Lit 12, Wed. May 25

We finished "Ode to the West Wind" and we read Shelley's "To A Skylark" and I checked the John Keats' notes and we read "Ode to a Nightingale. Make sure you read them in that order and read the introductory paragraphs before each poem as they set the stage and offer a clear way to view the poems. Make notes on the poems and the notes in the book.

I handed out a set of questions which are due tomorrow. See below.
We'll be finished this unit tomorrow and then we start the Victorian era so you can get a head start on the Victorian era notes.

Be sure to get the notes you missed today from a reliable friend.

Shelley Review Notes

Review of the first three parts:

1. Define alexandrine. Define terza rima. Define ode. Define sonnet and its components. Define apostrophe and personification. Define neo-classicism and allusion. Why are all of these components key to “Ode to the West Wind” and to our understanding of Shelley?
2. What is Shelley known for? How does he differ from other Romantic poets?
3. What is a periodic sentence? Why does it work in his sonnet, “Sonnet: England in 1819”? Despite his horror at the massacre and the ineptitude of Britain’s leaders, why could the poem be described as optimistic?
4. Read the commentary, page 549 and take notes on each section, including the discussion of Shelley’s use of terza rima.
5. The first three sections describe the wind’s impact on autumn, clouds and the sea. These sections emphasize the wind’s destructive qualities. Why?
6. What’s the key paradox with wind in section 1?
7. Why repeat “Hear, oh, hear” at the end of the first three sections?
8. Why does Shelley use elevated diction in “Ode to the West Wind”?

Section 4 and 5 Questions

1. What “heavy weight of hours” has “chained and bowed” Shelley from his connection to the wind? In other words, what caused him to lose his connection with nature?
2. Why is Shelley less free than the wind?
3. He repeats leaf, cloud, wave twice in section 4, why?
4. How does the wind provide comfort to Shelley? “I would ne’er have striven / as thus with thee in prayer in my sore need” (51-52).
5. Shelley wants to be the wind’s “comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven” and the wind’s “lyre,” why?
6. Section 5 extols the virtues of the wind and the virtues of poetry. How?

There are several allusions to the Bible in Section 5 which magnify the importance of Shelley’s lines and the impact that his poetry can have to sustain, comfort and ultimately transform society.

Lines 68-69 Shelley says: “Be through my lips to unawakened earth / The trumpet of a prophecy!” This line is an allusion to the Book of Revelation St. John the Divine: “To change the hearts and minds of men” and “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day and heard in me a great voice, as of a trumpet”.

Also: Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy” and “Behold he cometh with clouds”

Ode: comes from a Greek word meaning song. Greek poet, Pindar developed and improved upon the form. There is an ode named after Pindar. It is called the Pindaric ode.

The ode was a favourite form of the Romantic poets because it allowed for intense and expansive personal expression.  Odes are poems of

• Address (they use apostrophe). The poet speaks directly in the first person to some other person, being or power, the “thou” or “thee” of the poem

John Keats (another fatherless poet just like Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge)

His theory of poetry called “Negative Capability”

Keats wanted to subordinate his own personality in his poetry (absolute opposite to Byron) because he felt that poets should have NO identity. Without identity, the poet is better able to forget about him/herself and to concentrate on or identify with the subject of the poem. Also, negative capability occurs when a person is capable of being in uncertainty, mystery, and doubt without reaching after fact, explanation or reason.

Great poets must be able to accept that not everything can be resolved—not a solution for everything. He believed truths found in the imagination found holy authority.

He never created a formal theory about this concept but it has been discussed in many subsequent works and inspired many philosophers.