John Keats as romantic poet
Ø Name:-
Rathod Neha R.
Ø Class:-
M.A. sem-2
Ø Roll
no:-29
Ø Year:-
2016-2017
Ø Paper:-
5
Ø Topic:
john keats as romantic poet
Ø
M.K. Bhavnagar university
department of English
department of English
Ø
Joan
Keats as a romantic poet:-
Introduction:-
Keats was born in 1795
and died in 1821. He was a one of the key figures of the romantic movement. He
has become one of the most important poet of the second generation. The poetry
of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery. When he was very young his mother
died. He was a very good student and since he was a teenager he was interested
in books and he was fascinated in classical literature. Then he left school and
he went to work as an apprentice to a surgeon apothecary. After this period of
apprenticeship he decided to devote his life to writing. He made friend with
art and literature critics Haydon e Reynolds that influenced him in this period
because they took him to the British museum where there were the marbles of
Pantheon (known as Elgin marbles). Keats remained fascinated by these marbles.
Keats as the supreme lover of beauty says, “A things of beauty is joy forever.”
In 1818 he wrote “Endymion”, a
mythological poem. He published this poem but it was attacked by the critics.
Then he wrote “Hyperion” and in the same year he met and fall in love with
Fanny Brawne.
In 1819 he composed most of his
poems. In 1820 he went to Italy and he settled in Naples, then he moved to Rome
where he died in 1821 when he was only 26. On his tombstone are engraved these
words: “Here lies one whose name was written in water”.
John
Keats foremost Theme:-
· Beauty
· Love
· Nature
· Fancy
· Power
· Pain
We can distinguish
three moments in his poetic production:
• I stood tip toe;
• In step and poetry;
• On first looking into
Chapman’s Homer: he describes his emotion and his sensations that he felt when
he read for the first time Homer translated for Chapman.
His most successful
poems are lyrical poems (“Ode to a nightingale”), and his most important poem
is “Ode to a Grecian urn”. He was also fascinated by the middle ages and he
wrote “La belle dame sans merci”.
Features
and themes of his poetry:
• Melancholy, mortality
of mankind;
• Poetry was for him
his only reason of life; he considered poetry the way in which he could go on
living and according to him poetry could defeat death;
• Imagination
• Beauty that is central
in Keats poetry: for this reason beauty becomes a key point and it is the only
consolation in a life of sorrow. There are two different types of beauty
according to Keats: physical beauty that is temporary (beauty of a woman, of a
painting) and spiritual beauty that is the beauty of love, art friendship and
it is eternal. This kind of beauty represented for him a source of consolation
(so it is something like a moral value);
• Negative capability:
the poet (according to Keats) should not rationalise, he has to live his
experience without a theorization of his feelings and of his experiences. He
has to transform them into poetry (without rationalisation);
• Ancient Greek art
that is for him the prototype of beauty;
• Nature: Keats saw
nature as a form of beauty;
• Beauty imagined that
is superior than beauty perceived, so sensory perception, according to Keats,
is limited compared to that you imagined;
• Middle ages: he had a
great interest in the middle ages that are important because the imagination of
the poet can be enriched with the legends, with the elements of Middle Ages and
with the themes of medieval ballads.
What
makes John Keats a romantic
poet:-
“ beauty is truth, truth is
beauty,’ that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” (Ode on a
Grecian urn”)
Keas
cynicism about his life and his impending doom was seldom of his work though he
was depressed about death, he wrote with a strong appreciation of life , love
and beauty.
In
a letter to his lover fanny Brawne , Keats writes, I have two luxuries to brood
over in my walk your loveliness and the hour of my death… I hate the word: it
better too much the wrings of my self will, and would t could take a sweet poison
from your lips to send me out of it.”
Nature
vs. culture is the number one rule of Romanticism.
Keats
was heavily influenced by
· Homer
· Dante
· Virgil
· Shakespeare
Death,
sorrow, love and nature are signature of Romanticism.
Lyric and transcendent, that which is beyond human
understanding.
Creation of art and role of poet.
For
most work of John Keats:-
“ A Thing of beauty (Endymion)
“ Bright star”
“La belle dame sense Merci”
“Ode on A Grecian Um”
“Ode to A nightingale”
“To Autumn”
Quotes
of John Keats:-
“Hear lies one whose
name was writ in water.”
“ I love you the more
in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.”
“love is my religion –
I could die for it.”
“ I am certain of
nothing but the holiness of the hearts affections, and the truth of
imagination.”
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