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John Keats

Module

British Romanticism: Literature In An Age Of Revolution

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Students shared 16 documents in this course
Academic year: 2017/2018
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University of Cumbria

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John Keats: Art, Time, and Poetic Identity

Background

Keats was born in 1795 and died in Rome, 1821 after suffering with tuberculosis. The painting above depicts Keats on his deathbed in Rome. Keats is considered one of the central canonical poets of the Romanticism era, particularly within the second generation, but his work was considered unusual. The second generation’s work benefitted from the hindsight of prior events which occurred during the period of first generation’s Revolutionary Period, while also being heavily influenced by Regency culture. However, the second generation are particularly known for dying young.

Keats felt the pressures of being a poet during this unstable age. Unlike his contemporaries, Keats came from a middle-class background. Also known as the commercial/trading class, the middle-class were considered to be rising in status. Keats hailed from London, his father managed livery stables, and he had no formal primary schooling.

Keats was viciously attacked in the literary reviews of the period. The infamous Blackwood review situates him in the ‘Cockney school of poetry’ and refers to ‘the imperturbably drivelling idiocy of Endymoin’; clearly expressing class implications. He was perceived among critics as an upstart that needed to be squashed. Critical responses to his work were often riddled with snobbery as many personally condemned Keats for his class and use of mythology and form as they were seen as exclusively for the educated.

Reputation

Though Keats never received a unanimous response to his work, it was initially hostile. In the Victorian period Keats gained popularity as a sensitive and lyrical poet and was seen as lacking the moral/intellectual depth and dimension of the other Romantics. Due to being regarded as a sensuous writer who produced pleasing but incipit poetry, Keats’ skill was downgraded.

In 1880, Matthew Arnold challenged popular perceptions, arguing that Keats’ letters provide evidence of his intellectual rigor and moral awareness. As a result, Keats’ reputation underwent a radial revision. His letters set out key poetic theories and provided evidence for his intellectual ability. His letters were not only a place for him to layout his poetic theories and philosophical ideas, but also somewhere to explore them further.

Poetic Theories

Negative Capability (to enface ones mental identity and allow your ego to merge with the subject) – This key idea is mentioned in Keats’ December 1817 letter:

I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke of various subjects; several things dove- tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without irritable reaching after fact and reason – Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursed through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all considerations.

Keats, in his letter and explanation of Negative Capability opposes the models of previous Romantic poets and their works. An alternative model of thinking by the Romantic poets is represented by Wordsworth and Coleridge in Keats’ October 1818 letter on the ‘egotistical sublime’:

As to the poetical character itself ( I mean that sort of which, if I am anything, I am a Member; that sort of distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself – it has no self – it is every thing and nothing – it has no character

The ‘egotistical sublime’ is a self-centred quality that opposes negative capability. Prior literary figures of the Romantic period focused on their objective engagement with the external world and their mind and the transformation it causes within their internal mind. Negative Capability is how Keats defines a true poet – the capacity to lose oneself; some theories that this is a destructive quality as it indicates that Keats’ sense of self is fragile.

Negative Capability involves the capacity to efface own identity: ‘When I am in a room full of people.. identity of everyone in the room begins to press upon me that I am in a very little time annihilated’ (Reader, p. 108). Keats demonstrates a profound level of empathy and a vulnerable ego.

For Keats, the ontological (experience of being) proceeds the knowing. This includes experiencing something before truly understanding it. “life of sensations rather than thought” – he partakes of the experience of others. Tries to take on the positions of different subjects.

Negative Capability and Gender

In Mellor’s Romanticism and Gender, Mellor argues that there is a masculine Romantic discourse and a feminine Romantic discourse, and identifies Keats with the latter; it is believed that Keats adopted a ‘female’ role in life as his first job was at an apothecary. The ideas of discourse are not presented as binary opposites though, and not everyone fits.

Joseph Severn’s drawing of Keats on his deathbed presents the feminine ideas surrounding Keats. Some mythised that Keats was killed by the harsh reviewers who mercilessly attacked him and his works. Byron commented that this was what had snuffed him out. Shelley wrote in his poetic elegy to Keats: “pierced by the shaft that flies in darkness”.

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John Keats

Module: British Romanticism: Literature In An Age Of Revolution

16 Documents
Students shared 16 documents in this course

University: University of Cumbria

Was this document helpful?
John Keats: Art, Time, and Poetic Identity
Background
Keats was born in 1795 and died in Rome, 1821 after suffering with tuberculosis. The painting above
depicts Keats on his deathbed in Rome. Keats is considered one of the central canonical poets of the
Romanticism era, particularly within the second generation, but his work was considered unusual. The
second generation’s work benefitted from the hindsight of prior events which occurred during the
period of first generation’s Revolutionary Period, while also being heavily influenced by Regency
culture. However, the second generation are particularly known for dying young.
Keats felt the pressures of being a poet during this unstable age. Unlike his contemporaries, Keats
came from a middle-class background. Also known as the commercial/trading class, the middle-class
were considered to be rising in status. Keats hailed from London, his father managed livery stables,
and he had no formal primary schooling.
Keats was viciously attacked in the literary reviews of the period. The infamous Blackwood review
situates him in the ‘Cockney school of poetry’ and refers to ‘the imperturbably drivelling idiocy of
Endymoin’; clearly expressing class implications. He was perceived among critics as an upstart that
needed to be squashed. Critical responses to his work were often riddled with snobbery as many
personally condemned Keats for his class and use of mythology and form as they were seen as
exclusively for the educated.
Reputation
Though Keats never received a unanimous response to his work, it was initially hostile. In the
Victorian period Keats gained popularity as a sensitive and lyrical poet and was seen as lacking the
moral/intellectual depth and dimension of the other Romantics. Due to being regarded as a sensuous
writer who produced pleasing but incipit poetry, Keats’ skill was downgraded.
In 1880, Matthew Arnold challenged popular perceptions, arguing that Keats’ letters provide evidence
of his intellectual rigor and moral awareness. As a result, Keats’ reputation underwent a radial
revision. His letters set out key poetic theories and provided evidence for his intellectual ability. His
letters were not only a place for him to layout his poetic theories and philosophical ideas, but also
somewhere to explore them further.

Students also viewed

Related documents