Stylistic Analysis of the Poem “Ode to a Nightingale and Ode to Autumn”

Abstract

This study aims to stylistic analysis of poems Ode to a Nightingale and Ode to Autumn by John Keats and to its analysis, to find out the role of linguistic and poetic means in the creation of meaning, music and emotional effect. The aim is to examine the poet's word choice, imagery, stylistic features and how they develop the Romantic themes of ‘transience, beauty and the sensuous power of nature. The background is rich with the characteristics of sensuous images and melodic language that typified Keats's approach to English Romanticism, in which personal feeling and universal concerns are combined. The theoretical framework used is the stylistics approach which is a linguistic approach, with a formalist and functionalist perspective to analyze foregrounding, deviation and parallelism in literary text. Primary data was gathered by close reading of the two complete poems. Purposively samples were used, and those two odes were chosen as representative masterpieces (160 lines). Qualitative stylistic analysis was applied to the data, and a number of qualitative stylistic tools were used, such as identification and classification of metaphor, simile, alliteration, assonance, consonance, enjambment, and lexical pattern, with a phonetic and semantic analysis. Results show that Keats used a wide range of sensory diction and sound devices to produce the rhythmic musicality, colorful imagery and emotional impact. These methods help to successfully express the contrast between life and death as well as the abundance of fall, enriching the poems' aesthetic and thematic value.