ENGL 3653: English Literature II

John M. Mercer, Professor of English

Northeastern State University, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

Study Guide 5: Keats

Revised 2-11-09

Life of John Keats

Whereas the first generation of English Romantic poets—Wordsworth and Coleridge—lived relatively long lives, the great poets of the second generation—Byron, Shelley, and Keats—all died young.

1. What circumstances led to the early deaths of Byron, Shelley (see previous assignments), and Keats? Where did each die? How old was each when he died?
2. How do Keats’s poetic accomplishments at the age of his death compare with those of other great English poets (such as Shakespeare and Milton) when they were that age?

Keats’s Sonnets

“On First Looking into Chapman=s Homer,” 880

1. According to the footnote in the textbook, what experience prompted Keats to write this sonnet? What is “Chapman’s Homer”?
2. What is this sonnet’s rhyme scheme? Is it an English or an Italian sonnet? What other poet in this unit wrote sonnets of this same type?
3. In the first 8 lines (the octave), what situation (a recent personal experience) does the speaker describe?
4. In the last 6 lines (the sestet), what is the speaker’s response to that experience?

According to Harmon and Holman’s A Handbook to Literature, 9^th ed., an “objective correlative” (a term created by the 20^th-century poet and critic T. S. Eliot) is “a pattern of objects, actions, or events, or a situation that can serve effectively to awaken in the reader an emotional response without being a direct statement of that subjective emotion.” Eliot said it is Athe only way of expressing emotion in the form of art.@

5. In this sonnet, DISCOVERY is the objective correlative (and, in this case, extended metaphor) Keats uses throughout the sonnet to communicate his emotions about reading Chapman’s Homer. Throughout the sonnet, identify and analyze the specific metaphors and similes that relate to exploration and discovery. What is the literal term (tenor) of each of these figures of speech? What is the figurative term (vehicle) of each?

“On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” 883

1. What are the Elgin Marbles? Where did they originally come from? Where are they now? How did they get from their original to their present home?
2. For extra credit, find photographs of the Elgin Marbles. The Marbles will look about the same in the photographs as they did in Keats’s time (early 19^th century). Byron, whose response to the Elgin Marbles was quite different from Keats’s, called them “Phidian [Phidias was their sculptor] freaks, misshapen monuments, and maimed antiques.” Do the photographs support Byron’s judgment?
3. In the first 5 lines of the sonnet, what is the speaker’s (in this case, it is safe to say Keats’s) response to seeing the Elgin Marbles? In line 5, to what does the speaker compare himself? Why might the speaker feel this way?
4. In lines 6-8, the speaker is referring to his own feelings of inadequacy as poet. Why would seeing the Elgin Marbles make him feel inadequate?
5. In lines 9-14, the speaker gives two conflicting descriptions of or responses to the Marbles; he calls this conflict “an undescribable feud” (line 10). What are these two conflicting descriptions or responses? What figures of speech does he use for each? How could one respond to the Marbles in both of these ways at the same time?
6. Which type of sonnet is this? What is the rhyme scheme? In what ways does the content of the sonnet correspond to the structure created by the rhyme scheme?

“When I Have Fears,” 888

1. This was the first English or Shakespearean sonnet Keats wrote. What is the rhyme scheme of this sonnet and all English sonnets? How does the structure created by the rhyme scheme relate to the content of the poem?
2. What are the 2 things the speaker fears that he may not be able to experience or accomplish before he dies? Based on what you know about Keats’s life, was it reasonable for him to have such fears?
3. The emotion expressed in the last 2½ lines has been frequently debated. How do YOU interpret his emotion or attitude in these lines? For extra credit, do research to find out what critics have written about these lines (or about any of the assigned poems).

“The Eve of St. Agnes,” 888

1. What is typically Romantic about the setting (time and place) of this poem? What other assigned poem in this unit has a similar setting?
2. What is St. Agnes’s Day? What is the connection between St. Agnes’s Day and what happens in the poem?
3. As a footnote points out, the poem frequently presents contrasting qualities, such as cold/hot, youth/age, denial/indulgence. Give specific examples of these and/or other contrasting qualities in the poem. (For extra credit, you could write an entire essay on this topic.)
4. The verse form of this poem is called Spenserian stanza. Who created this verse form? What is the rhyme scheme? What is the meter? What assigned poem by Shelley uses the same verse form?
5. This is a very sensuous poem, containing many appeals to the five senses (or at least most of the senses). As you read the poem, identify vivid examples of appeals to the senses.
6. Identify the basic episodes in the plot of this narrative poem.
7. With what is Madeline preoccupied on this Eve of St. Agnes’s Day?
8. Why does Porphyro come to the castle? Why is he in danger?
9. How does Porphyro get into Madeline’s room?
10. What does he place beside her bed?
11. Why is she disappointed when she sees Porphyro?
12. What happens to the couple in the rest of the poem? What questions about what happens to the couple are left unanswered?

“La Belle Dame sans Merci,” 899

1. The verse form of this poem is a variation of ballad stanza. How does it differ from the traditional ballad stanza? Why does Keats use a variation of ballad stanza to tell this particular story?
2. Who are the two speakers in this poem? Which stanzas are spoken by each speaker?
3. What is the main sequence of events in this narrative poem?
4. What is the meaning of the title of the poem? How is the title appropriate to what happens?
5. According to a college dictionary or other reference source, what is a femme fatale? How does this term apply to this poem?
6. Is this story believable on the literal level? If not, what might be its symbolic meaning? For extra credit, do research to discover different interpretations of this poem.

Keats’s Great Odes

The five poems listed below are classified as Keats’s great odes.

1. What other assigned poems in this unit have the word “ode” in the title?

• Origin: The ode as a poetic form evolved from the “choral odes,” or songs of the chorus, in ancient Greek drama.
• Characteristics: The ode is a subgenre of lyric poetry. Odes tend to be dignified, sincere, imaginative, and intellectual.
• Form: In construction, odes are elaborate and can be classified into three basic types. According to Harmon and Holman’s A Handbook to Literature, 9^th ed., “For his odes, Keats devised a number of regular or irregular stanzas, the basic [stanza] being ten iambic lines mostly pentameter with a rhyme scheme . . . ababcdecde.”

2. Of the four assigned odes by Keats, which ones follow the form identified above?

“Ode to Psyche,” 901

This is the first of Keats’s five great odes. It is based on the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche. Keats uses Cupid to symbolize love and Psyche to symbolize the human mind or soul. The union of Cupid and Psyche, then, represents the loving human soul, which Keats celebrates.

1. Who is the “Goddess” apostrophized (addressed) in the first line?
2. The first stanza describes a pastoral scene where Cupid and Psyche are together. What lines describe both as having wings? Why?

Give most of your attention to the last 3 stanzas of this poem.

3. What does the goddess Psyche lack that other classical deities have?
4. Why does she not have these things?
5. What does the speaker of the poem offer to do for Psyche?
6. WHERE, rather than in the real world, does the speaker say he will build his tribute to Psyche (lines 51, 60)? Given who Psyche is, why is this an appropriate place?
7. In line 52, “pleasant pain” is an oxymoron. What is the definition of “oxymoron”? Why does Keats use this particular oxymoron?
8. Nothing that the speaker says in this poem can be taken literally. What, then, is Keats’s point? What does the poem mean?

“Ode to a Nightingale,” 903

Although this ode is not required reading, for extra credit you are encouraged to read it, write a response to it, and answer the following questions.

1. How does this poem compare with Shelley=s “To a Sky-Lark”?
2. What does Keats say about Ruth (from the Old Testament book of Ruth) that is not found in the Bible? Why does Keats add this detail? How does it show his “negative capability” (see below under “Ode on a Grecian Urn”)?

“Ode on a Grecian Urn,” 905

Like most of the other great odes of Keats, this entire poem is an apostrophe to the subject identified in the title.

1. What does a Grecian urn look like? For extra credit, find pictures of ancient Grecian urns.
2. Each of the first 3 lines of the poem personifies the urn in a different way. In what sense is the urn a “still unravish’d bride of quietness” (line 1)? a “foster-child of silence and slow time” (line 2)? a “Sylvan historian” (line 3)?
3. Lines 4-8 provide an overview of the scenes depicted on the urn. How do the figures and actions mentioned here relate to the more specific descriptions given in the rest of the poem?
4. What scene on the urn is described in lines 11-14 and 23-24? In what way is this scene said to be superior to the same experience in real life?
5. What scene on the urn is described in lines 17-20 and 25-27? In what way is this scene said to be superior to the same experience in real life?
6. What scene on the urn is described in lines 31-34?
7. The scene described in lines 31-34 prompts the speaker to imagine in lines 35-40 a related scene that is NOT pictured on the urn. What is this related but imaginary scene? Why does the speaker feel sorry for the town?

The speaker’s sympathy for the town is an example of what Keats called “negative capability.” As explained in Holman’s Handbook to Literature, 3^rd ed., Keats used the term “negative capability” in a letter “to describe the objective and impersonal aspects of Shakespeare. Shakespeare had ‘innate universality,’ Keats asserted. ‘A poet has no Identity . . . he is continually . . . filling some other Body.” In other words, negative capability is the ability of a poet to negate his own feelings in order to completely identify with something outside the self.

8. How do lines 35-40 demonstrate Keats’s own negative capability?
9. In the 5^th stanza, explain the appropriateness of each of the following ways of referring to the urn: “Attic shape,” “Fair attitude,” “silent form,” and “Cold Pastoral.”
10. According to lines 46-50, what function will the urn serve for humanity in future generations?
11. What is the meaning of “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (49)? According to the footnote in the textbook, what are some different interpretations of the last two lines of the poem? For extra credit, research the meaning of these last two lines. (I had a friend at the University of Missouri who wrote his entire doctoral dissertation on the meaning of these two lines.)

“Ode on Melancholy,” 906

The speaker of this poem advises the listener how to experience melancholy (sadness or depression). Although you might not think anyone would deliberately seek to experience melancholy, this emotion was a favorite subject of Romantic writers and readers.

1. According to stanza 1, if one wishes find melancholy, what should one NOT do, or where should one NOT go? Why is it necessary to tell the reader NOT to try these means to experience melancholy?
2. According to stanza 2, in what kinds of situations is one likely to find melancholy? Why?
3. In each of the first 3 lines of this stanza, a different companion of a personified Melancholy is identified. Who are these three companions? In what way is each of these companions defined by its opposite quality? How does the phrase “aching Pleasure” (23) fit the definition of an oxymoron?
4. In lines 25-30, Melancholy is depicted as a veiled goddess who has her own shrine in a temple. In whose temple is Melancholy to be found (25)? To see this veiled goddess, what does a person have to do (27-28)? In what way is this metaphor an objective correlative for the experience of melancholy?
5. According to lines 29-30, what happens to the person who sees melancholy?
6. What does this poem have to say about the human condition? What other poems or lines that we have studied in this unit make a similar point?

“To Autumn,” 925

Keats wrote this poem in September 1819, 17 months before he died of tuberculosis. His last poem, it is highly praised for its artistic unity, its objectivity, and its rich imagery (appeals to the senses).

1. Stanza 1 describes a morning in early autumn, when fruit is produced. Find examples of each of the following in this stanza:
1. Personification of autumn
2. Images of ripening, fullness, and fecundity
3. Organic and kinesthetic images

2. Stanza 2 describes a midday or afternoon in mid-autumn, the time of harvest. Find examples of each of the following in this stanza:
1. Personification of autumn
2. Visual images of activities related to harvest
3. Olfactory images

3. Stanza 3 describes a sunset in late autumn, after the harvest. Find examples of each of the following in this stanza:
1. Theme of the transience of life
2. Visual imagery of sunset
3. Auditory imagery, including onomatopoeia
4. Images that suggest peacefulness