Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

POEM
O Solitude!
If i must
with thee
dwell

GENERAL NOTES
-Sonnet
-Poem is an
antidote to working
in a hospital
-He is yearning for
a better life as an
escape to his
miserable
traumatic life
-Written (1814) at
a time when Keats
was surrounded by
death in his family
and in hospital
(work)
-Key themes:
nature, escapism,
inspiration of
nature and need to
restore himself,
conflict and a
search for
happiness
...
“O SOLITUDE!”
2
...
“its flowery slopes, its
river’s crystal swell”
4
...
“fox-glove bell”
6
...
”Is my soul’s pleasure; and
it sure must be/ almost the
highest bliss of human-kind”
8
...
Direct address- personifying solitude
...
Exclamatory shows a
deep yearning and desperation
...
“Murky buildings”- dark and dirty, perhaps rejecting the
industrial revolution
...

3
...
Listing the idyllic
calming nature that he desires
...
“let me thy vigils keep”= idiom for keeping a watch over
nature
...

5
...

6
...
He is finding joy in his own poetry
...
He wants a relationship of stability- deep and intense
...

8
...
Arguable that he does not want
solitude as the poem first suggests
...

-Sonnet- about the
power of poetry
...

-Homer wrote epic
long narrative
poetry, typically
about travelling
...

-Like the explorers
mentioned, Keats
discovered
Chapman’s
interpretation
which inspired him
...


1
...
”Round many western
islands have i been/ which
bards in fealty to Apollo hold”
3
...
“…never breathe its pure
serene till i heard Chapman
speak out loud and bold”
5
...
“like stout Cortez”
7
...
“Silent, upon a peak in
Darien
...
On a literal level he is travelling, on a poetry level he is
engaging in philosophical exploration
...

2
...
“bards in
fealty”- Elizabethan language not common for 1820s
...

3
...
“deep brow’d” portrays him as
intelligent and thoughtful
...

4
...
Volta- turning point of the poem: sudden
tension as he read’s Chapman’s version- reading it has a
rejuvenating affect on him
...

5
...
“watcher of the
skies” is a metaphysical image
...
Cortez was a spanish explorer who discovered the
pacific in 1851
7
...
“surmise”- deep in a thought
...
Silent in awe, overwhelmed by natures beauty like
Keats is overwhelmed by literary beauty
...

-Sea is never
ending: eternity,
unknown,
timelessness
...

-A hopeful poem
-Keats tries to find
meaning in a
godless world and
found this meaning
in nature
...
“It keeps eternal
whispering around desolate
shores, and with its mighty
swell”
2
...
“such gentle temper
found”
4
...
“Oh, ye! who have your
eyeballs vexed and tired”
6
...
“Until ye start, as if the
sea nymphs, quired!”

1
...
‘whisperings’ is onomatopoeicholds mysterious secrets
...
Sibilance conveys the sound of the sea throughout
poem- calming
...
Keats uses numbers to rationalise nature
...
“hecate”
represents destructive power of the seas- Greek goddess
of the sea- caused destruction via sea, goddess of
natural destructive power of the sea
...
Oxymoronic- the sea is a dichotomy; it has a soothing
sense to placate people yet can also destroy people
...

4
...

5
...
The sea is an antidote for anxiety/exhaustion
...
Harsh sounds- unpleasant oxymoronic, negative and
plosive- shows dichotomy of powers of the sea
...

7
...


In drear
nighted
December

-About the torment
of remembering
happy times in
misery
...

-Written in Dec
1817 when his
brother is dying of
TB
...

-Tells us that
poetry is all about
memory
-Overall argument
of the poem is that
if you cannot heal
good memories
during bad times, it
is better to not
remember them at
all
...


1
...
“The north cannot undo
them/ with a sleety whistle
through them/ nor frozen
thawings glue them”
3
...
“Apollo’s summer look; but
with a sweet forgetting”
5
...
“Ah! would ‘twere so with
many a gentle girl and boy-“
7
...
“When there is none one
to heal it/ Nor numbered
sense to steel it”
9
...
”

1
...
“too” infers Keats’s jealousy
...
The tree cannot remember the
spring- can’t remember the happy times- unlike human
capacity
...
List of description to show the power of nature- nothing
is able to destroy it as nature is indestructible and the
natural change is irreversible
...
PARADOX: nature is a
cycle but the cycle cannot be changed by anything
...
Brook (small river/stream) is personified- cannot
remember warmer times
...
The Apollo is a metaphor for warmth and good times
...
Illusion to Greek mythology
...

5
...
Frozen can be
reversed- natures superiority is that it can be frozen yet
bounce back, although humans cannot
...
“Ah!” shows emphatic distress- opening line is different
to indicate a change in argument
...
He
wishes humans could be the same as nature
...
Envy of nature: humans can remember because of
their mental capacity, yet memories are painful
...
He
asks if anybody was ever not upset when thinking about
past joys- a universal problem of the human condition: a
metaphysical existential question
...
He envys numbness
...
‘heal it’ brings references of
atheism- living in a godless world
...

9
...

-King Lear is a
play about betrayal
and deathexposes the flaws
of humanity
...

-Sestet develops
ideas about his
fear of death,
mortality and
transience
...

-Nostalgic
language- bringing
the past into the
presenttimelessness
...
“O golden-tongued
Romance with serene lute!”
2
...
“Leave melodizing on this
wintry day, shut up thine
olden pages, and be mute:”
4
...
“The bitter-sweet, of this
Shakespearian fruit
...
“Begetters of our deep
eternal theme, when through
the old oak forest i am gone”
7
...
”

1
...
He
personifying King Lear as well as his Romantic poetry
...

2
...
Syren is a
sea creature that tempts sailors for their own downfall
...
Tone change- he doesn't want to talk about his usual
stuff anymore
...

4
...
The
lines turn to show his dilemma between writing tragedy or
love
...

Tension within himself throughout “fierce” “burn” imagery
...
Shakespeare is amazing and Keats is upset that he
cannot be like him
...
Exclamatory evidence of enlightenment and
glorification
...
“Albion” is an ancient name for England
...
“Deep eternal theme” shows theme of mortality and
death- he is trying to find a way to live on through his
writing
...

7
...
Fire is supposedly between heaven and hellthey had no certainty of life after death as they had no
religion- created unease and a pronounced fear of death
...
He is asking to be
remembered as he is dying and his is young
...

-Sonnet that
contemplates
permanence
...

-An ODE:
1819-1820
...


1
...
“with eternal lids apart like
Nature’s patient sleepiness
Eremite”
3
...
“gazing on the new soft
fallen mask of snow…”
5
...
“To feel for ever is soft fall
and swell, awake for ever in
a sweet unrest”
7
...
”

1
...
He doesn't want to be alone- wants to be with
Fanny
...
They are always there- Godlike, personifying the stars
as if they had eyes (‘lids’)
...
‘Eremite’ is a Christian hermit alone from the
world
...
Keats had minimal knowledge of space or solar system
so he is pondering the unknown
...
A star has over-sight of
everything- he is imagining what the star sees
...
Range of the star- it has so much power and is
omniscient- implies Keats’ own frailty
...
Dramatic volta- his opinions have changed and he
starts to think about Fanny and how he would rather be
with her
...

6
...
At this time he had just
got engaged- commitment, marriage is forever
...

7
...
Repetition of still- desire for
permanence
...
“breath” and “death” is juxtaposition and
paradoxical- he desires to stay alive even though he
knows he is dying
...

-An ODE: he is
celebrating
Autumn
...

-Arguable that
whole poem is an
extended
metaphor about
life- Autumn is a
conceit for life
...

-Musical imagery
throughout: he
finds art in the
ugliest days of the
year
...


1
...
“To bend with apples the
moss’d cottage-trees, and fill
a fruit with ripeness to the
core”
3
...
“until they think warm
days will never cease, for
Summer has o’er brimm’d
their clammy cells
...
“Who hath not seen thee
oft amid thy store?”
6
...
“by a cyder-press…the
last oozings hours by hours
...
“Where are the songs of
Spring? Ay, where are
they?…thou hast thy music
too”
9
...
“small gnats mourn/
among the river shallows,
borne aloft/ or sinking…”
11
...
“gathering swallows
twitter in the skies
...
Starts with positive imagery
...
‘maturing; denotes end,
ageing and getting darker as the days get shorter
...
Bend as if the tree can't take the burden of the apples
...

3
...
Packed of asyndeton- a exciting process pace
...
The bees are wrong- warmer days will die like they will
in Autumn
...

5
...
This stanza is
personifying nature doing things to turn into Autumn
...

6
...
“hook” is a farming instrument associated
with death and the Grim Reaper
...
Production- image of late Autumn
...

8
...

This stanza has a semantic field of death
...

9
...

10
...
Ironic
rhyme of “mourn” and “borne” (possible pun on ‘born’)
...
“full grown lamb” connotations of slaughter as lamb
never gets to become a sheep, and connotations of a
growing child
...

12
...
‘skies’ is a reference to heaven and
Gods plan of natural order
...

-Translated to ‘the
beautiful woman
without pity/mercy’
...

-Indirectly a nature
poem
...

-Natural world
reflecting the
human state
...


1
...
“and no birds sing
...
“The squirrel’s granary is
full, and the harvest’s done
...
“I see a lily on thy brow/…
fever dew…a fading rose
fast withereth too”
5
...
“and made sweet moan
...
“I set her on my pacing
steed, and nothing else saw
all day long… sing a faery’s
song
...
“She found me roots of
relish sweet, and honey wild,
and manna dew”
9
...
”
10
...
”
11
...
She is speaking to the Knight
...
“palely”- unwell/vulnerable
...

2
...
Discomfort and loneliness
...
Winter has come- completion, what she has done to
the Knight cannot be changed
...

4
...
“fever
dew”-he is physically ill
...
This stanza is still
incomplete- the woman has made him incomplete
...
Change to POV of the Knight
...
Long hair and a light step are
traditional physical images of beauty- dainty and graceful
...
Implicit references to sexual activity and intimacystanza about him doing things aiming to please her
...
Possibly made a fatal error by having sex with her
...
Consummating relationship by spending the day
having sex
...

8
...
She is now giving him natural
gifts (feeding him)
...

9
...

10
...
‘elfin grot’ is her
home- grotto (unhuman), everything about her is
unworldly
...
“i shut her wild wild
eyes”- he is taking back control- repetition from line 16wildness increased and become manipulative
...
She has manipulated hum and put him to sleep- lines

12
...
”
13
...
“They cried- “La Belle
Dame sans Merci Have thee
in thrall!”
15
...
“…found me here, on the
cold hill’s side”
17
...
“no birds sing
...
He doesn't tell us the dream: there is a narrative gapmakes the reader imagine the worst to build tension
...
Physically pale- they've suffered courtly love
(emphatic of repetition)
...

14
...

Exclamatory tone creates a sense of desperation,
urgency, fear and death
...

15
...
“starved lips”sexual image? empty, vacant, lifeless- physically and
emotionally starved (food and love)
...

16
...
Shows he is trapped and has not
progressed physically but he has had a vivid/scarring
dream that has changed him emotionally
...
Paradox= he feels dead but he is
alive
...
Strong echoes of stanza 1
...
This is the
answer to his question in the 1st stanza using the words
of the question- he can only say whats been said to himnothing left
...
Acceptance of his place and permanence of his stateisolated from humanity by her love
...


Ode on a
-Urn fulfils so
Grecian Urn many roleswedding depicted
...

-Sense of
contemplating
beauty
...

-Theme that art
immortalises
things- art never
dies but this is
ironic as art is
never alive
...

-Tightly enforced
structure 5 stanzas
with 10 lines- art
form?

1
...
“Slyvan historian, who
canst thus express
...
“In Tempe or the dales of
Arcady? What mad
pursuit?…”
4
...
“Pipe to the spirit ditties of
no tone: fair youth, beneath
the trees…”
6
...
“Ah, happy, happy
boughs! that cannot shed”
8
...
“for ever warm…for ever
painting, and for ever young;
all breathing human passion”
10
...
“What little town by river
or sea shore…is emptied”
12
...
He is addressing the urn- the urn is personified and
feminised to show its importance
...
Compound- the urn is a product of silence/
slowing time
...

2
...
Nature- urn
is a beacon of history- recounting tales
...
Ancient Greece- he’s trying to recreate civilisations in
the past
...
Barrage of 7 questions in successionhe is so intrigued and curious- he is asking the urn so
many questions, implying that it knows more than him
...

4
...
Beauty of the unknown: he wants to hear the
silent music that the figures are playing
...

5
...
The trees cannot age- they are frozen in time
and are immortal
...

6
...
He wants to be
frozen due to his fear of death
...

7
...

They are always blossoming/always frozen in happiness
...
Always playing music
...

9
...

Permanence of art and transience of youth
...

10
...


When i have
Fears That I
May Cease
to Be

-This is a sonnet
about how he is
going to die and
will no longer be
ale to write or be
with the woman he
loves
...

-Written in 1818
-ABAB CDCD
EFEF GG rhyme
scheme
-Keats introduced
feelings of fearing
death
...
“O Attic shape! Fair
attitude! with brede… with
forest branches and the
trodden wood”
14
...
“When old age shall this
generation waste, thou shalt
remain, in midst of other
woe”
16
...
”

13
...
Urn is a microcosm of the world/society as it
encapsulates aspects of existence nature and life
...

14
...

Exclamatory tone= enthusiasm
...

15
...
Idea of being immortal and the ideals of
beauty/ageless-ness
...
This is a universal Greek idea that physical beauty is
all one needs- beauty is irrational, intangible and
unmeasurable
...


1
...
“Hold like rich garners the
full ripened grain; when i
behold upon the nights
starred face”
3
...
“when i feel… that i shall
never look upon thee more”
5
...
“Of the wide world i stand
alone, and think till love and
fame to nothingness do
sink
...
Introduces his anxieties of death, which was fairly new
to write about at the time
...
Semantic field of nature (to autumn
references)
2
...

Personifying night
...

3
...
This line is mostly
monosyllabic- never is foregrounded
...
VOLTA- change of tone where he turns his attention to
the woman he loves
...
She is described as magical- love in the language of
magic
...
Ends in a heroic couplet- a conclusion
...


To Sleep

-Experimental form
(avoids a final
couplet)
-He mixes
Shakespearean
and Petrarchan
form and adapts it
for himself
...

-Sonnet
-Possible prayer to
sleep

1
...
“O soothest Sleep! if so it
please thee”
3
...
“Then save me…breeding
many woes”
5
...
“Turn the key deftly in the
oiled wards, and seal the
hushed Casket of my Soul
...
Direct address to death
2
...

3
...
Poppy gives
notions of ecstasy or heroin- wants to be drugged to
sleep
...
He wants sleep to save him by taking him out of his
current surroundings
...

5
...

6
...


Ode on
Melancholy

-Possible to view
this poem as the
inevitability of
succumbing to
melancholy, or as
a poem of how to
overcome it
...

3rd stanza
ABABCDEDCE
...
“No, no, go not to Lethe,
neither twist”
2
...
“For shade to shade will
com too drowsily, and drown
the wakeful anguish of the
soul”
4
...
“in an April shroud; then
glut thy sorrow”
6
...
“Emprison her soft hand,
and let her rave, and feed
deep, deep upon her
peerless eyes”
8
...
Repeated negative gives a sense of urgency
...
Weak caesuras here guide our reading
...
Proserpine is the goddess of the underworld- religious
Greek imagery
...

3
...
These last 2 lines flow perfectly
...

4
...
“weeping cloud”- melancholy
obscures your view
...
“Shroud” are clothes for a dead body
...

Rose thorns puncturing
...
Sand wave will carry the sorrow away
...
Very different to stanza 1
...
Advice on things to do in this scenario- becomes
personal
...

8
...

The dash is a paradox (structural and meaningful)
...
“In the very temple of
Delight Veil’d Melancholy”
10
...
”

9
...
This stanza is full of tension between beauty
and melancholy and life and death- they are dependent
yet repelled from one another
...
Melancholy has won
...
The irregularity of rhyme scheme in this
stanza represents the tension of inevitability
...

-a young man is
lazing about, until
he is startled by a
vision
...

-The third stanza is
self-referential
...
“‘They toil not, neither do
they spin’…three figures
were seen with bowed
necks”
2
...
”
3
...
“My idle days? Ripe was
the drowsy hour; the blissful
cloud of summer-indolence”
5
...
“I burn’d and ached for
wings, because i knew the
three”
7
...
“The last, whom i love
more, the more of blame…i
knew to be my demon
Posey
...
This is a quote from the book of Matthew in the bible
...

2
...

3
...

4
...

5
...

6
...
“burn’d”
and “ached”- semantic field of pain
...
Love and Ambition are personified
...

8
...
His
blames the spirit of poetry for disrupting his lazy day- his
talent of poetry will not allow him to be lazy
...
“A man’s little heart’s short
fever-fit; fir Posey!-no,-she
has not a joy-at least for me”
10
...
”
11
...
“In masque-like figures
on the dreamy urn; Farewell!
I yet have visions for the
night”
13
...
Juxtaposition of a mans little heart and poetry as a
female- seductive
...
He is no
longer in indolence
...
Exclamation to show desperation to go back to
indolence and leave the figures
...

11
...

12
...
He is insistent to say goodbye
to the figures and go back to indolence
...

13
...


Ode to a
Nightingale

-About the
appreciation of
bird- against the
sorrow of mankind
and grief for
himself
...


1
...
“O, for a draught of
vintage! that hath been…”
3
...
“The weariness, the fever,
and the fret…where palsy
shakes a few, sad last gray
hairs…grows pale…spectrethin, and dies”
5
...
“Away! away! for i will fly
to thee…wings of Posey”
7
...
“In embalmed darkness,
guess each sweet…the
grass, the thicket and the
fruit-tree”

1
...
First stanza has
a sense of smell
...
Drinking wine to fight the depression of inevitable
death
...

3
...

4
...
Specific range of symptoms listed (of TB
which he was dying of)- hard constants and angry tone
...

5
...

6
...
Posey=poetry,
his escape from the world
...

7
...

8
...
Language of naturewhere he would rather be- aware of its hidden beauty
...

-Structural paradox
used throughout:
the - connects and
separates at the
same time
...
“I have been half in love
with easeful Death”
10
...
”
11
...
“Adieu! adieu!…was it a
vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:-Do i wake
or sleep?”

9
...

10
...

11
...
This
stanza has a sense of hope
...
Saying goodbye to the bird
...
Sense of uncertainty with a rhetorical
question- was the bird real? Ends with a philosophical
question whether he should live or die- he yearns for the
qualities of the bird
...

-He imagines that
he has either seen
or dreamed that he
has seen the
winged goddess
Psyche- wonders if
it was real
...

-Irregular formmostly iambic
...


1
...
“I wander’d in a forest
thoughtlessly”
3
...
“No shrine, no grove, no
oracle, no heat of palemouth’d prophet dreaming
...
“I see, and sing, by my
own eyes inspir’d”
6
...
”
7
...
“That shadowy thought
can win, a bright torch, and a
casement ope at night, to let
the warm Love in!”

1
...

2
...
This is a stanza that
builds on ideas- many critics say it is useless
...
Olympus is the home of the Greek Gods
...
Vesper is an
evening star
...

4
...

5
...

6
...

7
...

8
...
Critics say that this poem
builds up to a beautiful final stanza- this is questionable
...
In a dream
she sees where he
is so she digs him
up and plants his
head in a pot of
basil
...

-Mainly complete
iambic pentameter
although it breaks
at appropriate

1
...
“they could not, sure,
beneath the same roof sleep
but to each other dream and
nightly weep”
3
...
“Wak’d and anguished…
night of love and misery…
waxing very pale and dead”
5
...
“not my passion shrive”
7
...
“twin roses…honey’d
dart…up a western hill”
9
...
In torched
mines and noisy factories”
10
...
“So sweet Isabel/by
gradual defy from beauty
fell”
12
...
“Why were they proud”
14
...
“His image in the dusk
she seem’d to see”
16
...
“She forgot the stars, the
moon, and sun”

1
...
This suggests an
empathetic narrative and a symbol of her innocence,
foreshadowing love leading to negative consequences
...
They cannot sleep together- setting the story of an out
of reach love
...

3
...
Couplets foreground emotional emotional intensity
...

5
...

Enjambment shows flowing emotion
...
Passion has a dual meaning- overflow of feelings and a
religious experience of Christ
...
His emotion is discussed as indulgent
...
Change of seasons with temporal markers frame the
story in the setting of nature
...
Senses described
...

9
...
The first
line has an extra forced syllable- uncomfortable
...
Sibilance sets a sinister tone
...

11
...

12
...

13
...

14
...
Supernatural imagery- gothic tone emphasised by the
sibilance
16
...

17
...
Agnes

-St Agnes was the
patron saint of
virgins, she died a
martyr in 4th
century Rome
-She was
condemned to be
executed after
being raped all
night in a brothel,
but miraculously a
thunderstorm
saved her from
rape
-St Agnes day is
January 21st
-Written in
Spenserian
stanzas with 9
lines (first 8 in
iambic)

1
...
“his death bell
rung…
...
“St
...
“supperless to bed…
couch supine…nor look
behind…of heaven with
upward eyes”
5
...


1
...
Sets the scene for a cold night- opens and
closes with cold
2
...

3
...

She was told that on this night young virgins would have
visions of their future husbands if they follow the rituals
4
...

5
...




---