share will be eternal and timelessly perfect. The image playing through the urn is bitter-sweet. He concludes the poem with an enigma—a couplet that confuses readers, and has warranted debate amongst critics. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ It is unclear whether or not the speaker is reading from the urn, or establishing a last reminder to audiences himself. This line almost detracts the notion of permanence that was embedded in the rest of the

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