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Critical analysis of john keats
Explanation of the essay keats
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All written in just one month "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and "Ode on Melancholy" were a result of Keats’ feelings during that time. These feelings were, “the intense awareness of both the joy and pain, the happiness and the sorrow, of human life” (Thomas). Keats greatly contemplated human beings need to placate their craving for happiness in a “world where joy and pain are inevitably and inextricably tied together” (Thomas). This amalgamation of elation and agony is the integral part of human experience that Keats recognized and established as truth.
In “Ode to A Nightingale,” a prominent significance to Keats is his idea of the conflicted interplay in human life of living and death, mortal and immortal, and feeling versus the lack of feeling or inability to feel. “The ideal condition towards which Keats always strives because it is his ideal, is one in which mortal and immortal,…beauty and truth are one” (Wasserman). The narrator plunges into a dreamlike state when hearing a nightingale sing. As the nightingale sings, he shares its elation and feels the conflicting response of agony when he comes down from his dreamlike ecstasy and realizes that unlike the nightingale in his imagination, “Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird,” his life is finite (61). “Where palsy shakes a few, sad last gray hairs, where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies” (25-26).
In lines 51-58, the narrator longs for Death, and even woos Death so that he may no longer have to experience the pains and agonies that come hand in hand with the joys and ecstasies he also experiences. He longs for the continuing happiness of the song of the nightingale:
Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love w...
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...s doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain in the midst of other woe (44-47).
In "Ode on Melancholy," Keats welcomes the truth before him. He understands that bliss and suffering are one. To be able to completely have joy, one must also experience sorrow or melancholy to its fullest. “Ode on Melancholy” can be distinguished from "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn," where the poet is a dreamer that is trying to escape his own reality into the sorrow less, eternal world of the nightingale and the urn. “Keats valued intensity of emotion, intensity of thought, and intensity of experience; fulfillment comes from living and thinking passionately. Keats does not shrink from the implication that feeling intensely means that grief or depression may well cause anguish and torment” (website junks).
Time is endlessly flowing by and its unwanted yet pending arrival of death is noted in the two poems “When I Have Fears,” by John Keats and “Mezzo Cammin,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Keats speaks with no energy; only an elegiac tone of euphoric sounds wondering if his life ends early with his never attained fame. He mentions never finding a “fair creature” (9) of his own, only experiencing unrequited love and feeling a deep loss of youth’s passion. Though melancholy, “Mezzo Cammin,” takes a more conversational tone as Longfellow faces what is commonly known as a midlife crisis. The two poems progressions contrast as Keats blames his sorrow for his lack of expression while Longfellow looks at life’s failures as passions never pursued. In spite of this contrast, both finish with similar references to death. The comparable rhyme and rhythm of both poems shows how both men safely followed a practiced path, never straying for any spontaneous chances. The ending tones evoking death ultimately reveal their indications towards it quickly advancing before accomplish...
John Keats’s illness caused him to write about his unfulfillment as a writer. In an analysis of Keats’s works, Cody Brotter states that Keats’s poems are “conscious of itself as the poem[s] of a poet.” The poems are written in the context of Keats tragically short and painful life. In his ...
At a glance, the poem seems simplistic – a detailed observance of nature followed by an invitation to wash a “dear friend’s” hair. Yet this short poem highlights Bishop’s best poetic qualities, including her deliberate choice in diction, and her emotional restraint. Bishop progresses along with the reader to unfold the feelings of both sadness and joy involved in loving a person that will eventually age and pass away. The poem focuses on the intersection of love and death, an intersection that goes beyond gender and sexuality to make a far-reaching statement about the nature of being
Keats presents his feelings on how he no longer wishes for impossible goals, and how it is much more preferable to enjoy life as much as possible. It is of no use longing for things we cannot have, and so we must learn to live with the myriad of things we already have, of these one in particular appeals to Keats: the warmth of human companionship and the passion of love.
At a glance, the poem seems simplistic – a detailed observance of nature followed by an invitation to wash a “dear friend’s” hair. Yet this short poem highlights Bishop’s best poetic qualities, including her deliberate choice in diction, and her emotional restraint. Bishop progresses along with the reader to unfold the feelings of both sadness and joy involved in loving a person that will eventually age and pass away. The poem focuses on the intersection of love and death, an intersection that goes beyond gender and sexuality to make a far-reaching statement about the nature of being
Keats’ poetry explores many issues and themes, accompanied by language and technique that clearly demonstrates the romantic era. His poems ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘Bright Star’ examine themes such as mortality and idealism of love. Mortality were common themes that were presented in these poems as Keats’ has used his imagination in order to touch each of the five senses. He also explores the idea that the nightingale’s song allows Keats to travel in a world of beauty. Keats draws from mythology and christianity to further develop these ideas. Keats’ wrote ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ as an immortal bird’s song that enabled him to escape reality and live only to admire the beauty of nature around him. ‘Bright Star’ also discusses the immortal as Keats shows a sense of yearning to be like a star in it’s steadfast abilities. The visual representation reveal these ideas as each image reflects Keats’ obsession with nature and how through this mindset he was able
Poetry, Keats purports, "comes from the ferment of an unhappy childhood working through a noble imagination" (Keats 16). The "lesson of [Keat’s] boyhood" was that "the intensity of the beauty, the joy, the pleasure, and the bitterness of their loss" is "necessary for a poem" (Keats 17). The deaths of [Poe’s] parents, foster mother, and wife develop a similar intensity in the form of a "lingering pity and sorrow for the dead" (Whitman 61). The implied malevolence in "Annabel Lee" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci" echoes these poets’ pasts; the poems’ speakers are unable to live sanely or comfortably after experiencing and then losing the objects of their exquisite affection. Furthermore, the speaker’s names are concealed, stressing the importance of the women over the speakers.
The speaker started the poem by desiring the privilege of death through the use of similes, metaphors, and several other forms of language. As the events progress, the speaker gradually changes their mind because of the many complications that death evokes. The speaker is discontent because of human nature; the searching for something better, although there is none. The use of language throughout this poem emphasized these emotions, and allowed the reader the opportunity to understand what the speaker felt.
Life can often serve trials of character as food for thought.Instances such as the death of a loved one, unrequited love, or broken dreams can offer a person thoughts not available in other circumstances. When William Butler Yeats finds out his close friend, Lady Gregory, is suffering from a life-endangering illness, he comes to a startling conclusion. In A Friend’s Illness, Yeats concisely uses a simile and an allusion towards Job to establish that having a dear friend sick can be a devastating event. Then in the same poem, Yeats uses another allusion to Job and reflective diction conveying a wondrous tone to conclude that there is slight narcissism in being in a deep state of woe while a dear friend is sick.
Throughout Keats’s work, there are clear connections between the effect of the senses on emotion. Keats tends to apply synesthetic to his analogies with the interactions with man and the world to create different views and understandings. By doing this, Keats can arouse different emotions to the work by which he intends for the reader to determine on their own, based on how they perceive it. This is most notable in Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, for example, “Tasting of Flora, and Country Green” (827). Keats accentuates emotion also through his relationship with poetry, and death.
Imagery and symbolism merged to express his imagination, he became a unique poet in an evolving world where Romanticism was quickly expanding globally, not into a movement, but a way of thinking. Keats’ mother and brother, and eventually he too, passed away of tuberculosis. At the time of his brother 's passing, he developed ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’. ‘La Belle’ expressed Keats’ intellect and creativity, although at the same time he himself expressed his angst and depression for the loss of his brother. His poem ‘Bright Star’ was written in a part of his life in which a woman had influenced Keats’ greatly, so much in fact that he was driven to write ‘Bright Star’ in appreciation and celebration of the love of his life. These poems reflect Keats’ intellect, originality, creativity, and his ability to merge the contextual aspects of his life and his imagination with the ideals and concepts of Romanticism to create powerful
Keats’s Ode to Melancholy is best described by one word, melancholy. The Oxford English Dictionary defines Melancholy as a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause. In this poem, melancholy is the art of embracing sorrow and a sort of madness in order to be able to cherish the joy to truly live. Keats accomplished the idea of melancholy by using his imagery to reinforce the idea of sustaining opposites such as sorrow and joy in a person’s life.
Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats is one of the most notable poems throughout the history of English literature. In this lyrical poem, Keats addresses the themes of beauty and perpetuity through the characteristics the nightingale. The poet then describes the nightingale as a symbol of perfection, immortality, and freedom from the world’s secular activities. Keats wrote this piece at a time when he found himself stuck at the intersection between the two worlds of reality and fantasy. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis, found out that his brother died, and recently became engaged to Fanny Brawne. Struggling with two paradoxical idea of "fancy escape” and "mortal limitation", Keats echoes his personal life to this poem. In addition, he fully
Keats presents a stark contrast between the real and the surreal by examining the power of dreams. For the narrators of each work, dream works as a gateway to the unconscious, or rather, a more surreal and natural state of mind. Keats presents the world as a place where one cannot escape from his/her troubles. For the narrator in “Ode to a Nightingale” he attempts to artificially medicate himself as a means of forgetting about the troubles of the real world which cause him to feel a “drowsy numbness” (Ode to a Nightingale 1) which “pains / My senses, as though of hemlock I had drunk,” (1-2). The narrator, seemingly in search for both inspiration and relief, drowns out these feelings through an overindulgence in wine as a way to “leave
The moral of the nightingale’s death and Jesus’ crucifixion is one of love, pain and sacrifice. Wilde’s use of biblical symbols and themes make his story comparable to the death of Jesus Christ who dies for his love for Jerusalem. The parallels of these stories are found from beginning to end and one who is familiar with the story of Jesus will undoubtedly recognize it, at least in part, in “The Nightingale and the Rose.” The emphasis on the painful sacrifice is very prominent in both stories and the final lessons learned from each one, coincide greatly with one