John Keats and Melancholic Delight:
To Autumn
To Autumn by John Keats is a testimonial of the Romantic Era. The poem is filled with the importance of individual fulfillment at the behest of societal decline. The stoic nature of Keats's To Autumn is viewed by most as despairingly melancholic. However, when looking for hope one finds an eternal hopefulness amongst his opining. Autumn is used to symbolize the dichotomy in existence of life and death happening at once and forever. Keats sees in autumn the irony of life, and the contrast of humanity to the individual.
A general motif of the Romantic era became the inevitable decline of humanity. Philosophers and writers alike viewed industrialism as an evil driving innocence further from the reach of the collective. In short, the precipitous pace of history was leaving innocence in its wake. More over, tramping it along the way. "Society embodied forces opposed to individual development. Indeed, the word society had come to embody the impulses that desecrated nature and oppressed the poor in the interests of industry and progress" (Hugo-Spacks, 663).
The way to stem the tide of progress, in Keats' view, was to return to nature thus one's innocence. "Hope lay in the individual's separation form, not participation in, society. In the woods and mountains one might feel free" (Hugo-Spacks, 663)
Keats vision of man and nature, as seen in To Autumn, sought to combine the individual with the eternal. In other words see man in terms of nature. The opening line best illustrates this point, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."
Opening this poem with a positive viewpoint upon the harvest time of one's soul forebears Keats intentions of combining Melancholy with stoic nostalgia, even delight. In other words, starting the poem as fulfilled provides comfort only wisdom of having bore the fruit of life...
John Keats: A lyric Poem compared to a narrative one The poetry of John Keats: Common themes in "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn" Both poems by John Keats "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn" have a common theme: the transient nature of human desire. The poems reflect common Romantic preoccupations: exotic settings, art, and mysterious powers that serve to underline the limited
Autumn John Keats, Ode to Autumn 1819 (222) To Autumn has sparingly figured in criticisms of Keats's poetry, because when compared with other odes of 1819, Ode to Autumn appears not to provide a strong basis for exposition or discussion purposes. Ode to Autumn's three stanzas mark out the seasons' progress. In stanza one, Autumn's role as the harbinger of the fruits for the season is distinguished. In stanza two, Autumn
Keats' to Autumn An Analysis of Keats' "To Autumn" John Keats' "To Autumn" is a kind of "companion piece" to another English poem, "Ode to Evening," by William Collins -- a poem very much in the mind of Keats when he seat to work on "Autumn." Inspired by the English countryside, Keats, like Williams, evokes nature's reflection of the poet's own emergence from youthfulness to adulthood. Composed only two years before his
Most individuals fail to appreciate life to the fullest because they concentrate on being remembered as some of the greatest humans who ever lives. This makes it difficult for them to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, considering that they waste most of their time trying to put across ideas that are appealing to the masses. While many did not manage to produce ideas that survived more than them, others
Nature is the vehicle that leads him to awareness on a physical and emotional plane, expressed when he realizes that "each faculty of sense... keep[s] the heart/Awake to Love and Beauty" (62-3). Here we see that the poet is open to whatever his experience with nature will teach him. Another poet that demonstrates the mood and tone of the Romantic era is Percy Shelley. In "Ode to the West Wind,"
The winds are "driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing" (4) and the poet's thoughts are like "winged seeds" (7) of each passing season. The poet writes, "Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; / Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!" (13-4). Critic Jeanine Johnson notes that "Ode to the West Wind" "returns to the idea that human development and nature follow parallel cycles. If the seasons correspond to the
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