Sunday, December 2, 2007

Ode

Kyle Litfin

An Ode is a long lyrics poem that is serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style and elaborate in its stanzaic structure. There are many subdivisions of Odes such as regular ode, irregular ode, Pindaric ode and Horation ode.

Ex.
Percy Shelly's "Ode to the West Wind"
This is a great example of how Romantics used the personal ode of description and passionate meditation, stimulated by an aspect of the general which turns on the attempt to solve either a personal emotional problem (particular) or a general social issue (sometimes commenting on the general through the Poet's particular).

In the course, this displays a common difference between Neoclassical poets and Romantics. Romantics used nature, the landscape, together with its flora and fauna as a subject of poetry. Neoclassical poems were about other people, but Romantics invited the reader to identify the protagonist with the poet themselves, either directly (Wordsworth's Prelude) or in another recognizable form.

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