Author: Ano Sensei
Format: Video
Structure: Iambic pentameter, Ode stanza
Related content:
- • Keats: To Autumn – Reading & Analysis (Playlist) (Video Playlist)
- • Keats: To Autumn – Illustrated Reading (Video)
- • Keats: To Autumn – Reading & Analysis (Video)
John Keats's ode "To Autumn": analysis, background and overview.
For Keats himself, walking the countryside with thoughts of his approaching death and his love for Fanny Brawne, whom he was too poor to marry, "To Autumn" was a brief oasis in a broadly hostile landscape.
For some sixty years now, this poem has been lurking in the corner of my mind each time the nights grow longer and the days grow colder and gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Topics covered: alliteration and sound patterning | personification of autumn | the harvest and death imagery | paralepsis | biographical and political background | the Peterloo Massacre
Please check the playlist for the different viewing options for this video: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzVb6yL_jY6_UMFaLJrp1yw6NH0DQB5zy
0:00 Introduction
0:12 Analysis
0:30 Alliteration
01:07 Semantic connections
2:45 The human element
3:02 Fruition and ripeness
3:31 Overripeness
4:17 Contamination of an ideal world
5:00 The first and second stanzas contrasted
5:26 Autumn and harvest
5:52 Autumn personified
6:43 Autumn and the poor
7:09 Autumn and death
7:34 Alliteration
7:46 A comfortable atmosphere
8:16 A less comfortable atmosphere
8:48 The patience of autumn
9:30 The music of autumn
9:40 Paralepsis and the songs of spring
10:07 Wailing, mourning, bleating and twittering
10:40 Comparison of the music of spring and autumn
11:02 Positive and negative elements
11:39 Melancholy wistfulness
11:56 Critical responses
12:32 Background and context
12:46 Thoughts of love and death
13:12 The political landscape
13:45 Hope and doom
If subtitles / captions are not available in your language, let me know and I will add them.
#romanticpoetry #keats #naturepoem #naturepoetry #nature #poetry #poetrylovers #autumn
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10 Comments
Thanks a million for this, professor. Just wish to let you know that your videos, your teaching benefit me hugely and make me love and appreciate poetry even more. I’m grateful to you. Please keep making such amazingly insightful videos, sir. Sending lots of love and positive energy your way! 🙏🏻🙏🏻❤️❤️
Thank you for the feedback! Yes, there will always be more poetry videos (when I have time!)…
Thank you so much for your time and endeavour doing these videos, they are really useful when one studies Keats!! I’m starting to get a better grasp at the whole Keats’s thing 🙂 I do have a slight recommendation though, that comes without any judgement. It would sound even better I think, and would help to undertsand even better the overall meaning of the poem, if you could take a little time to read the stanza before ananlysing it; for me, it helps to locate the passage in the poem, and most of all it gives a global vision of the stanza under scrutiny. I’m a beginner in poetry, and for me, I think, have a native reading it before getting into more detail gives a first useful approach and sonority to it. But that’s a minor suggestion. Thanks againfor your great videos!
Thank you for the feedback! There are actually several versions of this video, one of which includes a reading along with the analysis (https://youtu.be/jrOSESzn8HM).
Hi Professor, thank you very much for the video! The very last parts of the analysis made me remember that it is also important to have a broader look at a poem by taking into account the context in which it was written to understand it in another light. Would you recommend reading Keats’s letters to understand his poems and his writing style more generally? They act as primary sources contrary to academic analyses so I thought that they could be greatly informative on his writing process, style and is poems. And on a more informal note, why is Keats one of your favourite poets? 😊 Thank you again!
Hi! Yes, there was a period a few decades ago when the idea was being floated that literary texts should stand up by themselves, without reference to the author’s intentions or the broader context, but that idea has been largely discredited.
I’m not sure to what extent you need to look at all the primary sources; it will depend largely on what your goals are. It might be enough just to read a decent biography. Nicholas Roe’s, perhaps?
But if you’re set to be a Keats scholar you will, of course, need access to his collected works and letters.
As for me, I read Keats’s poetry when I was a teenager and something prompted me to learn substantial chunks of them by heart. There’s something about the richness of the language and the intensity of the ideas that I find very attractive.
I never made a special study of him. My main area as an academic researcher was the early modern period. But I often chose to teach his works – especially these odes – to students.
He always struck me as such a poignant figure – cheated, it seems, out of his inheritance, unable to marry the woman he loved, and dead by the time he was 25 – and yet he left behind such a wonderful legacy…
@anosensei Once again, thank you very much for your insight 😊
My goal is passing next year’s national competitive exam to become an English teacher. Keats’s works (Poems (1817) and Lamia, Isabelle, The Eve of St. Agnes, And Other (1820) ; as well as the following poems: Ode on Indolence ; Sonnet [Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art!]; La Belle Dame Sans Merci; Sonnet. [The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!]; To –––– [What can I do to drive away]; To Fanny; [This living hand, now warm and capable]) are one of the five literary works to be studied for the exam.
I’ve only learnt recently about him but I must say that his fleeting life really made an impression on me as well – especially considering how close to my age he was when he passed away. He had an immensely tragic life but I feel like it’s the intensity of the physical and emotional pain he had to go through, coupled with his brilliant and creative sensitivity and his desperate acknowledgement that his life would be cut short, that generated the beauty in his poetry.
@sempksemp I’m sure your commitment, communicativeness and enthusiasm will make you an excellent teacher! Good luck!
[YouTube has sprung new terms of service (starting on June 1) that seriously affect my channel, so I am afraid my time is going to be taken up dealing with that for a while. The real work – making videos – is going to have to wait until I’ve sorted it all out…]
Thanks for making me feel as if im travelling with keats💛
Expecting more and more from you💛
Great job🤝
You are most welcome! As you can see, Keats is one of my favourite poets. I will certainly be making more videos about his poems and about poetry in general!