Department of English

THE IIS UNIVERSITY, JAIPUR

A project report
Submitted towards fulfillment of the degree of

Bachelors of Arts (pass course), as a part of curriculum of

Semester I, 2019-20

NAME: ANANYA SHARMA

COURSE: BA (PASS COURSE)

SUBMITTED TO: MRS. PRIYANKA RUTH

TOPIC: ‘JOHN KEATS AND HIS ODES’

 INDEX

1. Introduction to the Romantic Era

2. About the poet (John Keats)
3. Analysis of the John Keats’ odes
4. Main elements in John Keats’ poems
5. Conclusion
6. Bibliography
 CHAPTER – 1

ROMANTIC ERA

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward
the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to
1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as
glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a
reaction to the Industrial revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of
Enlightenment and the scientific rationalization of nature—all components of modernity. It was embodied
most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact  histography, education, his
social sciences, and the natural sciences. It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic
thinkers influencing liberalism, radicalism, conservatism and nationalism.

No other period in English literature displays more variety in style, theme, and content than the Romantic
Movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Furthermore, no period has been the topic of so
much disagreement and confusion over its defining principles and aesthetics. Romanticism, then, can best
be described as a large network of sometimes competing philosophies, agendas, and points of interest. In
England, Romanticism had its greatest influence from the end of the eighteenth century up through about
1870. Its primary vehicle of expression was in poetry, although novelists adopted many of the same
themes.
First and foremost, Romanticism is concerned with the individual more than with society. Nevertheless,
writers became gradually more invested in social causes as the period moved forward. Thanks largely to
the Industrial Revolution; English society was undergoing the most severe paradigm shifts it had seen in
living memory. The response of many early Romantics was to yearn for an idealized, simpler past. In
particular, English Romantic poets had a strong connection with medievalism and mythology.

On the formal level, Romanticism witnessed a steady loosening of the rules of artistic expression that
were pervasive during earlier times. The Neoclassical Period of the eighteenth century included very strict
expectations regarding the structure and content of poetry. By the dawn of the nineteenth century,
experimentation with new styles and subjects became much more acceptable. The high-flown language of
the previous generation’s poets was replaced with more natural cadences and verbiage. In terms of poetic
form, rhymed stanzas were slowly giving way to blank verse, an unrhymed but still rhythmic style of
poetry. The purpose of blank verse was to heighten conversational speech to the level of austere beauty.
Some criticized the new style as mundane, yet the innovation soon became the preferred style. One of the
most popular themes of Romantic poetry was country life, otherwise known as pastoral poetry.
Mythological and fantastic settings were also employed to great effect by many of the Romantic poets.

If one could identify a single voice as the standard-bearer of Romantic sensibilities, that voice would
belong to William Wordsworth. His publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is identified by many as the
opening act of the Romantic Period in English literature. It was a hugely successful work, requiring
several reprinting over the years. The dominant theme of Lyrical Ballads was Nature, specifically the
power of Nature to create strong impressions in the mind and imagination. The voice in Wordsworth’s
poetry is observant, meditative and aware of the connection between living things and objects. There is
the sense that past, present, and future all mix together in the human consciousness. One feels as though
the poet and the landscape are in communion, each a partner in an act of creative production. Wordsworth
quite deliberately turned his back on the Enlightenment traditions of poetry, specifically the work of
Alexander Pope. He instead looked more to the Renaissance and the Classics of Greek and Latin epic
poetry for inspiration. His work was noted for its accessibility. The undeniable commercial success
of Lyrical Ballads does not diminish the profound effect it had on an entire generation of aspiring writers.
As has been argued, Romanticism as a literary sensibility never completely disappeared. It was overtaken
by other aesthetic paradigms like Realism and Modernism, but Romanticism was always lurking under
the surface. Many great poets and novelists of the twentieth century cite the Romantics as their greatest
inspirational voices. The primary reason that Romanticism fell out of the limelight is because many
writers felt the need to express themselves in a more immediate way. The Romantic poets were regarded
as innovators, but a bit lost in their own imaginations. The real problems of life in the world seemed to be
pushed aside. As modernization continued unchecked, a more earthy kind of literature was demanded,
and the Romantics simply did not fit that bill.
 CHAPTER - 2

ABOUT THE POET

John Keats was born on October 31, 1795 in London, England—died February 23, 1821, Rome, Papal
States, English Romantic lyric poet who devoted his short life to the perfection of a poetry marked by
vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal, and an attempt to express a philosophy through classical legend.

The son of a livery-stable manager, John Keats received relatively little formal education. His father died
in 1804, and his mother remarried almost immediately. Throughout his life Keats had close emotional ties
to his sister, Fanny, and his two brothers, George and Tom. After the breakup of their mother’s second
marriage, the Keats children lived with their widowed grandmother at Edmonton, Middlesex. John
attended a school at Enfield, two miles away, that was run by John Clarke, whose son Charles Cowden
Clarke did much to encourage Keats’s literary aspirations. At school Keats was noted as a pugnacious lad
and was decidedly “not literary,” but in 1809 he began to read voraciously. After the death of the Keats
children’s mother in 1810, their grandmother put the children’s affairs into the hands of a guardian,
Richard Abbey. At Abbey’s instigation John Keats was apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton in 1811.
He broke off his apprenticeship in 1814 and went to live in London, where he worked as a dresser, or
junior house surgeon, at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ hospitals. His literary interests had crystallized by this
time, and after 1817 he devoted himself entirely to poetry. From then until his early death, the story of his
life is largely the story of the poetry he wrote.

It was during the year 1819 that all his greatest poetry was written—“Lamia,” “The Eve of St. Agnes,”
the great odes (“On Indolence,” “On a Grecian Urn,” “To Psyche,” “To a Nightingale,” “On
Melancholy,” and “To Autumn”), and the two versions of Hyperion. The ‘odes’ are Keats’ most
distinctive poetic achievement. They are essentially lyrical meditations on some object or quality that
prompts the poet to confront the conflicting impulses of his inner being and to reflect upon his own
longings and their relations to the wider world around him. All the odes were composed between March
and June 1819 except “To Autumn,” which is from September. The internal debates in the odes centre on
the dichotomy of eternal, transcendent ideals and the transience and change of the physical world. This
subject was forced upon Keats by the painful death of his brother and his own failing health, and the odes
highlight his struggle for self-awareness and certainty through the liberating powers of his imagination. In
the “Ode to a Nightingale” a visionary happiness in communing with the nightingale and its song is
contrasted with the dead weight of human grief and sickness, and the transience of youth and beauty—
strongly brought home to Keats in recent months by his brother’s death. The song of the nightingale is
seen as a symbol of art that outlasts the individual’s mortal life. This theme is taken up more distinctly in
the “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” The figures of the lovers depicted on the Greek urn become for him the
symbol of an enduring but unconsummated passion that subtly belies the poem’s celebrated conclusion,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” The “Ode on
Melancholy” recognizes that sadness is the inevitable concomitant of human passion and happiness and
that the transience of joy and desire is an inevitable aspect of the natural process. But the rich, slow
movement of this and the other odes suggests an enjoyment of such intensity and depth that it makes the
moment eternal. “To Autumn” is essentially the record of such an experience. Autumn is seen not as a
time of decay but as a season of complete ripeness and fulfillment, a pause in time when everything has
reached fruiting, and the question of transience is hardly raised. These poems, with their rich and
exquisitely sensuous detail and their meditative depth, are among the greatest achievements
of Romantic poetry. With them should be mentioned the ballad “La Belle Dame sans merci,” of about the
same time, which reveals the obverse and destructive side of the idyllic love seen in “The Eve of St.
Agnes.”

CHAPTER- 3
 ANALYSIS OF ‘THE ODES’ BY JOHN KEATS

In 1819 John Keats composer 6 odes poems  which are among his most famous and well regarded poems
Keats wrote the first five poem first ode on Grecian urn ,ode  melancholy , ode psyche in quick
succession during the spring and he composed To Autumn in September.

John Keats return in poem is unknown some critic content has left for mathematical is arranging
frequencies as a voltage kids represent attempt to created new type of short lyrical Ballad poems which
influence letter generation.
1) ode to autumn
2) ode to Nightingale
3) ode to Grecian  urn
4) ode to melancholy
5) ode to Psyche
6) ode to indolence 

What is the ode: A lyrics poem in the form of an address of particular subject of fun elevated in a style
for manner and written in very irregular meter it has three major parts strophe, anti strophe and epode.

The senses can be the most wonderful catalyst for our notions of art, nature and mythology. In 1819, six
odes were written by the English Romantic poet John Keats, using rich imagery to evoke these ideas
within the mind of the reader. The intoxication of Poetry comes to Keats through the world of the senses.
This poetry, however, remains trapped within the confines of the artist’s mind. This thesis will be
developed through a series of excerpts and analyses of five of his renowned odes: “Ode on Indolence”
and “Ode on Melancholy” reveal and illustrate the curse of the poet; “To Autumn” more clearly
demonstrates the poet’s movement from the senses to the mind, delving into the poet’s personification of
the natural world as an eternal goddess; and “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode to Psyche” expose and
detail the essential characteristic of poetic inspiration for Keats: that it is a cerebral event.

Although the course of this essay may not follow the chronological order of the odes, which is often
disputed amongst literary scholars, it serves a thematic narrative to view the odes in the order that
follows. Keats’s intoxication of Poetry can be illuminated if we begin by observing his “Ode on
Indolence”. Poetry, personified as Poesy, is described as she “whom love more, the more of blame / is
heap’d upon her, maiden most unmeek”. This reveals his admiration and respect for Poetry, as opposed to
the other two figures in “Indolence”, who are described less adoringly. Love is, rather simply, a fair
woman, while Ambition is pale and weary. The fact that Keats later refers to Poesy as his “demon” also
demonstrates his bittersweet notions of poetry as a guiding force in life as well as a fatal attraction. It is a
‘curse’ that he seems unable to rid himself of.

In “Ode on Melancholy”, this curse is illustrated using Roman mythology, which Keats often alludes to
throughout the odes. The speaker warns one suffering from melancholy to not “be kissed / by nightshade,
ruby grape of Proserpine”. Proserpine, or Persephone in Greek mythology, was the goddess of spring and
daughter of Ceres, the Olympian goddess of the harvest and fertility (“Persephone”). According to
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Proserpine was kidnapped by Pluto, god of the Underworld, who saw her in a
grove and grew mad with lust. Ceres killed off all the crops of humanity and spread famine until her
daughter would return. Jupiter, king of the gods, promised she could return if she had not eaten anything
while in the Underworld. Seeing as she had been tempted to eat some pomegranate seeds, Proserpine was
cursed to remain in the Underworld for four months every year, during which Ceres would prevent the
growing of crops. It can be argued that this curse or “intoxication” is reminiscent of the affliction Keats
feels from poetry. Just as she must remain in the Underworld, Keats must continue in his poetry. The fact
that Proserpine experienced and tasted the cause of her curse also emphasizes the notions that poetry
originates from the senses for Keats. The speaker in “Melancholy” warns those who are suffering from
melancholy not to poison themself, as Proserpine and Keats have, but to enjoy the emotions and
experiences of the mind which has been gained through the senses.

The image of ingesting and experiencing reoccurs in “To Autumn”, in which the season of autumn is
personified as a goddess that fills up the objects of nature with a sort of ripeness or fulfillment. She is
described as having her “hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind, / or on a half-reap’d furrow sound
asleep, / drowsed with the fume of poppies…”. Here, Nature is intoxicated by the scent of poppies, which
is an obvious allusion to opium. Britain was introduced to the opium trade in the 18 th century and soon
became one of the leaders in opium cultivation (“Opium Trade”). Opium was also popular amongst
literary circles (Berridge), and so Keats may have consumed opium at some point in his life. Autumn, like
Proserpine, takes part in pleasures of the world of the senses; however the former is also the source of
Keats’s poetry. By extension, Keats’s poetry can thus be seen as deriving from the senses on many levels;
his muse is Nature, who herself indulges in the pleasures of Nature.

In “Ode to a Nightingale”, the world of the senses is somewhat rejected; the speaker wishes to leave
behind sight, taste, smell and touch for the sound of the nightingale’s melody. The song of the nightingale
is an immortal and inspirational tune, which can be a metaphor for how Keats thinks about art; it is both
eternal and able to make things eternal, however this is seen more clearly in “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. In
the second stanza of “Nightingale”, the speaker wishes to taste wine “with beaded bubbles winking at the
brim, / and purple-stained mouth; / that [he] might dink, and leave the world unseen”. Alcohol, here, is
the inspiration for his poetry and brings him closer to the song of the nightingale. The use of the word
“stained” to describe his mouth also holds connotations of pleasure and gluttony. This description of
sensual pleasures as a “staining” experience foreshadows the dismissal of the senses in the fourth stanza,
in which the speaker wishes to reach the nightingale’s song, “not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, but
on the viewless wings of Poesy”. Although the senses are undoubtedly linked to Keats’s poetry, his art
ultimately lies in the abstract dimensions of his own mind.

This abstraction is most evident in “Ode to Psyche”, in which Keats literally transforms his own mind
into a temple for the contents of his poetry’s narrative. “Psyche” imagines the goddess lying in a bed of
grass next to her lover Cupid, who is referred to as Love. In the third stanza, the speaker observes and
laments the fact that Psyche seems to have no shrine or altar to worship her, no choir to sing for her, no
incense burnt in her name and no oracles to prophesy through her. In the final stanza, the speaker takes it
upon himself to be her “priest, and build a fane / in some untrodden region of [his] mind, / where
branched thoughts . . . shall murmur in the wind”. The poet acknowledges that the prime seat of poetry
should be in the mind; the imagination is, after all, what poetry fundamentally requires. This “rosy
sanctuary [will be dressed] / with the wreath’d trellis of a working brain … / and a bright torch…to let the
warm Love in”. Here, the poet himself is submitted into the narrative of Cupid and Psyche; Cupid will
enter the mind of the poet, attracted by Psyche. In simpler terms, Psyche, or Keats’s poetry in general,
literally and metaphorically rest in his own brain, housed by the ‘temple’ that he has created in order to
enter and become Poetry itself.

“Ode to Psyche” provides an example of the way in which poetry is ultimately a mental event for Keats.
This mentality can be first observed in “Ode to a Nightingale”, which initially demonstrates how the
senses are linked to poetry, but concludes with focus being placed on the mind. “To Autumn” makes the
senses explicit as the starting point of Keats’s poetry and the intoxication of the poet as necessarily having
to write poetry is illustrated through images from Roman mythology in “Ode on Melancholy”. The “Ode
on Indolence”, however, personifies poetry into a goddess, Poesy, in order to speak directly to the figure
that, fortunately for us, plagued Keats all throughout his life.

CHAPTER – 4
 MAIN ELEMENTS IN JOHN KEATS’ POEMS

1. The Inevitability of Death

Even before his diagnosis of terminal tuberculosis, Keats focused on death and its inevitability in
his work. For Keats, small, slow acts of death occurred every day, and he chronicled these small
mortal occurrences. The end of a lover’s embrace, the images on an ancient urn, the reaping of
grain in autumn—all of these are not only symbols of death, but instances of it. Examples of
great beauty and art also caused Keats to ponder mortality, as in “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles”
(1817). As a writer, Keats hoped he would live long enough to achieve his poetic dream of
becoming as great as Shakespeare or John Milton: in “Sleep and Poetry” (1817), Keats outlined a
plan of poetic achievement that required him to read poetry for a decade in order to understand—
and surpass—the work of his predecessors. Hovering near this dream, however, was a morbid
sense that death might intervene and terminate his projects; he expresses these concerns in the
mournful 1818 sonnet “When I have fears that I may cease to be.”

2. The Contemplation of Beauty

In his poetry, Keats proposed the contemplation of beauty as a way of delaying the inevitability
of death. Although we must die eventually, we can choose to spend our time alive in aesthetic
revelry, looking at beautiful objects and landscapes. Keats’s Speakers contemplate urns (“Ode on
a Grecian Urn”), books (“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”, “On Sitting Down to
Read King Lear Once Again”, birds (“Ode to a Nightingale”), and stars (“Bright star, would I
were stedfast as thou art”. Unlike mortal beings, beautiful things will never die but will keep
demonstrating their beauty for all time. Keats explores this idea in the first book
of Endymion (1818). The speaker in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” envies the immortality of the lute
players and trees inscribed on the ancient vessel because they shall never cease playing their
songs, nor will they ever shed their leaves. He reassures young lovers by telling them that even
though they shall never catch their mistresses, these women shall always stay beautiful. The
people on the urn, unlike the speaker, shall never stop having experiences. They shall remain
permanently depicted while the speaker changes, grows old, and eventually dies.

3. Nature

Like his fellow romantic poets, Keats found in nature endless sources of poetic inspiration, and
he described the natural world with precision and care. Observing elements of nature allowed
Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, among others, to create extended meditations and
thoughtful odes about aspects of the human condition. For example, in “Ode to a Nightingale,”
hearing the bird’s song causes the speaker to ruminate on the immortality of art and the mortality
of humans. The speaker of “Ode on Melancholy” compares a bout of depression to a “weeping
cloud”, then goes on to list specific flowers that are linked to sadness. He finds in nature apt
images for his psychological state. In “Ode to Psyche,” the speaker mines the night sky to find
ways to worship the Roman goddess Psyche as a muse: a star becomes an “amorous glow-
worm”, and the moon rests amid a background of dark blue. Keats not only uses nature as a
springboard from which to ponder, but he also discovers in nature Similes, symbols,
and Metaphors for the spiritual and emotional states he seeks to describe.
 CHAPTER- 5

CONCLUSION

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in
Europe toward the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate
period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion
and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval
rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the industrial revolution, the aristocratic social
and political norms of the age of enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature. No
other period in English literature displays more variety in style, theme, and content than the
Romantic Movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

First and foremost, Romanticism is concerned with the individual more than with society. The
individual consciousness and especially the individual imagination are especially fascinating for
the Romantics. “Melancholy” was quite the buzzword for the Romantic poets, and altered states
of consciousness were often sought after in order to enhance one’s creative potential. There was
a coincident downgrading of the importance and power of reason, clearly a reaction against the
Enlightenment mode of thinking. Nevertheless, writers became gradually more invested in social
causes as the period moved forward. Thanks largely to the Industrial Revolution, English society
was undergoing the most severe paradigm shifts it had seen in living memory. The response of
many early Romantics was to yearn for an idealized, simpler past. In particular, English
Romantic poets had a strong connection with medievalism and mythology.

William Wordsworth was an early leader of romanticism in English poetry and ranks as one of
the greatest lyric poets in the history of English literature. The description of Wordsworth is best
brought out by Tennyson's words, "one who uttered nothing base". 'The Prelude', an
autobiographical poem records the impressions made upon Wordsworth's mind from his earliest
recollection until his full manhood, in 1805, when the poem was completed. Outwardly his long
and uneventful life divides itself naturally into four periods: his childhood and youth, in the
Cumberland Hills, from 1770 to1787; a period of uncertainty of storm and stress, including his
university life at Cambridge, his travels abroad, and his revolutionary experience, from 1787 to
1797; a short but significant period of finding himself and his work, from 1797 to 1799; a long
period of retirement in the northern lake region, where he was born and where for a full half
century he lived so close to nature that its influence is reflected in all his poetry.

In conclusion, we can say that, Keats wished, to die into nature –to ‘cease upon the midnight
with no pains, but this was not his ordinary mood’. Keats sought, in spite of such moments of
pain, to live in nature and to be incorporate with one beautiful thing after another. He had a way
of fluttering butterfly fashion from one object to another, touching for the moment the charm of
each thing- the work of fancy ‘who is never at home’. Keats all odes, is very difficult to
understanding, and his all odes are very famous in the romantic age.                                               
                         
 BIBLOGRAPHY

https://www.dawsonenglishjournal.ca/article/mental-sensations-an-analysis-of-keatss-odes/

https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/bibliography/

https://www.biography.com/writer/john-keats

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keats