"Identifying the Soul"

A detailed Summary of "Identifying the Soul"

"Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane / In some untrodden region of my mind, / Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain / Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind" (Keats 848). This quote, taken from the last stanza of John Keats' "Ode to Psyche," exemplifies the meaning of the ode for the reader. According to Andrew Motion, author of Keats: A Biography, "Keats defines his individual self while registering his dependence on surrounding conditions. His pursuit of 'beauty' and 'truth' is both a lament for lost ideals and a celebration of their transfigured continuance" (382). In this paper, I will show how Keats uses the winged Psyche to describe his longing to identify the soul through the use of mythology and sensual imagery.

The first way that Keats describes his longing to identify the soul is through mythology. Keats introduces his reader to the goddess Psyche in the opening lines of the ode, "O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung / By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear," (Keats 847). In a footnote, Keats reveals that Psyche was a mortal who was wedded to Cupid and translated to heaven as an immortal. In Kris Steyaert's article, "Poetry as Enforcement: Conquering the Muse in Keats's

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet

So let me be thy choir, and make a moan

The second way that Keats describes his longing to identify the soul is through sensual imagery. According to Andrew Bennet, author of Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity, Keats uses "sensory degradation or deprivation - forms of fading in which the world fades as a result of the fading of the senses" (151). I agree with the claim that Keats uses sensory degradation, particularly in stanza two, however, Bennet fails to admit that in the third stanza all of the things that faded now come back to life. In the second stanza, Keats says that Psyche, because a late-born goddess, has no

virgin choir to make delicious moan

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Approximate Word count = 1040
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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