The morn, the eve, the light, the shade, the flowers To see wide plains, fair trees and lawny slope: His first reference, to what was to become a primary concern is found in an early poem, Specimen of an Induction to a Poem: Throughout his poetic life Keats propounded that the antipodal elements of ‘light and shade’ were essential to poetry. The relationship between the ‘immortal Bird’ and the man ‘rooted’ within his naturalistic world provides the antithetical essence of the poem. Ode to a Nightingale explores the encounter of an experience beyond the commonplace within this experience the poet details his emotional reaction to his encounter with the song of the nightingale. Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: A ‘Close Reading’ With Emphasis on ‘Light and Shade’. My evaluation will also determine whether he interconnects the stanzas, and if so, what effects their interrelationship has on the poem. Aside from attempting to ascertain his intentions for the poem, I will also assess the poem’s constituents to analyse Keats’ use of poetic devices such as: assonance, alliteration, anaphora, anadiplosis, sibilance and mechanisms for the balancing of both individual lines and the poem as a whole. This analysis will essentially follow the poem’s arrangement from stanza one through to its conclusion in stanza eight, though obviously there will be a considerable amount of cross-referencing between the stanzas. Once the nature of ‘light and shade’ has been established, I will then appraise its influence on Ode to a Nightingale through a ‘close reading’ of the poem. In order to ascertain how Keats’ concept works, it will naturally be necessary to clearly define what his own perspective and parameters were for his theory this will be achieved via an exploration of both his poems and letters.
Hence, this dissertation’s concern of correlating Keats’ perception of ‘light and shade’ with regards to his poem Ode to a Nightingale. After considerable research, it became apparent that critics in favour of his notion of ‘negative capability’ unfairly subjugated Keat’s poetic concept of ‘light and shade’.
This prompted me to return to Keats’ poem and see why exactly the poem proved so beguiling. The inspiration for this dissertation came primarily from Christopher Ricks’ stunning comparison between Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale and Bob Dylan’s Not Dark Yet on Radio 4 in February 2001. Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: A ‘Close Reading’ With Emphasis on ‘Light and Shade’
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