Romanticism & ‘Ode to Nightingale’ As European Literature Prototype

WHAT IS ROMANTICISM, IN THE EUROPEAN LITERARY TRADITION LITERATURE (THIS DISCUSSION IS IN LINE WITH AT LEAST THREE LITERARY GIANTS).

ALSO DISCUSSED JOHN KEATS “ODE TO NIGHTINGALE” AS A PROTOTYPE OF THE EUROPEAN LITERATURE WITHIN THE ROMANTIC AGE.

Romanticism is the artistic, literary that was originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th Century the romantic period was one of major social change in English, because of the depopulation of the country side and the rapid development of overcrowded industrial cities that took place in the period roughly between 1978 and 1832.

Indeed, romanticism may be seen in part as a reaction to the industrial revolution.

• Edward Young (1683-1765), whose the complaint or night thoughts on life, death and immortality (1742-45) to another “noted example of the grave yard genre”.

Other precursors of Romanticism are the poets James Thomson (1700-48) and James Macpherson (1736-96) and he was the first scottish poet to gain an international

• Edward Young (1683-1765), whose the complaint or Night thoughts on life, death and immortality (1742-45) to another “noted example of the grave yard genre. Other precursors of romanticism are the poets Janus Thomson (1700-48) and Janus Macpherson (1736-96) and he was the first Scottish poet to gain an international reputation, claiming to have found poetry written by the ancient bard ossian, he published “translations” that acquired international popularity being proclaimed as a celtic equivalent of the classical epics.
• Both Robert Burns (1759-96) and Walter Cycle. Robert Burns (1759-96) was a poiner of the Romantic movement and after his death he became a cultural icon in Scotland. As well as writing some poems chiefly in the Scottish dialect was published in 1786.
• In ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry which are often considered precursors of the Gothic genre. The poets included Thomas Gray (1716-71), whose Elegy written in a country church yard (1751) is the best known product of this kind of sensibility. William Cowper (1731-1800), Christopher Smart (1722-71), Thomas Chatterton (1752-70), Robert Blar (1699-1740) author of the Grave (1743), which celebrates the horror of death.
• Romanticism thought it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of enlightenment as well a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. To this was added, by cover practitioners a feeling for the sublime and uncanny, and an interest in ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry. It was also popularized in France by figures that included Napoleon. The first short stories in the Untied Kingdom were Gothic tates like Richard Cumberland’s remarkable narrative.
• Ode of Nightingale by John Keats: Ode to a nightingale is a poem by John Keats written in the garden of the Spaniards Inn in London. Ode to a nightingale is a personal poem that describes Keats’ Journey into the state of negative capability. The one of the poem rejects the optimistic pursuit of pleasure found within Keats’ earlier poem and, rather exposes the themes of Nature, Iran-science and morality, the latter being a particularly personal to Keats.
• The nightingale described within the poem experiences a type of death but does not actually die. Instead, the songbird is capable of living through its song which is a fate humans cannot expect. The poem ends with an acceptance that pleasure cannot last and that death is an inevitable part of life. In the poem, Keats imagines the loss of the physical world and sees himself dead-as a “sod” over which the nightingale and mortal man sitting in his garden, is made all the more acute by an effort of the imagination.
• Its Background; Keats’s six major odes of 1819, “Ode to Psyche written first and “to Autum” Written last. Sometime between these two he wrote “Ode to a Nightingale and it was written between 26 April and 8 May 1819 based on weather conditions and similarities between images in the poems and those in a letter sent to fanny Brawne on May Day. 

This   poem was composed at the Hampstead house, Keats shared with Brown possibly while sitting beneath a plum tree in the garden.

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According to Keats’ friend Brown, Keats finished the ode in just one morning. In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had build her nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continual Joy in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass-plot under a plum tree, where he sat for two or three hours. When he came into the house. I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feelings on the song of the nightingale.

Brown’s account is personal, as he claimed the poem was directly influenced by his house and preserved by his own doing. However, Keats relied on both his own imagination and other literature as sources for his depiction of the nightingale.

Its structure, “Ode to a Nightingale” was probably the first of the middle set of four odes that Keats wrote following “ode to psyche”, according to Brown. There is further evidence of this in the structure of the poems because Keats combines two different types of lyrical poetry in an experimental way, the oda hymn and the lyric of questioning voice that responds to the oral hymn. This combination of structures is similar to that I “ode on a Grecianun”. In both poems the dual form creates a sort of dramatic element within the poem. The stanza forms of the poem is a combination of elements from Petrarchan Sonnets and Shakespearean Sonnets. 

When it came to vowel form, Keats incorporated a pattern of alternating historically “short” and “long” vowel sounds in his ode. And when it came to other sound patterns, keats relied on double or triple Caesuras in approximately 6% of lines throughout the 1819 ode. 

The Themes of “Ode to a Nightingale” describes a series of conflicts between reality and the Romantic Ideal of uniting with nature. In the words of Richard Fogle, “The principal stress of the poem is a struggle between ideal and actual; inclusive terms which, however, contain more particular antithesis of pleasure and pain of imagination and common sense reason, of fullness and privation of permanence and change of nature and the human of art and life, freedom and bondage, walking and dream.

Of course, the nightingale’s song is the dominant images and dominant “voice” with the ode. The nightingale is also the object of empathy and praise within the poem. However, the nightingale and the discussion of the nightingale is not simple metaphor but it is a complex image that is formed through the interaction of the conflicting voices of praise and questioning. On this theme David Pertins summarizes the way “Ode to a nightingale and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” perform this when he says, “we are dealing with a talent, indeed an entire approach to poetry, in which symbol, however necessary, may possible not satisfy as the principal concern of poetry, any more than it could with Shakespeare, but is rather an element in the poetry and drama of human reactions.

However, there is a difference between an Urn and a nightingale in that the nightingale is not an eternal entity. Furthermore, in creating any aspect of the nightingale immortal during the poem the narrator separates any union that he can have with the nightingale. The nightingale’s song within the poem is connected to the art of music in a way that the Urn in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is connected to the art of sculpture.

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With this themes of a loss of pleasure, the poem according to Ceaude Finney, describes “the inadequacy of the romantic escape from the world of reality to the world of ideal beauty. Early Wassermann essentially agrees with Finney, but he extended his summation of the poem to incorporate the themes of Keat’s Mansion of many Apartments when he says, “the core of the poems is the search for the mystery, the unsuccessful quest for light within its darkness” and this leads one to an increasing darkness or a growing recognition  of two impenetrable the mystery is to mortals. With these views in mind, the poem recalls Keats’s earlier view of pleasure and optimistic view of poetry found within his earlier poems, especially sleep and poetry and rejects them. This loss of pleasure and incorporation of death imagery lends the poem a dark air, which connects “ode to a nightingale”with Keats’ other poems that discuss the demonic nature of poetic imagination, including Lamia.

As such the nightingale would represent an enchanting presence and, unlike the urn, is directly connected to nature. As natural music, the song is for beauty and lacks a message of truth. Keats follows Coleridge’s belief, as found in “the nightingale”, in separating from the world by losing himself in the bird’s song. Although Keats favors a female nightingale that lacks the melancholic feel of previous  poetic depictions. However, there is tension in that the narrator holds Keat’s guilt regarding the death of Tom Keats, his brother. The song’s conclusion represents the result of bying to escape into the realm of fancy.

The poem reliance on the process of sleeping common to Keats’ poems, and”ode to a nightingale shares many of the same themes as Keats’s sleep and poetry and Eve of St. Agnes. The dream image emphasizes the shawdowiness and elusiveness of the poem.