The Ethics of the Ode: The Ancient Tradition and Two Modern Examples

Abstract

Chapters three and four examine the work of two classically trained (though otherwise very different modern poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Chapter three discusses the ways in which Shelley used the ode form as a means of championing both his own poetry and his revolutionary political ideals. Chapter four discusses Hopkins's famous ode "The Wreck of the Deutschland," and examines the ways in which the poem both praises and enacts a specifically Catholic ethics of assent to the divine will.