{"id":487,"date":"2022-12-16T05:04:44","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T05:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/education\/?page_id=487"},"modified":"2023-03-27T06:52:28","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T13:52:28","slug":"e212-questions-keats-spr-2011","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/e212-questions-keats-spr-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"E212 Questions – Keats – Spr. 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

EMAIL<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0SYLLABUS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0POLICIES<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0| QUESTIONS<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0|\u00a0PRESENTATIONS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0JOURNALS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0PAPER<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0EXAM<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOde to a Nightingale\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.  What emotions and desires does Keats\u2019 speaker describe in connection with the nightingale?  How do his feelings and desires differ from those of Shelley\u2019s speaker in \u201cTo a Sky-Lark\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.  What value does the speaker attribute to the nighttime setting of his composition\u2014that is, what opportunities does the night open to him?  What associations does he make in connection with darkness?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.  How, in Stanza 7, does the bird\u2019s song lead the speaker beyond his immediate surroundings?  What draws him back to himself in the final stanza?  What does the poem suggest about the nature and duration of vision that the speaker has attained as he listens to the nightingale?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOde on a Grecian Urn\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4.  Keats respectfully opposes Wordsworth\u2019s poetry of the \u201cegotistical sublime.\u201d  How does the present poem offer an alternative focus for poetry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5.  What makes the speaker question the urn in the first stanza?  What state of mind does Keats\u2019 poem seem designed to bring about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6.  Why are the figures on the urn called a \u201cleaf-fringed legend\u201d?  (Look up the Latin verb \u201clego\u201d or the gerundive \u201clegendum\u201d in a lexicon.) What does such a word have to do with the relationship between speaker and urn?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7.  What paradox develops beginning with the second stanza and developing through the rest of the poem?  What does art give us?  What does it withhold?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8.  What subjects of address does the speaker draw from the urn?  What do they have in common?  What don\u2019t they have in common\u2014in other words, does the speaker have to address some subjects differently?  Does the speaker put them into any working relationship?  Explain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9.  People have sometimes said that line 25 is not good poetry: \u201cMore happy love!  more happy, happy, happy love!\u201d  But consider the placement of the line in the poem as a whole\u2014why might Keats have included such a line where he does, rendering it appropriate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

10.  Critics argue over the meaning of the poem\u2019s last two lines, with or without the parentheses.  How do you interpret them?  What does it mean to identify truth and beauty\u2014two realms that we generally insist upon keeping separate, just as we separate ethics or morality from aesthetics or beauty?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11.  In a sense, the speaker is playing \u201cart critic\u201d when he questions the urn about its meaning.  Does the personified urn\u2019s response validate this questioning?  What does the poem, and especially the final stanza as a whole, suggest about the status of attempts to address the meaning of a work of art?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

12.  Contemporary critics usually insist on interpreting art in terms of its social and historical context, with the understanding that context is always at least partly constructed by the critic and not simply available as objective data.  But how does Keats\u2019 speaker suggest we ought to consider a work of art, if indeed you take the poem as offering any insights about \u201ccontext\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo Autumn\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

13.  All of the seasons have found poets to sing their praises, or at least their significance.  But what is special to Keats\u2019 speaker about Autumn?  What associations does he draw from the season beyond the natural surroundings and the time of year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

14.  How does the stanzaic patterning of this poem, along with other formal features, reinforce the seasonal mood that Keats explores?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLetters\u201d (889-95)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

15.  On 889-90, what is \u201cnegative capability\u201d?  How does Shakespeare exemplify this capability, while Coleridge, according to Keats, lacks it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

16.  On 890, what criticism does Keats make of the Wordsworthian manner in poetry?  What does Wordsworth do that he shouldn\u2019t, and what does he not do that he should?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

17.  On 891, Keats writes that \u201cif Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.\u201d  What do you think of that statement as a description of how poetry is generally written?  Why is it or isn\u2019t it a good description of poetic composition?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

18.  On 893-94, what comparison does Keats make by contrasting the poetry of Milton and Wordsworth?  Does Keats favor one over the other, or is that not the right question to ask?  Explain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

19.  Why, according to Keats on 894-95, is the poet like a chameleon (i.e. \u201ccamelion\u201d)?  Why, in the view Keats explores, would it be beside the point to praise or condemn poetry for its supposed moral status or tendencies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edition: <\/strong>Abrams, M. H. et al, eds.  The Norton Anthology of English Literature.  <\/em>8th ed.  Vol. D.  New York: Norton, 2006.  ISBN Package 2 (Vols. DEF) 0-393-92834-9. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOde to a Nightingale\u201d 1.  What emotions and desires does Keats\u2019 speaker describe in connection with the nightingale?  How do his feelings and desires differ from those of Shelley\u2019s speaker in \u201cTo a Sky-Lark\u201d? 2.  What value does the speaker attribute to the nighttime setting of his composition\u2014that is, what opportunities does the night open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"wf_page_folders":[43],"class_list":["post-487","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4680,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/487\/revisions\/4680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}