John Keats (1795-1821)
Things to Consider:
- Negative Capability
- Egotistical Sublime
- Role of Nature
- Role of Art
- Imagination
- Ode
- Apostrophe
Discussion Questions:
457:
- Why did Keats abandon medicine for poetry?
459:
- What, according to the editors, are
"the distinctive qualities of the work of Keats's maturity"
(459)?
"Ode to a Nightingale" (1819)
On-line version
483:
- What is hemlock (2)? Why does the speaker feel as if
he has drunk it?
484:
- What does the speaker long to
forget?
- Why "seems it rich to die" (55)?
485:
- Explain: "The fancy cannot
cheat so well / As she is fam'd to do" (73-4).
See
other examples
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819)
On-line version
- How does this poem compare to Shelley's "Ode to the West
Wind"?
486:
- Why are unheard melodies sweeter than heard ones (11-12)?
- Explain: "She cannot fade,
though thou hast not thy bliss, / For ever wilt thou love
and she be fair" (19-20).
487:
- Explain: "Beauty is truth,
truth beauty,--that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye
need to know" (49-50).
Other Discussion Questions:
"Ode to a Nightingale"
- How does this poem compare with Percy Shelley's "To a
Skylark"?
483:
- What is Lethe (4)?
- What is vintage (11)?
- What is the "blushful Hippocrene" (16)?
485:
- Who is Ruth (66)?