Previous

Keats’s Odes

To understand where “Ode to a Nightingale” sits in relation to Keats’s other five odes, please consult this guide, which provides an analytical overview.

John Donne, “The Sun Rising”

Though Donne’s poem doesn’t take the form of an ode, he uses a stanza form that’s similar to Keats’s. That is, both poets use a ten-line stanza that bears a remarkable similarity to the sonnet. In doing so, these poets at once harness the compression of the sonnet form, and yet expand the poem’s scope beyond what a sonnet could otherwise accommodate.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

Fitzgerald used a phrase from Keats’s poem as the title for his 1934 novel. Though he himself is situated among the American modernists, Fitzgerald loved the British Romantics, and Keats was among his favorite poets. Other than the shared phrase, there is no obvious link between “Ode to a Nightingale” and Tender is the Night. That said, Fitzgerald’s novel may be said to share the poem’s anxious and melancholic tone.

Previous section Historical and Literary Context

Take a Study Break