Ode to Nightingale

JOHN KEATS

Personal context
    • Born 31st October 1795 (18th Century)

    • Lived in London, but he was unhappy thus moving away to live with his brothers. All of who suffered from tuberculosis.

    • As he found out he was developing serious symptoms of Tuberculosis, he moved away from London to Italy with his friend Joseph Severn.

    • Keats wrote his final version of Bright Star aboard the ship.

    • Died on 23rd February 1821



Artistic Context (The Lamp: Externalizing their feelings/ emotions)
    • ROMANTICISM: Inspired by wild, untrammeled and ‘pure’ nature.

    • Revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of he Age of Enlightenment.

    • Experience the sublimity of untamed nature and it’s picturesque qualities. Elevated folk art and custom to something noble and argued or a ‘natural’ epistemology of human activities as conditioned by nature in the form of language custom and usage.

    • His work reflects other Romantic themes such as ‘medievalism’ (Gothic revival, outdated attitudes), the heroic isolation of the narrator (Ode to a Nightingale), folklore (The Eve of St. Agnes), classical myth (Lamia or Hyperion), and primacy of freedom and feeling (Ode on Melancholy).

    • Often grounded in intense physical reality, focusing in on tiny details (EG: beaded bubbles winking at the brim)

Poem: Ode to the Nightingale (‘Ode’ means tribute)
Genre: Romanticism
Themes: Death, Immortality, Things beyond
Purpose: Exploring the idea of death – that it must be better than his suffering
Main Techniques: Extended metaphors, structured rhythm and rhyme, pacing, rhetorical devices

Structure
    - 8 stanzas
    - Each stanza contains a quartet and a sextet as shown with rhyme scheme ABABCDECDE
    - Written in iambic pentameters except 8th line of each stanza which is written in iambic tritameter
    - *Structured rhythm and rhyme imitate the song of a nightingale to bring a lyrical, fantastic beauty to the...