A Study of English Romantic Odes

Abstract

The ode has never been a fixed and distinct form; it is nearly impossible to formulate a perfect and faultless definition for it. Each writer may have a very personal impression and understanding of this poetic genre. There are numerous inconsistencies existing in both theory and practice concerning its form. The classical odes are usually written for public purposes; the Romantic odes for private and personal expression. In the “Immortality Ode,” Wordsworth feels that his vision has lost the glory with which it shone when he was young. He discerns grounds for a faith in immortality and finds in his mature outlook a compensation for the loss of his juvenile vision. This ode examines the whole story of human life as an exile from an earlier and more perfect state. It is not merely the record of one poet's vision, but of the necessary process of human existence. “Dejection: An Ode” dramatizes Coleridge's fluctuating mood as he witnesses the shift of light and shade and feels the change of atmosphere before the coming of a storm. It works through the interplay of past and present, and of different scenes and personal reflections. The poet dreads that private unhappiness has cost him his poetic imagination. Shelley typifies the balanced Romantic interest in nature and dreams on one hand and in the social and political world on the other. As we see in the “Ode to the West Wind,” Shelley tries to convey an optimistic message to mankind. It deals simultaneously with the function of poetry in human society and with the value of the poet's life burdened with sufferings and frustrations. Keats's unique and memorable poetic diction, his intense and sensuous imagery, and his effective use of tension, ambiguity, and paradox, etc., are all found in his odes. His odes are poems of imaginative meditation, exploring the poet's reactions to intense contemplation of a work of art (a Grecian urn), a living creature (a nightingale), a mythical goddess (Psyche), a psychological condition (melancholy), and a season (autumn). This thesis focuses mainly on the odes of the Romantic period. My concentration and object is to present the evolution and development of this specific genre and to deal with the poetic expressions of certain famous examples.

The ode has never been a fixed and distinct form; it is nearly impossible to formulate a perfect and faultless definition for it. Each writer may have a very personal impression and understanding of this poetic genre. There are numerous inconsistencies existing in both theory and practice concerning its form. The classical odes are usually written for public purposes; the Romantic odes for private and personal expression. In the “Immortality Ode,” Wordsworth feels that his vision has lost the glory with which it shone when he was young. He discerns grounds for a faith in immortality and finds in his mature outlook a compensation for the loss of his juvenile vision. This ode examines the whole story of human life as an exile from an earlier and more perfect state. It is not merely the record of one poet's vision, but of the necessary process of human existence. “Dejection: An Ode” dramatizes Coleridge's fluctuating mood as he witnesses the shift of light and shade and feels the change of atmosphere before the coming of a storm. It works through the interplay of past and present, and of different scenes and personal reflections. The poet dreads that private unhappiness has cost him his poetic imagination. Shelley typifies the balanced Romantic interest in nature and dreams on one hand and in the social and political world on the other. As we see in the “Ode to the West Wind,” Shelley tries to convey an optimistic message to mankind. It deals simultaneously with the function of poetry in human society and with the value of the poet's life burdened with sufferings and frustrations. Keats's unique and memorable poetic diction, his intense and sensuous imagery, and his effective use of tension, ambiguity, and paradox, etc., are all found in his odes. His odes are poems of imaginative meditation, exploring the poet's reactions to intense contemplation of a work of art (a Grecian urn), a living creature (a nightingale), a mythical goddess (Psyche), a psychological condition (melancholy), and a season (autumn). This thesis focuses mainly on the odes of the Romantic period. My concentration and object is to present the evolution and development of this specific genre and to deal with the poetic expressions of certain famous examples.