“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” 1. Read a few pages of Chapman’s Homer and try to ascertain why Keats found it so exciting. 2. Look up definitions of the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean sonnet. What are the forms of each? 3. What does Keats mean by “pure serene”? 4. […]
Read more Study Help Essay QuestionsAbout the Romantic Period
The romantic period is a term applied to the literature of approximately the first third of the nineteenth century. During this time, literature began to move in channels that were not entirely new but were in strong contrast to the standard literary practice of the eighteenth century. How the word […]
Read more About the Romantic PeriodSummary and Analysis “To Autumn”
Summary Autumn joins with the maturing sun to load the vines with grapes, to ripen apples and other fruit, “swell the gourd,” fill up the hazel shells, and set budding more and more flowers. Autumn may be seen sitting on a threshing floor, sound asleep in a grain field filled […]
Read more Summary and Analysis “To Autumn”Summary and Analysis Lamia
Summary The god Hermes (Mercury), having fallen deeply in love with a nymph who has hidden herself from him, hears a voice complaining of being imprisoned in a snake’s body. The speaker is a beautiful serpent. She tells Hermes that she knows he seeks a nymph and offers to make […]
Read more Summary and Analysis LamiaSummary and Analysis “Ode to a Nightingale”
Summary Keats is in a state of uncomfortable drowsiness. Envy of the imagined happiness of the nightingale is not responsible for his condition; rather, it is a reaction to the happiness he has experienced through sharing in the happiness of the nightingale. The bird’s happiness is conveyed in its singing. […]
Read more Summary and Analysis “Ode to a Nightingale”Summary and Analysis “Ode on Melancholy”
Summary The reader is not to go to the underworld (Lethe), nor to drink wolf’s-bane (a poison), nor to take nightshade (also a poison), nor to have anything to do with yew-berries, the beetle, the death-moth, and the owl (all symbolic of death). Death and all things associated with it […]
Read more Summary and Analysis “Ode on Melancholy”Summary and Analysis “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Summary Keats’ imagined urn is addressed as if he were contemplating a real urn. It has survived intact from antiquity. It is a “sylvan historian” telling us a story, which the poet suggests by a series of questions. Who are these gods or men carved or painted on the urn? […]
Read more Summary and Analysis “Ode on a Grecian Urn”Summary and Analysis “Ode to Psyche”
Summary The poet imagines that he has either seen or dreamed that he has seen the winged goddess Psyche while he was wandering in a forest. She lay in the grass in a grotto made of leaves and flowers in the embrace of Adonis. He addresses her as the “latest […]
Read more Summary and Analysis “Ode to Psyche”Summary and Analysis “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (original version)
Summary An unidentified speaker asks a knight what afflicts him. The knight is pale, haggard, and obviously dying. “And on thy cheeks a fading rose / Fast withereth too — .” The knight answers that he met a beautiful lady, “a faery’s child” who had looked at him as if […]
Read more Summary and Analysis “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (original version)Summary and Analysis The Eve of St. Agnes
Summary The setting is a medieval castle, the time is January 20, the eve of the Feast of St. Agnes. Madeline, the daughter of the lord of the castle, is looking forward to midnight, for she has been assured by “old dames” that, if she performs certain rites, she will […]
Read more Summary and Analysis The Eve of St. Agnes