Sleep and Poetry
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Extract One - lines 47-62 and 96-121
What is the tone of 47-62 (mood and vocabularly are always useful here). Does it represent a healthy attitude to poetry, in your view?
Look for repetitions, patterns and oppositions
Underline anything in the section which stimulates or refers to the senses
Look at the phonological quality of the extract (sound)
If Keats is referring here to what poetry can do, and where, metaphorically, it can take both writer and reader what kind of experience is he saying it can give (start with positive/negative; pleasant/painful etc and go on from there)?
Extract Two - lines 122-162
The first four lines of the section are much debated. What is your theory about what they might be saying about Keats' attitude to the craft and purpose of poetry?
Look for binary oppositions in these lines
Lines 124-162 could be seen as a kind of extended metaphor. Think of the poet as the charioteer and begin with the phrase 'glorious fear' - how the poet/charioteer 'looks out' - to determine what kind of picture of human life this section of the poem portrays.
Extract Three - lines 163-206
We have talked about imagination being a key word in Romanticism. Keats himself said 'what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth', and, in criticising Byron, 'he describes what he sees, I describe what I imagine - mine is the hardest task'. Try and apply this knowledge to lines 163-180.
Lines 163-180 have often been considered as referring to poetry in the age of Shakespeare, whereas lines 181-206 are aimed at the period immediately before the Romantics (usually referred to as neo-classical). You might like to look at a part of Alexander Pope's verse as an example. What attitude to this kind of writing is being expressed here? Justify by looking closely at the tone of the writing (mood and vocabulary are always useful here)
Extract Four - line 230-269
Look for oppositions in the imagery and vocabulary in this section, and look for patterns and repetitions
What is poetry, for Keats?
Keats is one of the 'young fawns' in lines 250-269. How does he see himself here, and the role of poets generally?
