"To Autumn": Keats' treatment of brightness and fulfilment

-









Examine Keats’ treatment of brightness and fulfilment in To Autumn.


Ans. To Autumn records the poet’s meditations on maturity. It encapsulates his efforts to achieve it issuing into a disciplined poetic art. The complete maturity exemplifies Keatsian virtues of sensuousness and pictorial beauty, felicity of diction, perfectness of form and splendid vividness of imagery. This impersonal ode celebrated the season of autumn as a time of natural fulfilment and as a part of the living process of nature. The season of ripeness and abundance is a reminder of the mortality of things, a herald to the approaching desolation of winter. In Stanza I, we come to know autumn as a ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’. The sun matures the earth, ripening the grapes, the apples, the gourds and the hazelnuts etc. Stanza II describes the imagery of arrested motion. It echoes the upcoming winter. The reaper is the messenger of death so, ‘the last drop oozing’, ‘flowing out of the cider-press’ imply that the harvest is drawing to a close. The last stanza begins with a couple of questions – “Where are the songs of spring? / Aye, where are they?” But there is no conflict in the answer: “Think not of them, thou hast thy music too”. Stanza III proceeds with images of death and withdrawal. The image of the ‘soft-dying day’ is followed by that of the mournful song of the gnats – a funeral dirge for the dying year. Other autumnal musical images, which are the sounds typical of the autumnal twilight, follow – the bleating of the lambs, the song of the hedge-crickets, the whistling of the robin redbreasts and the twittering of the swallows. They together compose the orchestration of autumn, a music that touches us by reflective tenderness. Keats spoke about ‘negative capability’.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Rajmohan's Wife" by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay-- Chapter wise Overview of the English Novel "Rajmohan's Wife" by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay/Detailed chapterwise Summary of the novel "Rajmohan's Wife" by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay/Synopsis of the novel "Rajmohan's Wife" by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay/ Complete or Comprehensive chapter wise summary in easy language of "Rajmohan's Wife" by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay/Thorough analysis and interpretation with deep understanding of "Rajmohan's Wife" by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay

-
Image
Rajmohan's Wife  by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay the first ever English novel in India. Apart from that, this novel is the novelist's first novel ever. Published in 1864, t he theme of the novel is love and romance as well as depiction of strong women with twenty-one chapters in totaling. The first chapter of the novel is “The Drawers of Water”, while  the last chapter of the novel is “The Last Chapter in Life’s Book – and In This”. Now let's have an overview of the chapters -- Chapter 1 A tiny hamlet situated on the banks of the Madhumati River was very much important because of the rich zamindars living there. After a siesta, Kanak, a lady of about thirty years of age, went to a neighbour's house with four huts. There she came across a young housewife who was busy in her needlework. Chapter 2 When the sun was about to go down, Kanak and her companion, that is, the young lady of eighteen years of age, were returning home with pitchers in their h
Read more

Derozio’s “To India, My Native Land”: Critical Appreciation

-
Image
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio’s love for India whispered into his ears to pay a homage to the land with the aid of his poem,  To India, My Native Land .  He is the first poet of Modern India to express his fiercely intense patriotism in poetry.  To India, My Native Land is a magnificent sonnet that depicts his pure patriotism. This sonnet also delineates his utmost will to emancipate India from the British bondage. In this patriotic poem, the speaker persona recalls India's past glory before the era of British bondage. She was suffused with name and fame, only glory but no worry during those days. She was over brimmed with cultural and spiritual richness at that time. Anyway, after the British reign, such abstracts went away in the twinkling of an eye. She became bereft of all such richness. In this poem, we come across rhetorical questions. Again, the image of eagle in this poem symbolise the royalty of the land in the then times. Dust  epitomises death, decay
Read more

Character portrait/Character/Character sketch of Sridhar in "Bravely Fought the Queen" by Mahesh Dattani

-
Image
  Character portrait/Character/Character sketch of Sridhar in Bravely Fought the Queen by Mahesh Dattani In the drama named Bravely Fought the Queen by Mahesh Dattani, Sridhar is depicted as Lalitha’s responsible husband. He, a worker of the Trivedi brothers, remains busy at taking care of advertising for the Re Va Tee product. He is a sincere and hardworking person. Also, he is very efficient. In this play, Jiten Trivedi stays obstinate and does not pay any attention to the intellect of Sridhar. In this play, we come to know Jiten’s character pretty well, especially when he argues that their aim is to attract men but not women, since it is the men who have the purchasing power. In this context, we can discern and find the male domination in the advertising world. However, Sridhar cautions them of the possible hostile consequences of the existing advertisement, since he is a very liable employee. Again, as and when Sridhar utters, “This is professional suicide”, Jiten, in utmost f
Read more