1795-1821

John Keats
Brief Biography

 Son of a stable-owner
 Small of stature (barely 5ft when
grown), but still athletic.
 Had poor health most of his life
 Felt he would have an early death
 Parents died when he was young
 Apprenticed to an apothecary
 Started writing when he was 18
 Had a ill-fated engagement with
Fanny Brawne
 1821 Dies in Rome
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Fanny Brawne
 Met her in September of
1818
 Keats was 23 she was 18
 We know very little about
her, her letters were
buried with Keats
 All we see is his side of the
story
 His letters were intense and
passionate
 Love was a disease only
she could cure
 He loves her but death
imagery is often
mentioned in the letters
 Refers to her as “the Minx”
in letters to friends
 Relationship was apparently
never consummated
 He was never financially
secure enough to marry
her

Literary…continued
 Sensuous
 Distinctive description
 Engages all of the senses
 Mythic imagery
 Borrows from Greek Mythology
 Frustrated Sexuality
 Pleasure vs. pain
 Lethal women – almost “vampiric” imagery
▪ “Christabel”
▪ “Lamia”
 Was the least political of the 2nd generation
Romantics
 Some say he was reacting to the social horrors by
being intentionally “escapist”


Literary Traits

 Most of his poetry is written

between 1818-1821
 Constantly experimented with
poetic forms
 Ie: Spenserian Sonnet
▪ Sub-form of the English
sonnet
▪ Ababbabccdcdee rhyme
scheme
The Odes

 Probablyhis most distinctive

achievement
 Most of them written in the spring of
1819
 Composed very quickly
 Very self-aware
▪ Examines the creative process
▪ Poems of “sensation” rather than thought
 Written during a tumultuous time in his
life:
 Death of brother
 His own ill health
The Odes…continued

 "Beauty is truth, truth beauty.“

 reconcile the frankly human experience :
▪ of touch, taste, hearing, and sight
▪ moral and philosophical aspirations of
timeless art
 rich, evocative language
▪ luscious sounds, sensual symbols of beauty
 Keats focuses on the images of the
nightingale and the urn
▪ a symbolic debate of the sensual pleasures
and pains of mortal existence versus the
ecstatic dissolution of self in art.
▪ identification between the speaker and the
symbol and the knowledge of its (the
nightingale’s or the urn’s) limitations
Odes…continued

 Keats strives for an aesthetic

objectivity in his poems:
▪ "negative capability,“
▪ Poet’s personality does not
intrude into the poem
 engages some of the same Romantic
preoccupations:
▪ failure of the imagination,
▪ heightened observation of nature
▪ innovation of lyrical forms
Nightingale - Summary

 the poet becomes numb to the world

 escapes to the dark realm of the
nightingale’s song
▪ hopes he can die at that moment of
joy;
▪ considers the consequences of
death,
▪ the eternal life of the nightingale
 he is called back to his self and the
fleeting experience of artistic
pleasure.
Grecian Urn - Summary

 poet praises the urn

 considers its features with inquisitive
joy
 he imagines the idealized and
permanent state of each
unconsummated passion
represented there
▪ ecstatic sympathetic identification with
the passion
 considers the sacrifice, the mysterious
motives of the pagan ritual
 poet contemplates the urn
Themes

 Beauty is the inspiration of the human

spirit
 it is the inevitable nature of things to
destroy beauty
 art is the permanent expression of
transient beauty.
 The nightingale’s song becomes the
vehicle for the poet’s imagination,
expression, ecstasy;
 the urn is the timeless historian of
human passion, the preserver of