Author: Ano Sensei
Format: Video
Structure: Iambic pentameter, Ode stanza
Related content:
- • Keats: To Autumn – Reading & Analysis (Playlist) (Video Playlist)
- • Keats: To Autumn – Analysis (Video)
- • Keats: To Autumn – Illustrated Reading (Video)
Keats "To Autumn" — Reading and analysis: ripeness, harvest and death
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
0:00 Introduction
0:10 First stanza: a reading
0:50 Analysis
1:01 Alliteration
1:46 Semantic connections
3:24 The human element
3:42 Fruition and ripeness
4:02 Overripeness
4:56 Contamination of an ideal world
5:35 Second stanza: a reading
6:20 The first and second stanzas contrasted
6:45 Autumn and harvest
7:09 Autumn personified
8:00 Autumn and the poor
8:26 Autumn and death
8:51 Alliteration
9:01 A comfortable atmosphere
9:32 A less comfortable atmosphere
10:05 The patience of autumn
10:46 Third stanza: a reading
11:27 The music of autumn
11:37 Paralepsis and the songs of spring
12:08 Wailing, mourning, bleating and twittering
12:38 Comparison of the music of spring and autumn
13:00 Positive and negative elements
13:36 Melancholy wistfulness
13:48 Critical responses
14:29 Background and context
14:43 Thoughts of love and death
15:09 The political landscape
15:42 Hope and doom
If you just want an analysis of the poem, without the reading, click here: https://youtu.be/Fx0qtVgOqBg
If subtitles / captions are not available in your language, let me know and I will add them.
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7 Comments
Feeling fortunate to be here and listening the analysis of this great poem from u
OVER-BRIMMING THANKS TO YOU😇
Thank you for your kind comment. I’m glad you liked it!
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thanks really for helping me to get ready or my exams it’s after 10 days but tell now i don’t understand why it’s considered a perfect poem.
I can’t remember when I first read this poem. It feels as if I have lived with it all my life. I hope it will live inside you as it has inside me!
This has been truly a wonderful analysis! I appreciate your hard work. Have a beautiful day 🙂
Thank you for the feedback! For some reason, I found it harder to put the analysis together for this ode than for the other two I have looked at so far (“Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn”). I think perhaps that is because, behind the poem’s apparent simplicity, there is a lot going on. Best wishes from Japan – it’s a lovely day here!