This paper attempts an intertextual reading of two important odes, namely, Milton’s “Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” and Keats’ “To Psyche”. The paper attempts to analyze the two selected odes in the light of the modern theories of intertextuality, which determines the use of poetic conventions and the shape of poetic discourse. While intertextuality is not a search for sources, it can be considered a participation of text in a discursive space of culture. An attempt is made to adopt the notion of interrelationships among texts. In analyzing these relationships in the odes chosen, the context of utterance and the use of speech-acts is considered, and the inherent comparative framework of the odes is brought out.

Two important odes in English literature, namely, Milton’s “Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” and Keats’ “To Psyche”, seem to call for analysis in the light of the notion of intertextuality which is understood to be controlling the use of poetic conventions, including the shaping of poetic discourse. To be specific, the distinct similarity in the use of poetic
discourse in the following two extracts from the said two odes warrants such a reading:

The oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving:
Apollo from his shrine
man no more divine
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from his prophetic cell. (Milton, 1964, p. 47)
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged censer teeming;
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming. (Keats, 1964, p. 97)

English Studies Journal, an intertextual, reading, two important odes, namely, Milton’s, Ode, Morning, christ’s Nativity” , Keats’ “, Psyche”.