Being and process in John Keats’ Ode to Autumn
The paper considers how the language of John Keats’ poem conveys the sense of Autumn as being simultaneously a state and a process. The paper conveys that Keats shows us that Autumn is like the paradox of light, both a particle and a wave; at once, a bounded entity and an ongoing process.
“In his “Ode To Autumn,” John Keats portrays the process of transformation that the earth and its inhabitants undergo in the fall. However, simply to assert that in this poem Keats presents Autumn as being a process rather than a state would miss Keats’ insight into what Nature’s processes are all about. While he could not have phrased it in Twentieth Century vocabulary, Keats shows us that Autumn is like the paradox of light, both a particle and a wave; at once, a bounded entity and an ongoing process.”