Ode To a Nightingale - analyse its Romanticism
...icularly apt for the themes Keats wished to explore in his poem. In Classical tradition, the nightingale is associated with love. The influential myth of Philomela, turned into a nightingale after being raped and tortured, stresses melancholy and suffering in association with love. Keats often used Greek and Roman mythology as inspiration for his poetry and he was preoccupied with the symbolic nature of many fables. The nightingale has also been associated with poetry; Keats no doubt knew Coleridge’s two poems To the Nightingale and The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem and according to his letters, only days before had Keats discussed the nature of nightingales and poetical sensation with the older poet. In this contemplation on poetic experience, Keats attempts to achieve awareness of beauty and permanence through the symbol of the nightingale. The ode is an apostrophe to the bird, the “light-wingèd Dryad of the trees?and the poem is basically structured around the contrast between the poet, who is earthbound, and the nigh...