Dialogical Odes by John Keats: Mythologically Revisited

What is it about?

This paper, using Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism tries to investigate the indications of dialogic voice in Odes by John Keats. Indeed this study goes through the dialogic reading of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode to Psyche’, and ‘Ode on Melancholy’, considering mythological outlooks. Analyzing Keats’s odes through dialogical perspective may reveal that Keats plays a role of an involved and social poet of his own time. Moreover, Keats embraces the world of fancy and imagination to free himself from sufferings of his society. Keats’ odes are influenced by expression of pain-joy reality by which he builds up a dialogue with readers trying to display his own political and social engagement. Applying various kinds of mythological elements and figures within the odes may disclose Keats’s historical response and reaction toward a conflicted society and human grieves in general.

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Why is it important?

To conclude, it can be said that Keats, like many other Romantic poets, was greatly influenced by Greek mythology and made an attempt to deploy mythological symbols and characters to communicate his experiences with his reader. Since mythological concepts were mostly rooted in social and political events, Keats took this implication into account in order to reflect sufferings of his troubled society. On the other hand, mythological air of his poetry can be seen as an escape into the imaginary world of legends from the harsh and conflicted world of reality. Thus, these mythological images are a kind of a shared sense that affords the readers and the poet the possibility of coordinating their thoughts together in term of a shared reflection that can be expressed in response to the current conditions. This common sense can be found in dialogical nature of social attitudes of Keats’s poetry that invokes reactions and responses from the individuals in society that are parts of uniquely created joint responses to joint circumstances.

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