ODE ON MELANCHOLY

 "no, no, go not to Lethe”

I believe that Keats seems to be advising people not to give up when you are melancholic or sad. Don’t try to go to Lethe river in the underworld in order to forget evertythings that happens in your life. In this picture we can see how all this people is trying to forget, and escaping reality.

“make not your rosary of yew-berries”

The rosary is used in the Christians religion to pray, he dosent want people to loose fait and create a symbol of death with it. 

“sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud”

he makes a relation between a weeping cloud and melancholy. How melancholy all of a sudden appears once again and traps yourseld. Makes you be part of this gloomy atmosphere that you cant get out of. it trapps you. 

“ that fosters the droop headed flowers all”

 Everything, even nature, its affected by melancholy. but the droop headed flowers evokes the sense of weakness and death, but at the same time the rain brings them life and enrichs them with what they need to survive. so there is a contradiction in this image. 

“and Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips”

I believe that this line represents the fact that joy comes once in a while, and even whren you get to be happy, you have the sense that this moment its about to dissapear and to leave you alone once again with the melancholy. the fact that it says that the hand is actually never at his lips expreses the idea that actually joy its not fully experienced. 

“Can burst Joys grape agains his palate fine”

Here we can perceive the synasthetic image. Having the image of the grape itself, the texture as it burst, and the taste of it in your palate. How Joy can be squished and take advantage of this moment of happiness.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN ; STANZAS

FIRST STANZA

Why is the urn compared to a ” still unravish’d bride”?

• "still" has two meanings - "motionless" or "remaining in time". Time and motion are two concepts that the poem explores throughout.
• "unravish’d" means unspoiled - a bride yet to lose her virginity; similarly, the urn and the scenes it represents are "unspoiled" by the passage of time, its always the same, it doesn’t age => agelesness

Explain the term “sylvan (of the forest) historian”(l.3)

• The urn is a “Sylvan historian” because it records scenes from a culture lived long ago (ancient greeks); and because it is bordered with leaves, as well as having scenes of the countryside within.
• Is it paradoxical that the urn, a “bride of quietness”, can tell its stories “more sweetly than our rhyme” (meaning the poem itself)?
• The gentleness of the term “sylvan historian” and his “flowery tale” told “sweetly” do not prepare us for the wild sexuality of lines 8-10. (Another contrast!)

What change in viewpoint occurs in lines 8-10?

• The short questions and frequent repetitions inject pace into the poem. Notice how the speaker moves from contemplative observer to emotionally-involved participant with these breathless questions. (We have another contrast - that of the participant vs the observer). You may want to think about how I develop this idea throughout, and what it might suggest about the audience’s relationship with “Art” in general… He gets excited as he becomes a more active participant in events of the urn ,  excitement is created by the short questions which add the pace of the last lines

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

SECOND STANZA

In lines 1-4 I contrast the ideal (in art, love, and nature) and the real - the “heard melodies”; which does my speaker seem to prefer at this point? How can you tell?

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

       Of deities or mortals, or of both,

               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

-         Contrast

“Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter”. In this line I believe  this line its related to the desire of what one never had. Those unheard and imaginated melodies have something that was never listened, therefore are sweeter and more special. He establishes a difference between the shallow melodies and the ones that go beyond that and have a more profund meaning. He seems to believe that real tunes, and intresting melodies are not heard by humans,  but the ones humans can imagine go beyond that and can be related with the celestial “spirit ditties”. He lets his imagination flow and bases his story or unheard melody in the drawings depicted in the urn. PARADOX: There are different things represented in the urn, but this representations are more real and have more importance in the imagination than in real life.He is amazed with how the urn stimulasted his mind and imagination.

Is the idea of unheard pipes an oxymoron?

• Oxymoron: a statement with two parts which seem contradictory; examples: sad joy, a wise fool, the sound of silence, or Hamlet's saying, "I must be cruel only to be kind"

This is an oxymoron as the ideas are opposed contrasting reality vs imagination. First creating a difference in the creation of sound and the unheard pipes. This creates and ambivlanece between reality and mind.

In lines 5-10 we begin to sense a negative undercurrent to the ideal, to frozen time. How do I use language to help convey this negativity?

His negativity reflects his problems with love in his own life, in the poem the fact that he cannot see another person happy because of love, its clearly represented.

The general idea of the poem seems to be positive but the words he chooses to use have a negative connotation.

The last six lines contrast the drawback of frozen time; note the negative phrasing: "canst not leave," "nor ever can," "never, never canst" in lines 5-8. Keats says not to grieve; whom he is addressing- Then he lists the advantages of frozen time; however, Keats continues to use negative phrasing even in these lines: "do not grieve," "cannot fade," and ""hast not thy bliss." Keats may have done this withought any intention, or there may be a reason for this negative undertone.

Rhythm and Meter in La Belle Sans Merci

The poem has a different scheme in which subverts the traditional ballad form. The fact that stanzas end so quickly, creates an emphasis on them , which shows how Keats wanted to alter the pace. Also extends the meaning of the poem as it  suggests what is going to happen (foreshadows) in a way, that everything is going to end very quickly, and all  of a sudden.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci 

2)

John Williams Waterhouse 1849-1917

He painted classical, historical, and literary subjects. His father was a painter too.

His paintings represented  despiting woman, femme fatale, like circe invidiosa, Cleopatra, la belle dame sans merci and different versions of lamia.

3) I believe that the painting reflects the fact that the woman is trapping him ( in fact its seems that it is with her own hair) , and he cant do anything else than play along, because of how they seem to be position together, he is due to follow her. Her position, has to do with the characteristics of femme fatale, trying to imnotize him and trap him.  Waterhouse alludes to nature, and the totality of the image, of them merging with nature, that it clearly representes the ballad. Also it seems that the picture of them sourrunded by the peaceful atmosphere of trees and flowers its contrasted with the intense look between them.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan

 Also its imposrtant to state how the light of the picture creates and enchanted effect, almost as it is glowing.

4)

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" by Henry Meynell Rheam, 1901

5)

I believe that the painting I choose, represents in a better way, the setting were they are. With the lake in the sourrounings. I believe that both paintings have a particular light were the effect of something mysterious going on, is created. Anyway in this paining, he looks weaker, and feeling dreamy, which clearly represents the poem.

 And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

Also I believe that this painting suggests how this “affair” is going to end, this mysterious and wicked fairy is going to abandoned him after making him fall for her, and he wil be left alone, next to the lake, alone and “palely loitering”

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

TREASURE HUNT

SECTION 1 - BIOGRAPHY

Time line:

1,2)

Oct 31, 1795: John Keats is born in London

1802: Keats brother Edward dies.

1803: Keats begins his studies at a small school in Enfield, England.

Apr 16, 1804: John’s father dies. John's mother, become a widow with four surviving children and remarries later the same year.

1805: Keats' mother abandons the family and disappears for three and a half years, leaving the children with their grandmother.

1809: Keats' mother returns to the family, sick with tuberculosis.

Mar 1810: Keat’s mother dies of tuberculosis. She leaves the children in the with their grandmother. The grandmother gives the  children to a guardian.

1815: After four years as an surgeon apprentice, Keats begins his medical studies at Guy's Hospital in London. Privately, he has started to write poetry.

Oct 1816: Keats meets the poet Leigh Hunt, who encourages him to write poetry

Dec 1816: Keats decides to abandon his medical career so that he can focus on his poetry.

Mar 3, 1817: Keats' first poetry collection,Poems, is published.

Jul 1818: Keats begins a six-week walking tour of England and Scotland with his friend Charles Armitage Brown.

Nov 28, 1818: Keats completes Endymion, his first long poem

Dec 1, 1818: Keats' brother Thomas dies of tuberculosis at the age of 19.

1819: After his brother's death, Keats moves in with his friend Charles Brown in the Hampstead neighborhood of London. There, he meets and falls in love with his neighbor, Fanny Brawne. By the end of the year, the cthey get engaged. He writes many of his best poems, including the and  but also battles depression and the first symptoms of tuberculosis.

Feb 3, 1820: Keats has a lung hemorrhage, the first serious symptom of the tuberculosis that will eventually take his life. When the second one happens a few months later, he moves into Leigh Hunt's house, where Fanny nurses him.

Jul 1820: Lots of Keats poems are published

1821 : The first months of 1821 become the final stage of tuberculosis.

John Keats dies of tuberculosis at the age of 25 in Rome. He is buried in the Protestant cemetery.

Last John Keat’s words after dying: The approaches of death came on. [Keats said] 'Severn—I—lift me up—I am dying—I shall die easy; don't be frightened—be firm, and thank God it has come.' 

3)

John moved with Charles Brown in 1819 , and later, fannys family moved besides them,John met Fanny and he was in love with her. She was an inspiration form him, as he was Deeply insipired by his love, and wrote amazing love letters.Therfeore, one can say that she was like a muse for him, and his work.   He once told to a friend  "I can bear to die," "I cannot bear to leave her."

4-5) letters

“but I should as soon think of choosing to die as to part from you” 

Letter to Charles Brown on the 30 of November , 1820:

Brown and John Keats were close friends. When Charles Brown first met Keats in the late summer of 1817, Keats was twenty-one, and Brown thirty. Shortly after their meeting, Keats and Brown were planning to see organise a walking tour to Scotland together.

Last three sentences of the letter to Charles brown:

“ Write to George as soon as you receive this, and tell him how I am, as far as you can guess; and also as note to my sister- who walks about my imagination like a ghost- she is so like Tom. I can scarcely bid you goodbye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow…”

SECTION 2 CONTEXT

1)ROMANTIC PERIOD1798 1832 

	I believe that this image, represents the personal and political freedom, the energy and sublimity of nature; Because of the flowers, he contact with earth, the wind and the petals flying away. Petals could represent new ideas. 2) Historical Event in the Romantic Era: “The French Revolution” A event mthat occured in the modern European history, the French Revolution began in 1789 and ended in 1790s. During this period, French citizens restablishes their country’s political aspects redesigning the system. This was also the era in which Romanticism was mostly developed and continue growing by the influnce of the revolution effects.  3) Provide brief diagram or bullet points outlining some of the key characteristics of Romanticism. You may find this useful. Or this. ·      Romantic believed in everything that is natural, spontaneous, and real. ·      They worked with actual feelings, emotions. Giving a strong importance to imagination and intuition. Everything that had to do with the individual. ·      They  leave aside “rules“ of society , and the reason. To create works that would represent the love, nature, creativity. ·      Romantics were also interested in the medieval past, the strange events, the “gothic“ and the exotic. Evertything that was “different“, and show individualism. ·      Romantics liked rebellion and revolution, because they were in favour of human rights, individualism, and they were against  oppression. ·      They were interested in introsprection of the self being, and its authentic emotions related to different ocations, like for example  death.  4) Eugene Lacroix 1838 5)  The picture shows the portrait of lord Bryon, John Keat’s rival.  The fact that both John Keats and Lord Bryon was because of envy rehaznos that Keats felt over Byron's success.  Bryon succeeded only because he was an aristocrat and Keats always had financial concernes.  SECTION 3 - POEMS 1) Give a brief, bullet-pointed explanation of what an Ode (in poetry) is. List all the Odes I wrote, including the first line for each one, and the date (roughly) they were written.  ·         Poem written for an ocaccion or has to do with something in particular. ·         Odes now a days, are less “formal, and important, but unfortounaly that has to do with todays coiety and their minimum respect for propriety morality and dignity. ·         It’s a word that comes from a greek word that means to sing or chant ·         They convey their strongest feelings ·         Pindaric, Horatian and Irregular, are three typical types. ·         John Keats wrote six lyric odes, written between March and September 1819 ·         He died barely a year after finishing the ode “To Autumn,” in February 1821. ·         Ode on Indolence: One morn before me were three figures seen, ·         Ode to Psyche: O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung ·         Ode to a Nightingale : My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains ·         Ode on a Grecian Urn: Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, ·         Ode on Melancholy: No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist ·         To Autumn: Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 2) The Contemplation of Beauty: “ ode on a Grecian Urn” The Mortality of Human life: “ ode of Nightingale” Effects of time: “ To Autum”; Quoet: “Where are the songs of spring?” The inevitability of Death: “When i have fears that i may cease to be” Dream of vision ( Reality) 3) I take great pride in my synaesthetic images.  •             Can you briefly explain IN YOUR OWN WORDS what these are? ‘ Synasthestic images is when in a same image, there is more than one sense, that combines. for example, visual and sound. •             What function(s) do they perform in my poems? it is part of their sensual effect, and the combining of senses. This represents what happens in reality, the unity. Senses are not separated when something happens to us, emotions are combined. •             Give the example from the link on Isabella, explaining the sensory images it combines. And TASTE the MUSIC of that VISION pale. (stanza XLIX) In this stanza it combines, the visual, the sound and the taste of something in particular. 4) POETIC BALLAD: Has two or more estanzas all sung to the same melody Sentimental and romantic songs A ballad is a form of verse, often narrative set to  music Used by poets and composers to produce lyrical ballads              Basically love songs O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,        Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake,        And no birds sing. O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,        So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel’s granary is full,        And the harvest’s done. I see a lily on thy brow,        With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose        Fast withereth too. I met a lady in the meads,        Full beautiful—a faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light,        And her eyes were wild. I made a garland for her head,        And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She looked at me as she did love,        And made sweet moan I set her on my pacing steed,        And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend, and sing        A faery’s song. She found me roots of relish sweet,        And honey wild, and manna-dew, And sure in language strange she said—        ‘I love thee true’. She took me to her Elfin grot,        And there she wept and sighed full sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes        With kisses four. And there she lullèd me asleep,        And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!— The latest dream I ever dreamt        On the cold hill side. I saw pale kings and princes too,        Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci        Thee hath in thrall!’ I saw their starved lips in the gloam,        With horrid warning gapèd wide, And I awoke and found me here,        On the cold hill’s side. And this is why I sojourn here,        Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is withered from the lake,        And no birds sing. SECTION 4 - IB AND ME 1)  Five abilities I need to develop Analysis of a work in terms of content and technique; engage with the details of the works Acquire deeper knowledge and understanding of the works studied How language, theme, setting, and character can have particular effects Be familiarized with a variety of interpretation and critical perspectives Demonstrate appropriate analytical responses How will I be assessed by the IB for Part 2? Individual Oral Commentary and discussion Formal oral commentary of poetry studied in Part 2 Subsequent questions (10 minutes) Followed by a discussion based on one of the other Part 2 works (10 minutes) Knowledge and understanding of the poem Appreciation of writer's choices Organization and presentation of the commentary Knowledge and understanding of the work used in the presentation Response to the discussion questions Language