JOHN KEATS’ PARADOXES | Bright Star, Ode on a Grecian Urn & Ode on Melancholy

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JOHN KEATS’ PARADOXES | Bright Star, Ode on a Grecian Urn & Ode on Melancholy | 1819 POETRY ANALYSIS

Рет қаралды 13,797

Dr Octavia Cox

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 38

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

How do you interpret John Keats’s paradoxical thinking?

@HRJohn1944 3 жыл бұрын

First of all, thank you for another very stimulating and thought-provoking exposition. One of the things that I find fascinating about Keats is the way in which he can deal with both the actuality of death (or the unpleasantness - if that's not too weak a word - of life), as in the 3rd stanza of "Nightingale" (well, he was a medical student at Guy's) and his idealised versions - the 6th stanza of Nightingale: "Now more than ever seems it rich to die/To cease upon the midnight with no pain....". Similarly, in "Grecian Urn": "Cold Pastoral!" is followed by the lines "When old age shall this generation waste/Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe/Than ours....." - so the reasons for "The weariness, the fever and the fret/Here, where men sit and hear each other groan..." may change, but such weariness will continue.throughout future generations; in Bright Star - "Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath/And so live ever - or else SWOON to death" (my emphasis, of course).

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

Yes, very true. As you say, Keats was a medical student at Guy's Hospital, and we know that part of the training was to perform dissections on grave-robbed bodies - these might be recently buried bodies, or they might be less recently buried bodies that had already begun to decompose. In the words of Nicholas Roe, Keats had to endure "the stink, maggots and livid colours of decaying flesh (see Roe's wonderful biography 'John Keats: A New Life' (2012), pp.75-76). To have encountered the human body in such a way must have changed the way he thought about life and death and humanity and beauty.

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

And thank you very much for watching.

@bonniehagan9644 3 жыл бұрын

His obsession with the paradox of coupling permanence and passion makes me think of the dark places this can go. It is a light hop from 'seeking to die at the pinnacle of ecstasy' to the much grimmer 'seeking to kill at the pinnacle of ecstasy.' Perhaps i should return to Endymion instead. 😉

@robertgainer1395 3 жыл бұрын

All too often these poems are taught in isolation. By bringing them together in your lecture, and by setting them against the biographical contexts of Keats’s dying brother Tom and his frustrated love for Fanny, you have deepened my understanding of them. I fear I shall be thinking about these poems quite a lot over the next few days!

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

What a lovely comment - thank you. Yes, I too think it's useful to read Keats's poetry, especially of 1819, almost as a collection. He's rethinking and reformulating and rethinking and reformulating the same ideas. It's almost as though he can't escape from them!

@danielross7899 3 ай бұрын

I fell in love with Keats' work while studying literature at university years ago, and have always felt a beautiful resonance when meditating on his writing (including the letters), and his all-too-short life. Your presentation here has rekindled my passion not just for Keats, but also poetry itself. I'm grateful, and feel lucky to have found your work. Thank you 🙏🏼

@elisabethbuckley5725 3 жыл бұрын

The Ode to Autumn with its themes of ripeness and decay very much came to mind as I listened to your excellent analysis.

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

Yes, indeed. Another wonderfully beautiful poem. Oddly, even though To Autumn is more obviously about oncoming decay, I find the poem's narrative voice to be more settled &/or accepting of decay in that poem. Perhaps it's to do with the present tense of the poem's final line, "And gathering swallows twitter in the skies".

@bonniehagan9644 3 жыл бұрын

I recalled reading Ode to a Grecian Urn, but I had not encountered Bright Star before. What a delight! I really appreciated the way all the disparate samples of his writing informed this poem. Thanks for all the work you put into this and the obvious joy you take from it to share with us.

@readinenglish6577 7 ай бұрын

Wonderful work of yours, enchanting analysis and very thought provoking, thank youuuu so much

@michakj4994 3 жыл бұрын

The pleasure is to listen to you, only this advantage, as I am not familiar with the poet and its works. The feeling of my failure is not pleasant for me. Nevertheless if Dr Cox is presenting the whole lecture about this topic perhaps I should take it as advice for my future studies.

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

Keats's Great Odes are beautiful. And thought-provoking. I find myself coming back to them again and again. Well worth a read, I'd suggest.

@liamodalaigh3201 2 жыл бұрын

Doctor, I found your channel and am mesmerized by your lectures. I returned to college after retirement, taking ONE literature course per semester for 2 years ‘til COVID shut us down! Your lectures are spectacular! Thank you !

@debojitb2730 2 жыл бұрын

Very intricately and comprehensively described the state of mind of the poet. Very engrossing. It infuses more life into Keats' poetry than I ever imagined existed. Thank you so much

@GrandOldMovies 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much for posting these terrific analyses of these great works of literature. It brings me back to my own college days studying English Lit (Dickens was my specialty), and a wonderful teacher I had who also did these kinds of close textual readings. Your videos have inspired me to return to these writers and poets, and I always look forward to your next one - thank you again!

@mieliav 2 жыл бұрын

find the teacher (if still aboveground), go tell them how much they meant. sincerely, a teacher.

@leonorsantos9355 3 жыл бұрын

Thank you!

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

My pleasure. Thanks for watching.

@Himmelhauser 2 жыл бұрын

Robert Frost and Sylvia Plath (among others) also build poems around the tension between human life and the eternal universe of celestial bodies. Also Lampedusa, closing lines of The Leopard: «When will she grant me an appointment less ephemeral, far from stumps and blood, in her own region of perennial certitude. »

@CaroleMcDonnell 3 жыл бұрын

yay! Off to listening.

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

Hope you found it an interesting listen.

@CaroleMcDonnell 3 жыл бұрын

@@DrOctaviaCox it was. Very enlightening. As usual. I remember my professor bewailing to the class that it would have been a shame for Keats to die and not have slept with Fanny. He was banking on certain comments in their letters as proof.

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

Ha! - well, I'm sure Keats would have thought the same thing too! I rather think, though, that his letter to Fanny that I quoted in the video (25th July 1819), suggests that they had not, by then at least, consummated anything: “I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute". I infer certain things from Keats's desire to "have possession" of Fanny's "Loveliness"...

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

And I'm very glad that you found it enlightening.

@CaroleMcDonnell 3 жыл бұрын

@@DrOctaviaCox As always, as always. Thanks so much!

@carolynkeiser5545 3 жыл бұрын

There are many beliefs in this world, & idea's about what truth is. I have religious beliefs that are beautiful to me. Listening to the deep feelings of others makes me more grateful for my religious beliefs, I do believe my religion is true. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints is very dear to me. In our Church we build Temple's. In these Temple's we get married, not just for time, we are married for Eternity. We believe in reserection, we believe in The Bible and The Book of Mormon. These scriptures teach about reserection and Eternal life. Families can be together forever. Just as many who have lived have longed for. Thank you for explaining these poems. I'm grateful to know the blessings of happy ever after marriage and family can really be possible. BYU - Brigham Young University - a Church School - has started Book of Mormon Central on KZfaq and we also have Missionaries who would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you again, poetry has never made much sense to me. But what has drawn me to want to learn more is the expetion of feelings that are so similar in people in general. But knowing that now and knowing that my questions are answered while the questions of Poets are still unanswered makes me sad and I would like to invite them to read The Book of Mormon and study with the Missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. I hope you will not mind my share my love of my religion with you but the deep feelings of these poems are so sad and there really are happy ever after answers available. 😊💒

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

It's absolutely my pleasure to share my thoughts on these poems. Thank you for watching.

@larasayed01 Жыл бұрын

Thank you ever so much Doctor for your insightful presentations! I have a question that I'm trying to find an answer to actually; it's about Keats and indifference: How do you perceive John Keats's indifference? Thank you Doctor.

@archiewoosung5062 3 жыл бұрын

Rather important to decide when "Bright Star" was written, else liable to miss-interpretion!

@DrOctaviaCox 3 жыл бұрын

These things are not always knowable with certainty! Robert Gittings in his classic biography 'John Keats' (1968) speculates that the poem could originally have been composed for Isabella Jones (a friend of Keats's) in late 1818 (c. October -November). But a transcript of the poem in the hand of Charles Brown (Keats's great friend, who he lived with at Wentworth Place - the Brawnes lived in the other part of the house) is explicitly dated '1819'.