The Second Generation Of English Romantic Poets: Byron, Shelley And Keats di Elena Bordone, Paolo Racca
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John Keats
To Autumn (1819)

General introduction

This short ode [E1] [ES1] [F1] [I1] is often considered to be one the ripest fruit of Keats’ poetic production. Moreover, it is a perfect example of what its author called “negative capability”. [E1]

Far from the attitude of the “wordsworthian poet” (see Letter to R. Woodhouse), Keats refuses to approach Nature as a mirror of his own interior world of feeling and emotions. Reversing the pattern of most Romantic poetry, he chooses to leave his own point of view apart and to be literally “haunted” by the presence and spirit of the World itself: this is the only earnest way of reaching beauty, its real core and the true object of art.

Illustration by W.J. Neatby, 1899 - source: Wikimedia Commons

Read the text

I

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more,
later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

II

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

III

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

ACTIVITIES

Comprehension and interpretation

  • Skim the text and see whether there is a prevalence of abstract or concrete images.
  • What kind of environmental background does the poet adopt? Does this choice tell us something about his attitude towards society?
  • Are there any human characters in the poem? Why is it so, in your opinion?
  • Who does the poet speak to?
  • The poet faces Nature through physical perception. Look at stanza I:
    • what senses are involved here? (Support your statement by quoting words and expressions)
    • what idea are all the images of fruit and plants linked to?
  • All the images in Stanza II are linked to the same agricultural activity: what is it? Can you find links with the images in Stanza I?
  • What are the protagonists of Stanza III? Through which of their qualities are they described?

Textual and linguistic analysis

1.Sound

  • Look at Stanza II: are there any consistent examples of alliteration? What effect do they convey? (think about the image that the poet wants to call in mind)
  • Go through Stanza III: does the poet make use of onomatopoeic words? Identify them and link them to the suitable semantic areas.

Rhythm and rhyme

  • How many lines are there in each stanza? Is the pattern regular? Go through Stanza I: can you identify a regular stress pattern? What kinds of meter does the poet make use of?
  • Look at the rhyme scheme in the three stanzas: what are the similarities, and what are the differences? How would you split each stanza according to this criterion?
  • To sum up: does the structure of this ode remind you of typologies that you already know? How would you classify it?

Language

  • The poet describes the Autumn by means of a suggestive language device: what is it? Where is its use more evident in the text? Find verbs, nouns and adjectives that are used to this purpose.
  • Find examples of compound nouns. Are they linked to abstract thought or to practical references? What can you deduce from this consideration?
  • How would you define the general tone of the composition? Choose one or more of the following alternatives and give reasons:
    • bucolic
    • abstract and philosophical
    • self-indulgent
    • polemic
    • sentimental
    • descriptive
    • technical
    • colloquial
    • formal
    • bureaucratic

Sources and materials

  • Wikipedia - the Free Encyclopedia: a useful guided analysis of structures, themes, background. [E1]
  • Suite 101.com: some good hints at a closer analysis of poetic and linguistic features [E2]
  • Romanticismo Inglese: a useful translation for the Italian-speaking readers and a good deal of information about the making-of. [I1]
  • Anthologie Anglaise: a pdf resource containing a French translation and some bibliographical notes. [F1]
  • AMediaVoz: Spanish translations of the current poem and of many others from the same author [ES1]
  • Poemas en Engles: other useful translation (this one is provided with the original text). [ES2]

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