Keats poems - form, struture, small points

Question 1

chapmans homer 1815

Answer 1

context
- written after reading a translation of the illiad (poor and cannot read latin) w/ cowden clark
- chapman translation was a more direct and iambic translation - raw and emotive reading experience

form
- petrachan sonnate with octave then sestet -> problem and solution form

meter
- iambic pentameter
- trochee on ‘silent’ -> renders the shock and awe through the pause

ideas
- sense of passivity to the first section - image of ‘realms of gold’ + ‘kingdoms’ - sense of established tradition// facade
- astromomer - spiritual and etherial nature of astronomy, passive watching, isolated experience
- explorer - grounded on earth, active exploration, shared excitement and experience, physicality

Question 2

when i have fears that i may cease to be

Answer 2

form
- shakespearean sonnet
- three quatrains followed by rhymic couplet - here the couplet is longer, giving the previous line a sense of urgency

ideas
- harvest metaphore - used to symbolize the fruits of his creative effort, relates the fear of a failed harvest with the fear of death - also introduces the potential to rot (elongated sounds of gleaned and teeming)
- tactile imagary to explore the beauty of the heavens - highlights the futility of this task
- hyperbolic romantic imagary
- trochee on never - interrupted by the fear of death, and therefore the interruption of creative flow

Question 3

on sitting down to read leer once again

Answer 3

form
- hybrid? - change from encloased rhyme scheme to the second at point of volta
- closed rhyme - sense of transience to the feelings imparted by the romantic form of literature

ideas
- image of the siren - superficially beautiful, golden tongue -> seductive but false, alluring but not immidiately real
- comparison between shakespeares work and a bitter sweet fruit - something desirable, biblical, essential and nourishing
- bodily and physical imagary of second section contrasts the mystical of the first
- thematic link to the tragic mood of leer - angst and anguish implied through the ‘clouds’ + ‘eternal theme’
- uses location to distinguish the greatness of leer to the vapid romances ‘barran dream’ - image of infertility and lifelessness re-enforses message that great literature is neccesary to life
- dual association of passion and suffering of fire imagary - ultimate image of phoenix shows that it is a renewing force

Question 4

oh solitude

Answer 4

context
- nature as something that inspires and generates creativity in romantic movement
- nature viewed as a theistic force - response to the modernised world
- nature as a point of inspiration for the imagination - fusion of observation of nature and the ability of the human mind to transcende and create

form
- petrachan sonnet
- apostrophy to solitude - personified as a godlike being

ideas
- ‘jumbled heap of murky buildings’ - dissolution with urban life, implication that the urban world is separate from the natural - contrasted with ‘crystel swell’
- positioning of the natural world as above the urban - prepositional language
- crystal swell - clenliness, pureness, mystecicsm, something that one can see through and trancend the physical world to view the clarity

Question 5

on the sea

Answer 5

context
- written 1817
form
- petrachan sonnet - volta after second quatrain presents a moment of realisation

ideas
- enjamberment between 1st and 2nd line, then caesura syntactically replicates the ‘mightly swell’
- ‘desolate shores’ - disrupts the iambic rhythm which mimics the flow of the ocean as it meets the land
- sense of secrecy and mysticism - allusions to Hecate, godess of witchcraft and wildnerss - feminine presence of the sea as healing, but also strong
- gluts twice ten thousand - bluntness of the verb highlights the sublime power of the sea + hyberbollic image
- sea trancends its past defined characteristics and behavuours

Question 6

to sleep

Answer 6

context
- letter to george + georgina 1819 - experimental hybrid sonnet form
- use of the rhyme scheme of a shakespearean sonnet for the first octave, but follows octave sestet form of the petrachan sonnet

ideas
- personification of sleep - benign presence + soporiphic rhymth created through trochee on ‘midnight’
- connotations of nature/ forests - ‘embowered + enshaded’
- ‘soothest’ - superlative for the most soothing, or could have connotations of the role of a ‘sooth’ sayer - supernatural power of sleep
- concentrated sibilance = softness of the phonetics of the poem mimicing the peace desired
- three imperatives adressed towards sleep - imploring sleep to come to avoid the development of his wrries, desparation
- woes - linked to an infestation of the mind, once establoshed they exponentially increase
- shakespearean allusion

Question 7

bright star

Answer 7

context
- 1819 letter to Fanny Brawn ‘love is my religion’
form + structure

ideas
- expresses desire to be as immortal as a star, but rejects their solitary nature and isolation from the earth - allusion to eremite as a hermite, having to live in seclusion to devote themselves to god
- rejects this cold devotion ‘pure abolution’ + ‘priestlike’ - similar to context of rejecting christain doctrines of religion for his own love
- pure and cold langauge used to explore the star
- speaker achieves the stediness of the star through intimacy without the isolation, and this trancends the fear for loss

Question 8

ode to psyche

Answer 8

context
- 1819 letter to george and georgina - vale of soul making
- classical odes as celebratory of someone or something - extended building towards rhetorical elevation and insight

ideas
- apostrophy to psyche - believing it his duty to be in reverence to the godess through poetry, but simultaneously recognises his shortcomings which emphasises in turn the extreme beauty of the godess
- use of compound adjectives ‘mid hush’d, cool rooted, fragrent eyed’ - builds rhythm and tranquility, associates psyches beauty with natural imagary
- use of negative phrases ‘no voice no lute no incence etc.’ - elevates her neglect and highlights the building of his intentions
- changing tone to introspection after ‘yes’ - fress interpretation of worship, devotion and love - idea that contemplation of the young and fresh goddess has replaced monotonous and stifling traditional notions of reverence

Question 9

ode on a grecian urn

Answer 9

form
- subverts celebratory tone of classical odes more towards interregation and questioning
- ekphrastic poem combined with the dialogical nature of an ode creates a deeper sense of tension between past and present

ideas
- celebration and dread at the fleeting nature of life - tension between the everlasting scene of the urn, and the passing of time which has rendered these people untouchable and unreachable
- the highlighting of the eternal spring of the urn in turn intensifies the sense of eternal death and the superficiality of this existance