Keats' Ode to a Nightingale Project Prospecus

Project

Final Project Prospectus

A Vision or Waking Dream: Keats' Ode to a Nightingale

Introduction

As shown in my E2, Ode to a Nightingale is a poem that experiences a relatively flawless publication history. Published anonymously in the Annals of Fine Arts July 1819 issue, the poem first appears to its audience with an ease that rivals only the very fantasy of birdsong it strives to depict E1. Yet despite the poem’s apparent simplicity and uncanny smoothness, Ode to a Nightingale struggles with a tension that eventually was to plague Keats throughout his entire poetic career.

In criticism published prior to Ode to a Nightingale in the Quarterly Review, Keats was described as too weak a poet, combining incongruous ideas with unintelligible sentences. Often indicted as a “direct copyist of Mr. Hunt”, Keats is here described as “more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his own standard, yet generally had a meaning.” Because of its gratuity and facetiousness, Keats poem Endymion fell under what the critics would later call “Cockney poetry”. In a lot of ways, Ode to a Nightingale can be seen as a direct response to such criticism. The poem exists neither here nor there, while not solely limited to the mind of the poet, it also is not readily applied to a normal state of shared existence.

In its uncertainty, the poem evades the kind of static criticism that once so choked and stifled Keats creativity. His Ode spreads before us in its wild and untamed movement, snaking between reality and the imagined. At its height, Ode to a Nightingale paints a picture that lures its audience into a sense “Forlorn!”. In the end we are left only with a question of existence and truth: “Fled is that music—do I wake or sleep?” Keats accomplishes his ultimate task as poet in a rhetoric that literally undermines a once sure-footed audience. I hope in mapping the poem that my diagram will be able to portray this progression into uncertainty through Stanza VIII, and in the process do justice to Keats original intent. I will focus not so much on Ode to a Nightingale as a response to earlier criticism, but instead, as a poem in and of itself holding dialogue between author and reader. Audience, at least I feel, is a quite tricky subject, especially in a poem where the lines between stanzas marking very personal commentary and others intent on objective justification are blurred.

Basic Mapping

Jettisoning between reality and the imagined, forcefulness and passivity, desire and acceptance, truth and beauty Ode to a Nightingale follows an uncertain movement that snakes between stanzas. At times showing extreme want and desire (“O, for a draught of vintage!”), the poem depicts a narrator intent on his own mortal transcendence, wishing only to “Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget” and escape a reality all too limited and constricting. While at other times, Ode to a Nightingale also shows moments lost in Nightingale song, where the poet “on the viewless wings of Poesy” transcends reality “Already with thee!”.

The poem neither fully rejects nor accepts the idea of the immortal bird. As a muse, influencing a heightened state of reality, the bird in Stanzas IV, V, and parts of VII appears like a drug, overwhelming the poet’s senses, carrying him to a state more sublime. While throughout Stanzas II, III, VI, and VII, the poet experiences a heightened sense of reality, in direct contrast to a bird seemingly not of this world (“Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!”). Stanzas I and II fall into an interim state, not fully imaginary nor real, they act as agents carrying us as audience in and out of the poem, furthering complicating the question of “was it a vision, or a waking dream?” Presenting a poem that neither rejects nor fully accepts singular modes of interpretation, Keats leaves his audience alone with a question they must answer for themselves. In its fragility, Ode to a Nightingale embodies a piece as vulnerable and susceptible to criticism as once was the young poet himself.

Audience

In a pattern similar to the poem’s movement between reality and the imagined, Keats addresses two specific audiences. The first is Charles Brown, Keats’s good friend who continually supports Keats in his endeavors as a poet. Brown is the main “audience” in Keats’s meandering into the Imagined World. Secondly, and very different, are the critics who once ripped apart Keats in the Quarterly Review, for what they felt were his downfalls as the poet of Endymion. Similar to Brown’s relation to the imagined, the critics directly affect Keats’s scorned realism and depiction of a less-than-perfect mortal world.

A final address to audience occurs at the very end of Ode to a Nightingale in an appeal to readership. Keats ends his poem in a rhetorical question stating, “Fled is that music—do I wake or sleep”, and in the process blurs the lines between reality and the imagined. Keats seeks our acceptance and recognition of a world wholly uncertain. In a state of limbo, the reader gets the feeling that Keats, more than anything, is depicting himself, and a world that is not fully willing to accept his truly intense capabilities both emotionally and intellectually. Keats turns to us, not simply asking the question of “was it a vision, or waking dream?” but more importantly, “do you too see the inherent paradoxical nature of reality, in a world unable to commit to beauty or truth”? In the poem’s final movement, the poet asks an unanswerable question that falls on deaf ears. We cannot answer. In his “floating” question, Keats only accomplishes to fall deeper into a more profound solitude and loneliness that was to plague him his entire life. To this day, Keats’s Odes are still seen as “works in progress”, furthering the notion that his struggles to gain acceptance from a scornful readership continues.

Medium

Microsoft PowerPoint.