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In a 1979 essay, Jerome McGann argued that while the poem was indirectly influenced by historical events, Keats had deliberately ignored the political landscape of 1819.<ref>McGann 1979 pp. 988–1032</ref> Countering this view, Andrew Bennett, Nicholas Roe and others focused more on the political aspects of the poem, Roe arguing for a direct connection to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819.<ref>Strachan 2003 p. 175</ref> Later, Paul Fry further argued against McGann's stance when he pointed out, "It scarcely seems pertinent to say that 'To Autumn' is therefore an evasion of social violence when it is so clearly an encounter with death itself [...] it is not a politically encoded escape from history reflecting the coerced betrayal [...] of its author's radicalism. McGann thinks to rescue Keats from the imputation of political naïveté by saying that he was a radical browbeaten into quietism".<ref>Fry 1995 pp. 123–124</ref> In regards to other political aspects, post-colonial critic Alan Bewell interpreted the themes of Keats's ode in the context of British imperialism. He claimed "To Autumn" promoted the moderate climate of Britain over tropical climates.<ref>Bewell 2008 pp. 635–638</ref>
In a 1979 essay, Jerome McGann argued that while the poem was indirectly influenced by historical events, Keats had deliberately ignored the political landscape of 1819.<ref>McGann 1979 pp. 988–1032</ref> Countering this view, Andrew Bennett, Nicholas Roe and others focused more on the political aspects of the poem, Roe arguing for a direct connection to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819.<ref>Strachan 2003 p. 175</ref> Later, Paul Fry further argued against McGann's stance when he pointed out, "It scarcely seems pertinent to say that 'To Autumn' is therefore an evasion of social violence when it is so clearly an encounter with death itself [...] it is not a politically encoded escape from history reflecting the coerced betrayal [...] of its author's radicalism. McGann thinks to rescue Keats from the imputation of political naïveté by saying that he was a radical browbeaten into quietism".<ref>Fry 1995 pp. 123–124</ref> In regards to other political aspects, post-colonial critic Alan Bewell interpreted the themes of Keats's ode in the context of British imperialism. He claimed "To Autumn" promoted the moderate climate of Britain over tropical climates.<ref>Bewell 2008 pp. 635–638</ref>
==Critical reception==
Critical and scholarly praise has been unanimous in declaring "To Autumn" one of the most perfect poems in the English language. A.C. Swinburne placed it with "Ode on a Grecian Urn" as "the nearest to absolute perfection" of Keats's odes; Aileen Ward declared it "Keats's most perfect and untroubled poem"; and Douglas Bush has stated the poem is "flawless in structure, texture, tone, and rhythm";<ref>Bennett 1991 qtd. p. 159</ref> Walter Evert, in 1965, stated "To Autumn" is "the only perfect poem that Keats ever wrote – and if this should seem to take from him some measure of credit for his extraordinary enrichment of the English poetic tradition, I would quickly add that I am thinking of absolute perfection in whole poems, in which every part is wholly relevant to and consistent in effect with every other part."<ref>Evert 1965 p. 298</ref>
Early reviews of "To Autumn" focused on it as part of Keats's collection of poems ''Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems''. An anonymous critic in the July 1820 ''Monthly Review'' claimed, "this writer is very rich both in imagination and fancy; and even a superabundance of the latter faculty is displayed in his lines 'On Autumn,' which bring the reality of nature more before our eyes than almost any description that we remember [...] If we did not fear that, you as is Mr K., his peculiarities are fixed beyond all the power of criticism to remove, we would exhort him to become somewhat less strikingly original,—to be less fond of the folly of too new or too old phrases,—and to believe that poetry does not consist in either the one or the other."<ref>Matthews 1971 qtd. p. 162</ref> Josiah Conder in the September 1820 ''Eclectic Review'' argued, "One naturally turns first to the shorter pieces, in order to taste the flavour of the poetry. The following ode to Autumn is no unfavourable specimen."<ref>Matthews 1971 qtd. p. 233</ref> The ''Edinburgh Magazine'' ran a review in 1820 which simply said, "The ode to 'Fancy,' and the ode to 'Autumn,' also have great merit.<ref>Matthews 1971 qtd. p. 215</ref>
Mid-19th century critics viewed the poem favorably. A review in the October 1859 ''National Review'' explained that there are "four exquisite odes,—'To a Nightingale,' 'To a Grecian Urn,' 'To Melancholy,' and 'To Autumn,'—all so pregnant with deep thought, so picturesque in their limning, and so suggestive."<ref>Matthews 1971 qtd. p. 356</ref> In 1865, Matthew Arnold used the poem as evidence that Keats was a better poet than Percy Bysshe Shelley .<ref>Arnold 1865 p. 109</ref> John Dennis, in an 1883 work about great poets, wrote that "the 'Ode to Autumn', ripe with the glory of the season it describes—must ever have a place among the most precious gems of lyrical poetry."<ref>Dennis 1883 p. 372</ref> The 1888 Britannica declared, "Of these [odes] perhaps the two nearest to absolute perfection, to the triumphant achievement and accomplishment of the very utmost beauty possible to human words, may be that of to Autumn and that on a Grecian Urn".<ref>Baynes 1888 p. 23</ref>
At the turn of the 20th century, a 1904 analysis of great poetry by Stephen Gwynn claimed, "above and before all [of Keats's poems are] the three odes, ''To a Nightingale'', ''On a Grecian Urn'', and ''To Autumn''. Among these odes criticism can hardly choose; in each of them the whole magic of poetry seems to be contained."<ref>Gwynn 1904 p. 378</ref> Sidney Colvin, in his 1920 biography, pointed out that "["To Autumn"] opens up no such far-reaching avenues to the mind and soul of the reader as the odes ''To a Grecian Urn'', ''To a Nightingale'', or ''On Melancholy'', but in execution is more complete and faultless than any of them."<ref>Colvin 1920 p. 422</ref> Following this in a 1934 analysis of Romantic poetry, Margaret Sherwood stated that the poem was "a perfect expression of the phase of primitive feeling and dim thought in regard to earth processes when these are passing into a thought of personality."<ref>Sherwood 1934 p. 263</ref>
Harold Bloom, in 1961, described "To Autumn" as "the most perfect shorter poem in the English language."<ref>Bloom 1993 p. 432</ref> Following this, Walter Jackson Bate, in 1963, claimed that "[...] each generation has found it one of the most nearly perfect poems in English."<ref>Bate 1963 p. 581</ref> Later in 1973, Stuart Sperry wrote, "'To Autumn' succeeds through its acceptance of an order innate in our experience – the natural rhythm of the seasons. It is a poem that, without ever stating it, inevitably suggests the truth of 'ripeness is all' by developing, with a richness of profundity of implication, the simple perception that ripeness is fall."<ref>Sperry 1973 p. 336</ref> In 1981, William Walsh argued that "Among the major Odes [...] no one has questioned the place and supremacy of 'To Autumn', in which we see wholly realized, powerfully embodied in art, the complete maturity so earnestly laboured at in Keats's life, so persuasively argued about in his letters."<ref>Walsh 1981 p. 118</ref> Literary critic and academic Helen Vendler , in 1988, declared that "in the ode 'To Autumn,' Keats finds his most comprehensive and adequate symbol for the social value of art."<ref>Vendler 1988 p. 124</ref>
In 1997, Andrew Motion summarized the critical view on "To Autumn": "it has often been called Keats's 'most ... untroubled poem' [...] To register the full force of its achievement, its tensions have to be felt as potent and demanding."<ref name="Motion p. 461"/> Following in 1998, M. H. Abrams explained, "'To Autumn' was the last work of artistic consequence that Keats completed [...] he achieved this celebratory poem, with its calm acquiescence to time, transience and mortality, at a time when he was possessed by a premonition [...] that he had himself less than two years to live".<ref>Abrams pp. 51–52</ref> James Chandler, also in 1998, pointed out that "If ''To Autumn'' is his greatest piece of writing, as has so often been said, it is because in it he arguably set himself the most ambitious challenge of his brief career and managed to meet it."<ref>Chandler 1998 p. 430</ref> Timothy Corrigan, in 2000, claimed that {{"'}}To Autumn' may be, as other critics have pointed out, his greatest achievement in its ability [...] to redeem the English vernacular as the casual expression of everyday experience, becoming in this his most exterior poem even in all its bucolic charm."<ref>Corrigan 2000 p. 156</ref> In 2008, Stanley Plumly wrote, "history, posterity, immortality are seeing 'Ode to a Nightingale,' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' and 'To Autumn' as three of the most anthologized lyric poems of tragic vision in English."<ref>Plumly 2008 p. 343</ref>
==Notes==
==Notes==