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John Keats: background on his life
- Leading Romantic poet by age of 25
- Influences when he wrote Autumn
- Keeping his health in mind, what do you think his reaction to Autumn should be? Have your guesses changed after reading the poem?
Romanticism: Nature, emotion, imagination, individual, & spontaneity
Lyrical poetry:
- Ode: poem praising & glorifying a person, place, or thing
- Horatian ode: uniform stanzas, more meditative & restrained
- Rhyme scheme: Three 11-line stanzas: ababcdedcce
- Meter: pentameter
- Notice that Keats sets of the first four lines (abab) with a semicolon in all three stanzas
Look out for apostrophe, personification, tone & tone shift, and three speakers
Read Poem
- Can anyone point out the apostrophe, personification, & three speakers?
- Paraphrase meaning (by stanza)
- Stanza 1:
- General personification of Autumn (woman)
- Early stages—harvest; bees are still acting like it’s summer, etc
- Everything comes to repletion
- Early in day as well—everything lively & moving
- Stanza 2:
- Apostrophe—more direct personification: reaper, gleaner, cider-presser
- What is the personality of Autumn herself?
- Middle—harvest is getting to wrap up
- Noontime—everything drowsy and relaxed
- Stanza 3:
- Tone changes (discuss more later)
- Beginning of Autumn’s decline—Autumn is worried, but narrator seeks to reassure her
- Animals getting ready for winter
- End day with setting sun
Line-by-line interpretation—literary terms
Stanza interpretation and they work to create the theme
Themes and Organization
- Change and progression
- Discuss how three speakers create this theme and how they influence tone
- Time controls everything, including Autumn and Keats
- What is Keats’s position on death?
- Juxtaposition of melancholy and joy
- Where is it most apparent?
- How does Keats do it?
Relate to other poem—“To an Athlete Dying Young”
- What are some similarities?
- Death is not a bad thing
- Differences?
- “To an Athlete Dying Young”: better to die young while in prime vs. delaying death in “To Autumn”
- “To Autumn” is more of a celebration of life