Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale". A Close Reading With Emphasis on Light and Shade

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2002 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1st, , course: English, language: English, abstract: The inspiration for this dissertation came primarily from Christopher Ricks' stunning comparison between Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" and Bob Dylan's "Not Dark Yet" on Radio 4 in February 2001. This prompted me to return to Keats' poem and see why exactly the poem proved so beguiling. After considerable research, it became apparent that critics in favour of his notion of 'negative capability' unfairly subjugated Keat's poetic concept of 'light and shade'. Hence, this dissertation's concern is correlating Keats' perception of 'light and shade' with regards to his poem "Ode to a Nightingale". In order to ascertain how Keats' concept works, it will naturally be necessary to clearly define what his own perspective and parameters were for his theory; this will be achieved via an exploration of both his poems and letters.§§Once the nature of 'light and shade' has been established, I will then appraise its influence on "Ode to a Nightingale" through a 'close reading' of the poem. This analysis will essentially follow the poem's arrangement from stanza one through to its conclusion in stanza eight, though obviously there will be a considerable amount of cross-referencing between the stanzas. Aside from attempting to ascertain his intentions for the poem, I will also assess the poem's constituents to analyse Keats' use of poetic devices such as: assonance, alliteration, anaphora, anadiplosis, sibilance and mechanisms for the balancing of both individual lines and the poem as a whole. My evaluation will also determine whether he interconnects the stanzas, and if so, what affects their interrelationship has on the poem.