Ode to a Nightingale General Notes
Reappraisal in Film
Keats searching for a nightingales nest
"mr browne bet i couldnt find a nightingales nest"
Recital of poem
She enters his office whilst he's writing --> she enters a mans space
Praise Poem with serious purpose and grand style and intricate stanza forms
based off philomena myth
the silencing of women under the guise of freedom?
Melancholy --> is the song really a cry for help?
Philomena is raped and mutliated by her brother-in-law and then transforms into a nightingale, a bird reknowned for its song.
Scene starts with her doing her knitting whilst he recites the poem
Background
written in spring 1819 while staying with Browne
Brown wrote about keats' composition saying "in the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song"
Brown goes on to describe how Keats composed this ode in a few hours sitting under the tree where the bird was
Big Ideas
Intrinsic relationship between pain and joy
the sublime
the human condition, in particular transience of life vs immortality of nature
escaping reality
Key Images
The Nightingale
Sleep, dreaming and waking
consciousness and intoxication
Mythological allusion
The Nightingale
Nightingale bird often thought to represent beauty, love, musicality of nature, joy, self expression
Nightingales are symbols of beauty and melody but also of darkness and mysticism
To dreamof these bird is often symbolic of joy and hope but also a bad omen
in order to 'sing' the way they do their hearts beat very fast, meaning they do not live very long
In Greek mythology Philomena was a nightingale who sung all day until her heart burst with sorrow for not being able to give up her melody
Structure
Ode
Consistent rhume through each stanza gives a melodic and rhythmic quality (like a nightingale) - quatrain = alternate rhyme sestet = changes
Enjambment adds to the tone of the piece and focus on dreaming and a stream of conscious thought - deep reflection and contemplation
The poem moves through the speakers contemplation before the final stanza where the are 'awake' and had realisation and certainty