Ode on Indolence - John Keats Revision Guide

Student Revision Guide
This Revision Guide offers 7 clear sections: Overview; Form and Structure; Close Analysis; Key Themes; Context; Critical Perspectives; Study Questions and Extension Activities.
The Close Analysis section follows the ode stanza by stanza: the three figures passing like figures on a marble urn, the blissful cloud of summer indolence from which the speaker watches them, their identification as Love, Ambition and Poesy, and the closing banishment of the three Phantoms. Form and Structure examines the ode stanza and the two rival orders in which the stanzas have been printed; the guide follows the modern order and treats the difference as material for discussion. Context covers the spring of 1819 and the other great odes, Negative Capability, the Gospel epigraph and the poem’s publication in 1848. Critical Perspectives asks whether the banishment holds, and how far the ode embodies Negative Capability.
Quotation Quilt
A selection of key quotations from ‘Ode on Indolence’, arranged to support the themes and concepts an essay on this poem is most likely to need.
Quotations are grouped by the three figures and the marble urn; the Gospel epigraph and the lilies of the field; the blissful cloud of summer indolence; Love, Ambition and Poesy; the refusal to be roused; and the closing banishment of the Phantoms.