ENG341 - Romantic Literature

John Keats - "To Autumn"

Keats's Ode 'to Autumn', Ovid, and Homer - Rodney Stenning Edgecombe

Notes and Queries, Sept 1997: pg. 333-334

• One of the many achievements of Keats's great ode 'To Autumn' is the way it breaks with the more formal "insertive" prosopopoeia of the 18^th-century, and extracts its personification from figures in the landscape.
• Lines 12-18: Likely sources for this procedure: Ovid's Metamorphoses and Homer's The Odyssey, Book VII.
• Homer's ideal garden is perhaps remembered in the way Keats mediates extremes of cold ('mists') and warmth ('mellow fruitfulness') in the first line of his poem.
• Temporal sequencing:
  1. Stanza I - Morning, August
  2. Stanza II - Afternoon, September
  3. Stanza III - Evening, October