Author(s)

Li Na

Corresponding Author

Li Na

ABSTRACT

Keats’s “To Autumn” has been regarded as the most accomplished one among his six odes. New Critics believes that tensions are necessarily a part of everyone’s life and superior poetry present these human experience while at the same time showing how these tensions are resolved within the poem to achieve its organic unity. “To Autumn” possesses these qualities of superior poetry that New Critics maintains. This article attempts to interpret this poem in a formalistic approach by resorting to “careful scrutiny” of New Criticism, based on its principle concepts such as “tension”, “paradox” and “irony”.

KEYWORDS

New Criticism, Careful Scrutiny, Tension, Paradox, Irony