NATURE AS A SANCTUARY: AN ECOCRITICAL COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ESCAPISM IN JOHN KEATS’S ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE AND GHANI KHAN’S THE PALACE

Abstract

The research at hand explores how nature is portrayed as an escapist refuge in John Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale and Ghani Khan’s The Palace using the ecocritical approach. The study will examine how the two poets, both in different cultural, historical and stylistic settings, utilize the use of natural imagery, sensory motives and imaginary constructs to establish spaces of refuge that offered psychological, emotional and philosophical reprieve to the human suffering and existential fears. Based on the qualitative research design, the study applies a comparative literary analysis under the influence of close reading, thematic categorization, and ecocritical interpretation. As the poem by Keats is analyzed, the refuge is based on the momentary aesthetic and emotional escapism, where the song of the nightingale and the countryside scenery serves as the moment of transporting the poet out of mortality and worldly matters. Ghani Khan, in his turn, creates a sustainable and holistic refuge encompassing natural components in the walls of the palace to provide a more sensual and environment-oriented environment of both imaginative and philosophical contemplation. The comparative analysis shows that the two poets share the idea of finding solace and imaginative renewal and spiritual contemplation in nature, and diverge in their attitudes toward the temporality, the focus of senses, and cultural outlook. The study indicates how ecocriticism is applicable to the study of the role of literature in the development of the human perception of the natural world and their interaction with it. The results indicate that literature can be viewed as a reflection of ecological awareness and as the means of exploration of the imaginations, which points at the transformative role of nature in human experience.