John Keats, "To Autumn". The dying year: the beauty and the dread.

Within fifteen months of writing this poem, Keats was dead. Critics and study guides tend to emphasise the warmth and positivity of this poem but I've always felt that, behind the golden hues of autumn sunlight, it has a much darker underbelly. The beauty of autumn is inseparable from its transience, and the poem's power comes from the shadow of winter and death that falls across every stanza. For Keats himself, walking the countryside with thoughts of his own mortality and his thwarted love for Fanny Brawne, whom he was too poor to marry, "To Autumn" was a brief oasis in a broadly hostile landscape. For some sixty years now, this poem has been lurking in the corner of my mind each time the nights grow longer and the days grow colder and gathering swallows twitter in the skies. Topics covered: alliteration and sound patterning | personification of autumn | the harvest and death imagery | paralepsis | biographical and political background | the Peterloo Massacre Please check the playlist for the different viewing options for this video:    • John Keats: To Autumn   0:00 Introduction 0:12 Analysis 0:30 Alliteration 01:07 Semantic connections 2:45 The human element 3:02 Fruition and ripeness 3:31 Overripeness 4:17 Contamination of an ideal world 5:00 The first and second stanzas contrasted 5:26 Autumn and harvest 5:52 Autumn personified 6:43 Autumn and the poor 7:09 Autumn and death 7:34 Alliteration 7:46 A comfortable atmosphere 8:16 A less comfortable atmosphere 8:48 The patience of autumn 9:30 The music of autumn 9:40 Paralepsis and the songs of spring 10:07 Wailing, mourning, bleating and twittering 10:40 Comparison of the music of spring and autumn 11:02 Positive and negative elements 11:39 Melancholy wistfulness 11:56 Critical responses 12:32 Background and context 12:46 Thoughts of love and death 13:12 The political landscape 13:45 Hope and doom If subtitles / captions are not available in your language, let me know and I will add them. #romanticpoetry #keats #naturepoem #naturepoetry #nature #poetry #poetrylovers #autumn © All rights reserved.