Poetry and Immortality: John Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' - Professor Belinda Jack

What is Keats' poem about, and why is it one of the greatest poems ever written?
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...

‘Thou wast not born for Death! immortal bird/ No hungry generations tread thee down.’
Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ contains these curious lines. How can a bird be ‘immortal’? The poem is partly about immortality, but how does its complex poetic web work?

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...

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