Ode to a Nightingale - Keats

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  • Created by: Amleth
  • Created on: 28-05-18 20:00

Summary

Struck by the melancholic singing of a Nightingale, Keats is stunned by the happiness of the birds song and despairs at the difference in his own unhappy life. He also acknowledges the birds immortality in song and soul, seems envious that the bird will not know of human "weariness" and "fever", perhaps a reference to Tom's illness and death, and the bird was not "born for death, immortal Bird!" 

Keats would rather forget his unhappiness, than die: the references to hemlock, and Lethe, solidify this argument, as both would blur the memory enough to allow Keats to forget. 

Emphasises the feeling of melancholy, a tragic / Greek emotion that Keats would have found through his readings. Ref to Bible.

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Context

1819 - Year of engagement (hope) /  when he was most creative / before illness / Peterloo Massacre / After Tom's death, reflective on it  - there is both melalcholy and bittersweet happiness.

Often considered the most personal due to reflections on death and stresses of life.

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Symbolism

Nightingale - a symbol of the connection between love and death. 

Sings songs of love, in Romeo and Juliet foreshadows the death to come.

- The prelude of death but also surrounded by happiness and love - the birds song and Fanny.

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Structure

8 stanzas of 10 lines - metre of each line is iambic pentametre, 10 syllables - 5 stressed and 5 unstressed, except the 8th line of each stanza which is iambic trimetre - has only 6 syllables per line instead of 10.

Keats did an excellent job at keeping the rhythem, structure and rhyme regular - ABABCDECDE. - Homo-strophic.

Most structured of the Odes.

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Tone

Escapist / melancholic / existential / momentary happiness / hopelessness. 

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Language

onomatopoeia  used to create a variety of moods - harsh ‘t’ and ‘k’ of ‘heart aches’ and heavy ‘d’ and ‘p’ sounds at the beginning of the ode suggest the weightiness of Keats’ dreary mood. 

Then an obvious contrast when introduces Nightingale - light sounds such as "light-winged Dryad" and repetition of the long ‘ee’ sounds of ‘beechen’, ‘green’ and ‘ease’ - lack of worries of bird.

Also Semantic field of nature - "green / summer / forest / flora / flowers / grass / violets" etc. - reinforces the theme of nature. 

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Imagery

Despite the death imagery "been half in love with easeful Death," he does not really want to die - represents the complexities of human emotions and nature of human life - mixture of pain / joy, emotion / numbess, the actual / the ideal, etc.

- ending - did it happen?

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Senses

Keats' language is very sensuous - tastes of "Flora and the country green." - mixing of senses - 

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