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John Keats's imagery includes the description of sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, temperature,
weight, pressure, hunger, time, beauty, and movement. Keats repeatedly combines different senses in one image, also known
as synaesthesia. The way Keats uses his synaesthesias makes the imagery have two different effects.
One of these is the sensual effect. The other is the combining of senses normally experienced as separate suggests an underlying
unity of dissimilar things.
Ex.
Ode to a Nightingale
- In some melodious plot, of beechen green.
(Imagery of sound and color used.)
- Tasting of flora and the country green
(Imagery of taste and sight used.)
Other Examples of Imagery:
Examples in La Belle Dame sans Merci:
- And no birds sing.
- The squirrel's granary is full
- And on thy cheek a fading rose
- Her hair was long, her foot was light
- And there I shut her wild sad eyes
- I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
Examples in To Autumn:
- Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
- Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind
- While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
Examples in Ode on a Grecian Urn:
- A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
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