Keats's ‘Dull Rhymes’ and the Making of the Ode Stanza

Abstract

AbstractThis article focuses on how John Keats's experimentation with the sonnet genre led to the development of his famous ode stanza. Several sonnets written in 1818 and 1819, most notably ‘If by dull rhymes our english must be chain'd’, illustrate Keats's dissatisfaction with traditional forms and his desire for a stanza that could present a more meditative speaker. Providing a brief survey of critical approaches to Keats's odes, the author stresses that the vital connection between ode stanza and the sonnet needs renewed discussion. With close readings of the interplay between syntax and form in the stanzas of Ode on Melancholy, Ode to a Nightingale, and To Autumn, the article attempts in a preliminary way to explore how the odes highlight their speaker's revision of tradition, presenting a lyric voice conscious of its own position in literary history.