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Symbols

Sleep- eternal peace, death of day’s troubles

  • Speaker describes sleep in a positive/peaceful way through extended metaphors

Mole- restless conscience

Literary Devices v2

Repetition:

Keats uses repetition to emphasize speaker's desire to sleep

  • “save me”

Alliteration:

Like repetition, Keats uses alliteration to emphasize certain phrases and give poem music quality

  • “curious Conscience”
  • “soothest sleep”

Assonance:

Keats uses assonance to give poem musical/lyrical quality and rhythm

  • “thine. . . eyes”
  • “please thee”
  • “embower’d. . . enshaded”

Literary Devices

Rhythm & Meter

Metaphors:

Keats uses metaphors to compare sleep to death

  • “O soft embalmer of the still midnight/ shutting with careful fingers and benign”
  • “Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards/ And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul”

Apostrophe/Personification:

Keats commands sleep to come as if it were there/ a real person

  • reflects speaker’s intense desire to sleep
  • “o soft embalmer of the still midnight. . . with careful fingers”
  • “o soothest sleep!”
  • “then save me”
  • “save me from curious conscience”

Simile:

Simile is used to compare restless conscience to burrowing mole

  • “burrowing like a mole”

Traditional:

  • Meter:
  • Iambic pentameter
  • Ten syllables per line
  • Alternates between unstressed and stressed
  • Sonnet Length
  • 14 lines

Non-traditional:

  • Rhyme Scheme
  • usually ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
  • poem is ABAB CDCD BC EFEF
  • Structure
  • usually 3 quatrains, 1 couplet
  • 2 quatrains, 1 couplet, 1 quatrain
  • intended to emphasize tone shift

Tone/Diction/Imagery

Tone:

“To Sleep” has a very melancholy/ peaceful tone

reflects desires to sleep and be at peace

  • Reflected in diction
  • Soft embalmer, gloom-pleased, soothest sleep, darkness
  • uses words associated with afterlife, eternal peace
  • amen, hymn, divine
  • uses words associated with death
  • embalmer, casket

Imagery:

Keats uses funeral and sleepy imagery in order to reinforce tone and reflect speakers desire to sleep

  • soft embalmer. . . with careful fingers, casket of my soul, bed, pillow, still midnight

Dramatic Elements:

To Sleep

Description/Speaker

Speaker addresses concept of sleep in speech

  • Uses personification/metaphors/imagery
  • Speaker reveals thoughts/emotions
  • Speaker acts as observer/commentator
  • Reminiscent of soliloquies in plays
  • Ex: Macbeth and the knife

Narrative and Lyrical Elements:

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,

Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,

Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light,

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:

O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close

In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,

Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws

Around my bed its lulling charities.

Then save me, or the passed day will shine

Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,-

Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords

Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;

Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,

And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

Summary

Narrative Elements:

  • Poem employs relatively few narrative elements
  • Focuses more on human emotions than story
  • Some narrative elements evident in metaphors

Lyrical Elements:

  • Poem expresses speaker’s desire to sleep
  • Speaker is not impartial
  • Speaker expresses opinions/emotions
  • Poem is given musical quality through the use of repetition, assonance, alliteration, parallelism, etc

In “To Sleep,” Keats describes an anonymous person’s desire for sleep through a series of extended metaphors.

  • Identity of speaker is a mystery
  • One can infer that speaker is someone who is tired and needs sleep
  • Like Grecian Urn, Speaker of "To Sleep" is not impartial
  • Keats speaks through speaker's commentary

In first two quatrains, the speaker speaks positively of sleep through death metaphors

  • Describes it as “soft embalmer” of the night
  • Uses positive words such as soft, benign, light, divine, soothest sleep
  • Appears to have strong desire to sleep
  • Likens sleep to biblical salvation from day’s trouble
  • Uses religious words such as amen and hymn
  • Also compares sleep to the effects of the flower poppy
  • Used in creation of drug opium

After the two quatrains, a non-rhyming couplet is used to signify tone/subject shift

  • Speaker talks to sleeps directly
  • Asks to be saved from worldly woes

Final quatrain elaborates on couplet

  • Reveals some reasons as to why the speaker wants to sleep
  • Speaker wants to be saved from restless, active conscience
  • Wants to be at peace
  • Wants to be sealed in “casket of my soul”

Ties to Romanticism:

Structure

  • Romanticism was movement away from structure/order
  • Poem uses irregular/abstract structure and rhyme scheme

Subject matter

  • Before romanticism, poems were formal narratives
  • Romantic poems, however, discarded narratives in favor of human emotions
  • “To sleep” doesn’t tell a story but instead focuses on speaker’s desire to sleep/ emotions

Works Cited

Henry, Harley. "The Romantic Period." Essentials of British and World Literature. Sixth Course ed. Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 2008. 706-17. Print

"John Keats: The Poetry Foundation." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2015. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org>.

Robinson, Jeffrey C. "'Ode on a Grecian Urn': Hypercanonicity and Pedagogy." Romantic Circles. Ed. Dave Rettenmaier et al. University of Maryland, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015. <http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/grecianurn/ contributorsessays/grecianurnrobinson.html>.

To Sleep

Tone/Diction/Imagery-Stanza 5

Literary Devices-Stanza 5

Tone & Diction:

Unlike the warm and happy tone of previous stanzas, Stanza V has a much more distant and frustrated tone

  • Tone is reflected in diction
  • Ex: overwrought, trodden, marble men, cold pastoral, waste

Imagery:

In Stanza V, Keats uses darker and more ominous imagery to reinforce the poem’s sudden shift in tone

  • Ex: cold pastoral, trodden weed, forest branches, marble men

Summary-Stanza 4

Allusions:

Keats alludes to ancient Greece in order to emphasize urn’s place in history

  • Ex:“attic shape”

Alliteration:

Keats uses alliteration to emphasize certain phrases and increase emotional intensity

  • Ex: marble men/maidens

Anaphora:

Keats uses anaphora to give poem musical/lyrical quality

  • Ex:“all ye know. . . all ye know”

Paradox:

In the final lines of Stanza V, Keats uses a paradox to explore the relationship between truth and beauty

  • “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”
  • Although truth is not beauty, truth is like beauty in that it cannot ever be accurately described in words; it can only be felt
  • Art cannot be explained, only experienced

Literary Devices

Symbols

Rhythm and Meter

Summary-Stanza 5

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Stanza 5

  • Speaker suddenly becomes frustrated with the urn
  • The urn now appears cold and distant
  • The speaker claims that urn is completely beyond comprehension
  • The speaker comes to the conclusion that beauty is truth and truth is beauty
  • Like beauty, truth/art cannot be accurately expressed through words; it can only be experienced
  • Art cannot be understood, only felt

In Stanza 4, the Speaker suddenly shifts to third illustration

  • People from local towns gather to watch sacrifice of cow
  • Speaker assumes towns must be empty since is everyone is at sacrifice
  • Towns will always remain empty since it is an illustration
  • Speaker’s opinion of urn changes/tone shift

Tone/Diction/Imagery-Stanza 3

Urn- art and beauty

  • Art evokes emotions that are often too difficult to understand/explain
  • Like beauty in that it can’t be explained

Urn-time

  • Urn and illustrations on urn stay constant through time
  • Urn doesn’t change

Lovers stuck in time- love

Traditional:

  • Meter:
  • Iambic pentameter
  • Ten syllables per line
  • Alternates between unstressed and stressed
  • Structure:
  • Structure reminiscent of traditional odes
  • Contains 5 stanzas
  • 10 lines each

Non-Traditional

  • Rhyme Scheme:
  • Follows irregular rhyme scheme
  • First four lines of each stanza follow ABAB scheme
  • Last six lines follow irregular pattern
  • First three have rhyme scheme of CDE
  • Next three have some variation of last scheme
  • CED, EDC, ECD, etc

Repetition & Anaphora:

In Stanza III, Keats uses copious amounts of repetition in order to reflect the speaker’s intense emotions/desire to be in urn

  • Happy x6
  • More happy love! more happy, happy love!
  • Forever warm and still to be enjoy’d/ Forever panting and forever young;

Alliteration:

Keats uses alliteration to give poem a musical quality

  • Ex: “heart high-sorrowful”

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Tone & Diction:

Poem undergoes tone shift from peaceful/romantic to excited and passionate- speaker cannot control desire

  • Tone shift reflected in diction
  • Ex: happy x6, panting, breathing, burning, parching

Imagery:

In first four lines of stanza, Keats employs same warm, woodland imagery as used in previous stanzas

  • Ex: boughs, leaves, Spring, piping songs

However, in line 5, imagery shifts in order to reinforce the speakers intense desire and passion

  • Ex: burning forehead, parching tongue, breathing human passion

Ties to Romanticism:

Narrative Elements

  • Poem employs relatively few narrative elements
  • Focuses on human emotions rather than story
  • Does include some narrative elements in the illustrations described
  • Each illustration depicts a certain scene, creating a narrative
  • However, the emotions conveyed by the narratives are more important than the actual narratives

Literary Devices-Stanza 4

Structure:

  • Romanticism was movement away from structure/order
  • Poem uses irregular/abstract structure and rhyme scheme

Subject Matter

  • Before romanticism, poems were formal narratives
  • Romantic poems discarded narratives for human emotions
  • Poem doesn’t tell a story but instead focuses on emotion/relationship between art and beauty
  • Uses forest/nature imagery and deliberate emotional diction

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Stanza 4

Apostrophe/Personification:

Speaker addresses little town directly as if it were real

  • “And, little town, thy streets for evermore will silent be; and not a soul to tell”
  • “O mysterious priest, leads’t thou that heifer lowing at the sky”

Rhetorical Question:

Keats uses rhetorical question to signal a new illustration

  • “Who are these coming to the sacrifice?”

Alliteration:

Keats uses alliteration to emphasize certain phrases and increase emotional intensity

  • “thou that,” “peaceful… pious,” “silent. . . soul”

Summary-Stanza 3:

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

Tone/Diction/Imagery-Stanza 4

Tone & Diction:

In contrast to the passionate and excited tone of Stanza III, Stanza IV employs a much more subdued and peaceful tone as speaker describes another illustration

  • Author’s diction reflects this shift
  • Ex: peaceful, pious, little, silent

Imagery:

Stanza IV is comprised of mostly imagery as the speaker describes, in detail, another illustration to the reader

  • Author uses peaceful and cool imagery in order to reinforce tone
  • Ex: green alter, peaceful citadel, pious morn, little town by river or sea shore, silken flanks with garlands drest

Lyrical Elements:

Emotions of author are central to “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

  • Narrative takes backseat to human emotions
  • Speaker expresses opinions/thoughts about urn
  • Opinion changes throughout poem
  • Speaker is not impartial narrator

Poem's structure has musical/whimsical quality

  • Irregular rhyme scheme
  • Forest/nature imagery
  • Copious amounts of repetition, parallelism, assonance, etc

In Stanza III, the Speaker becomes quite emotional/ passionate while discussing static nature of the urn

  • In the urn’s illustrations, nothing will ever change
  • Trees will always be green, musician will be piping songs
  • Young men will always be lustful and chasing women
  • Life will always be happy inside illustrations
  • Speaker desires to be a part of the illustrations to the point that he cannot control his emotions
  • Stanza serves as a sort of climax for poem

Dramatic Elements

Poem is made dramatic by structure

  • Speaker addresses urn in speech
  • Speaker uses personification/metaphors/imagery
  • Reveals speaker's emotions/thoughts
  • Speaker serves as observer/commentator
  • Reminiscent of soliloquies/monologues in plays
  • Ex: Hamlet talking to skull

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Stanza 3

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Literary Devices-Stanza 2

Summary- Stanza 2

Alliteration:

Keats uses repetition to emphasize certain phrases and to create greater emotional intensity

  • Ex:“never, never,” “though thou… thy”

Apostrophe/Personification:

Keats addresses inanimate illustrations as if they are real/human

  • Ex: “ye soft pipes, play on,” “fair youth,” “Bold lover”
  • Reflects speaker’s admiration/love of urn

Assonance/Consonance:

Keats uses assonance/consonance to emphasize certain phrases and give poem a whimsical/musical quality

  • Ex:“sensual ear, but, more endear’d,” “goal… grieve”

Paradox:

Uses paradox to explore speaker’s feelings about the urn

  • Ex: “Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter”
  • The anticipation is greater than the actual event

Speaker moves on to second illustration

  • young musician sits under tree playing pipe
  • man and tree are forever stuck in time because it is a picture
  • tree will always be green
  • man will always be happily playing pipe

Speaker returns to first illustration

  • young lover will never be able to kiss his love
  • however, he will always be in love

Speaker admires urn’s static nature and is jealous of illustrations

Literary Devices-Stanza 1

Tone/Diction/Imagery-Stanza 2

Allusions:

Allusions serve to reinforce tone and create more woodland imagery

  • Tempe-famous valley in Greece, haunt of Apollo
  • Arcady-region of Peloponnese, celebrated as unspoiled wilderness

Metaphors/Personification:

Keats personifies urn by comparing it to a historian/bride of quietness

  • unravish’d bride of quietness, foster-child of silence and slow time, sylvan historian
  • Urn is timeless, immortal, ever-lasting

Repetition/Anaphora:

Keats uses anaphora in order to provide emphasis and create rhythm

  • Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness/ Thou foster child of silence and slow time
  • What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
  • Of deities or mortals, or of both

Alliteration:

Like anaphoras, Keats uses alliteration to emphasize certain words and create rhythm.

  • Leaf-fring’d legend

John Keats

Tone & Diction:

Like Stanza I, Stanza II has longing, romantic tone

  • reflects speaker’s desire to be in illustrations
  • desire reinforced by diction
  • Ex: sweet, sweeter, love, bliss, ditties

Imagery:

Vivid, natural imagery used to reinforce light mood

  • Ex: trees, heard melodies, soft pipes, wilt, bare

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Stanza 2

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Tone/Diction/Imagery- Stanza 1

Tone & Diction

Stanza employs romantic, happy, peaceful tone

  • reflected in diction of author
  • flowery, sweetly, ecstasy

Imagery:

Keats uses a lot of nature and forest imagery to reflect tone

  • flowery, leaf-fringed, sylvan, etc

Speaker/Context:

Summary- Stanza 1

In "Ode on a Grecian Urn," John Keats explores the relationship between art and beauty through a detailed description of a Greek urn

  • Greek urns were very popular in English Museums in 19th century
  • Served as inspiration for Keats

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Poem is spoken from perspective of an anonymous observer

  • Speaker’s identity is a mystery
  • Can be inferred to be a patron in an art museum observing a Grecian urn on display
  • Speaker is not impartial
  • Keats expresses his own thoughts/opinions through commentary given by speaker

Stanza 1

In first half of stanza, speaker describes urn

  • personifies urn as historian/bride of silence
  • describes the urn in natural/positive terms
  • romanticizes about urn

In second half of stanza, speaker describes illustration on urn through rhetorical questions

  • several young men chase women through forest
  • wild, passionate, playful scene

Noah Freestone

Thomas Hill

Patrick Smith

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What Maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

The Later Life of John Keats

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Keats' Outlook on Life

In his early adulthood, Keats attended Guy's Hospital for medical training. He became a wound dresser, but his classmates claimed that he spent all of his time scribbling down rhymes. In 1816, Keats quit his medical career to focus on poetry. Keats published his first volume the following year, but it was unsuccessful. Keats continued to pursue poetry and was more successful after his first failed attempt. His work slowed when his brother contracted tuberculosis and died in 1818. Keats had nursed his brother and it soon became evident that he too had contracted tuberculosis. His tuberculosis progressed until he began hemorrhaging and spewing blood. His doctor's recommended that he go to Italy to see the doctors there. Keats took their advice and traveled to Italy where he died on February 23, 1821 at the age of 25.

For obvious reasons, John Keats was not what you would call optimistic about life. He stuck close to his family that remained alive and strove to avoid falling in love until the last few years of his short life. Keats' works often highlighted both the good and the bad aspects of life. Most previous poets focused on nature, but Keats preferred the human nature. He once stated that "Scenery is fine-but human nature is finer(Keats)." During his transition from an adolescent into an adult, Keats gained a more understanding outlook on the tragedies of his youth. This new understanding allowed him to write poetry that would have previously been difficult for him to write because of his struggles with depression and pessimism.

(Anecdote)

Chronicles of Keats

Early on in his career, Keats would "dress the part" as many of the poets used to do back then. He experimented with growing many different styles of mustaches, and was often seen in an outfit similar to a naval officer's uniform.

The Early Life of John Keats

John Keats

John Keats was born October 31, 1795 to his parents, the wealthy owners of a successful horse-rental business. When John was 8 years old, his father was thrown from a horse and succumbed to his wounds. John's mother remarried after only two months to a man whom she later discovered was only after her money. She sent the children to live with their grandparents during the separation process and then joined them after it was final. She left the stable business with her failed husband. John's grandfather soon died and the financial turmoil that inspired so many of Keats' poems began. Keats was well-liked amongst his peers for his kindness and willingness to stand up for what he believed in. This, unfortunately, landed him in many fights. His classmates believed that he would become a great man, but no one foresaw his future career in poetry.

Important Events that Led to the Romantic Period

During a time of change, fear, and hopelessness, John Keats focused on poetry. Through his words, he gave hope to the hopeless, bravery to the timid, and inspiration to the discouraged.

  • End of the American Revolution
  • Left England ashamed of their lost (low morale)
  • End of French Revolution
  • Reign of Terror gave people a feeling of fear
  • Napoleon Bonaparte crowned as emperor (Europeans were in fear of being conquered during Napoleonic Wars)
  • Industrial Revolution
  • People moving from rural areas into the cities
  • Horrible child labor laws (virtually non-existent)
  • Filthy living conditions

6

The

The Romantic Period

  • William Blake (1757-1827)
  • "The Tyger (1794)," "The Lamb(1789)," "London(1794)"
  • William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
  • "The World is Too Much with Us(1807)," "The Tables Turned(1789)," "Anecdote for Fathers(1789)"
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
  • "Kubla Khan(1816)," "Limbo(1893)," "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner(1798)"
  • Lord Byron (1788-1824)
  • "She Walks in Beauty(1815)," "When We Two Parted(1808)," "Don Juan(1819-1823)"
  • Percy Shelley (1792-1822)
  • "Ode to the West Wind(1820)," "The Masque of Anarchy(1832)"
  • John Keats (1795-1821)
  • "Ode on a Grecian Urn(1820)," "To Sleep(unknown)," "Bright Star(1838)"

The Romantic Period reached its peak from 1798-1832. It was a time period in which people (especially Europeans) became more open minded to intensely emotional forms of art, literature, and understandings of the world. One of these forms of literature was poetry. Romantic poetry focused more on nature, emotions, and the human condition than any previous era.

The Romantic Period took place during the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was the time period during which mass production and machinery took the place of sole proprietorships and hand-made goods. Working conditions during the I.R. were often below that of which we would allow animals to be in today. Children were often forced to work long hours in dangerous jobs because families were too poor to support themselves with just the father and mother contributing.

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