Ode on Melancholy

Question 1

stanza 1

Answer 1

• What not to do – epizeuxis “no,no”
• Lists self-destructive behaviours through rich imagery and multiple classical allusions.
• Uncertainty of who it addresses – previously deleted stanza references a questing hero travelling to the underworld in search for the goddess Melancholy.
• Initial arresting tone
• Essentials discusses alcohol and drugs (“poisonous wine”) – attempts to numb or end “anguish” won’t make the most of their melancholy as they can’t witness its close relationship with beauty, instead overwhelmed with sadness.
• Shouldn’t “go to Lethe” (river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology) or forget their sadness – uncertainty of who the poem addresses.
• Shouldn’t commit suicide: “the ruby grape of Prosperine” (mythological queen of the underworld) is a poison.
• Shouldn’t become obsessed with objects of death/misery – “beetle” “death-moth”, “owl” – semantic field of death.
• Should remain aware and alert to the depths of his surrroundings.

Question 2

stanza 2

Answer 2

• What do to in place of things previously forebode
• Afflicted with “the melancholy fit”, sufferer should overwhelm sorrow with natural beauty – “on the rainbow of the sale sand-wave, in the eyes of his beloved, or glutting it on the morning rose”.

Question 3

stanza 3

Answer 3

• Explanation of injunctions (pleasure and pain inextricably linked)
• Beauty must die, joy is fleeting.
• Flower of pleasure is forever – “turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips”.
• Shrine of melancholy is inside the “temple of Delight” – noting good lasts forever - only visible if overwhelmed with joy until it reveals sadness (“burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine”), man who does it will “taste the sadness” of melancholy’s might + “be among her cloudy trophies hug”.
• Overall innate connection between melancholy, beauty, and passing of time

Question 4

form/ structure

Answer 4

• Iambic pentameter - matches logical, argumentative thematic structure.
• Rhyme scheme same I as stanza 1 and 2 – creates the sense of a two-part thematic structure.
• First four lines of every stanza defines the stanza’s subject.
• Only ode not in 1st person

Question 5

context - written

Answer 5

• Written 1819
• Initially extra stanza at beginning that was later deleted – creates abrupt opening to poem which conveys suddenness at which sadness can appear but changed focus to escaping sadness rather than a long journey towards it

Question 6

context - cultural (melancholia)

Answer 6

• Medicinal medicine: melancholy was considered as a pathological condition – specifically arising from an imbalance in the bodily humours
• Renaissance: fashionable – linked to creativity
• Keats got ideas from Burtons’s ‘Anatomy of Melacnholy’ (1621) – investigation of cases, symptoms, cures for melancholia
• Burton suggested avoiding melancholy at all costs – Keats argued its inseparable from pleasure as all thing in human life are transient
• Letter to brother + sister-in-law (1819): “This is the world – thus we cannot expect to give way many hours to pleasure – Circumstances are like clouds continually gathering and bursting – While we are laughing in the seeds of some trouble is it into the wide arable land of events”

Question 7

context - classical

Answer 7

• Melancholy: personified as goddess – greek mythology: daughter of Nyx. Keats isn’t referencing mythology, rather personifying the feeling
• Lethe: river in underworld that induced forgetfulness
• Wolf’s bane: plant with poison said to be able to kill a wolf + have psychological/ cardivovascualar effects on humans – folklore said to harm and force wear wolves to turn into human form
• Proserpin: wife of pluto, return from underworld marks start of spring + her return to it marks winter – goddess of fertility, growth, spring
• Psyche: goddess of the soul – represented as a butterfly emergin from the mouth of a dying man

Question 8

context - letters

Answer 8

• to Fanny: met 1818, described love as an illness only she could cure (reflects poems coexistence of beauty and pain)
• many of his letter reflect themes covered in poem
• wrote a letter that he hoped to maintain a “peaceable and health spirit” - root of the poems appear t presence for the natural world over intoxication (later developed drinking problems)