John

Keats
1795-1821
“They will explain themselves - as all poems should do
without any comment.”
John Keats to his brother George, 1818
JOHN KEATS
BIOGRAPHY
Early Life
 Born October 31, 1795 in central London
 Swan and Hoop Inn
 Eldest of four children (three boys and one sister,
Fanny)
 Father dies when Keats is eight years old; mother
dies of tuberculosis when he is fourteen
 Keats becomes a key figure in the second
generation of the British Romantic movement
(along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley)
Education & Apprenticeship
 1803: parents sent him to board at John Clarke’s school in
Enfield, close to his grandparents’ house (financial concerns)
 Clarke’s school was small, but progressive.
 Befriended headmaster’s son, Charles Cowden Clarke, who
would later introduce Keats to Renaissance literature and serve
as a mentor.
 Volatile, “always in extremes” personality
 At age 13, Keats began focusing his energy toward reading and
studying.
 At 14, after his mother dies, Keats leaves Clarke’s school to
apprentice with Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary
until 1813.
 Registers as a medical student at Guy’s Hospital in October
1815—shows distinct talent.
 1816—receives apothecary’s license, but by the end of the year
announces his intention to become a poet, not a surgeon.
 Suffered periods of depression
 First poem, “An Imitation of Spenser”, was written in 1814, when
Keats was 19 and studying medicine.
Early Poetry and Influence
 Clarke introduces Keats to Leigh Hunt, an
influential poet and close friend of Byron and
Shelley.
 Though his poetry was not well received initially,
Hunt continued introducing Keats to prominent
men, establishing Keats as a respected public
figure.
 1817—his health failing, Keats moves in with his
brothers to help care for brother Tom, who has
tuberculosis. Some biographers suggest that it is
while nursing his brother that Keats first contracted
his “family disease.”
Hampstead Heath
 After brother Tom dies in December 1818,
Keats moves in with a friend, Charles
Armitage Brown.
 During the winter of 1818-1819, Keats
produces his most mature work.
 Meets Wordsworth at a dinner at
Hampstead.
 Composes five of his six “great odes” in
April and May 1819.
 Romantic Life (Fanny Brawne and
Isabella Jones)
 Keats first met Fanny Brawne sometime between September
and November 1818, when he was nursing his brother Tom.
 Fanny’s grandfather had kept an inn, as Keats’s father had,
and she had also lost several family members to tuberculosis.
Their relationship was intimate, but brief.
 Isabella Jones and Keats were also briefly involved in the winter
of 1818-1819, when Keats was at his creative best.
 Biographers suggest that the first version of Keats’s “Bright Star”
sonnet may have been written for Isabella, but the final version
was presented to Fanny. He continued to work on this poem
until the last months of his life, and the poem is ultimately
associated with Fanny.
 By the end of June 1819, Keats arrived at an understanding with
Fanny, though it was not a formal engagement because he still
had no financial stability or prospects.
 Keats suffered knowing that as a struggling poet, he would not
be able to marry her anytime soon. He became jealous and
depressed.
Fanny Brawne
 "My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist
without you — I am forgetful of every thing but
seeing you again — my Life seems to stop there —
I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a
sensation at the present moment as though I was
dissolving — I should be exquisitely miserable
without the hope of soon seeing you. [...] I have
been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for
religion — I have shudder'd at it — I shudder no
more — I could be martyr'd for my Religion — Love
is my religion — I could die for that — I could die
for you." (Letter, 13 October 1819)
 LOVE FOR FANNY BRAWNE

Keats began to lend Brawne books, such as Dante's Inferno, and

they would read together. He gave her the love sonnet "Bright
Star" (perhaps revised for her) as a declaration. It was a sort of
work in progress which he carried on until the point of his death,
and the poem came to be associated with their relationship. "All
his desires were concentrated on Fanny".[48] From this point there
is no further documented mention of Isabella Jones.

Sometime before the end of June, he arrived at some sort of

understanding with Brawne, far from a formal engagement as he
still had too little to offer, with no prospects and financial
stricture.[49] Keats endured great conflict knowing his
expectations as a struggling poet in increasingly hard straits
would preclude marriage to Brawne. Their love remained
unconsummated; jealousy for his 'star' began to gnaw at him.
Darkness, disease and depression surrounded him, reflected in
poems such as The Eve of St. Agnes and "La Belle Dame sans
Merci" where love and death both stalk. "
"I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks;" he wrote to her,
"...your loveliness, and the hour of my death".[49]
In one of his many hundreds of notes and letters, Keats wrote to
Brawne on 13 October 1819: "My love has made me selfish. I
cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of every thing but
seeing you again – my Life seems to stop there – I see no further.
You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present
moment as though I was dissolving – I should be exquisitely
miserable without the hope of soon seeing you ... I have been
astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have
shudder'd at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr'd for my
Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die
for you."
 Isabella is the narrative poem by
John Keats. Isabella fell in love
with Lorenzo who was murdered
by her brothers.
His ghost tells her in a dream of
his murder. She keeps the head
of her lover in a pot of basil.
William Holman Hunt who
painted the picture used his wife
Fanny’s face for this drawing
because she died of fever after
child birth which is why he
immortalized her beauty in the
face of Isabella. After her
death, he worked on it steadily
for months together returning to
England in 1867, and finally he
completed it in January 1868.
The painting of Isabella by William
Holman Hunt
 Isabella Jones
Keats befriended Isabella Jones in May 1817 while on holiday in
the village of Bo Peep, near Hastings. She was beautiful, talented,
well educated not in the top rank of society yet financially secure,
an enigmatic figure who would become a part of Keats's
circle.[41][42] Throughout their friendship Keats never hesitates to
own his sexual attraction to her, although they seem to enjoy
circling each other rather than offering commitment. He writes
that he "frequented her rooms" in the winter of 1818–19, and in his
letters to George says that he "warmed with her" and "kissed her“.

The themes of The Eve of St. Agnes and The Eve of St Mark may
well have been suggested by her, the lyric Hush, Hush! ["o sweet
Isabel"] was about her, and that the first version of "Bright Star"
may have originally been for her.[43][44] In 1821, Jones was one
of the first in England to be notified of Keats's death.[41]
Letters
 Keats wrote hundreds of letters to his brothers, sister,
friends, and romantic interests.
 Much of what we know of Keats, his life, and his
inspiration come from his letters.
 None of Fanny Brawne’s letters to Keats survive. We
have his letters to her, but upon his request, after his
death her letters were destroyed.
 Though first published in 1848 and 1878, Keats’s
letters were ignored until the twentieth century,
when T. S. Eliot described them as "certainly the
most notable and most important ever written by
any English poet.”
Later Life
 By the end of 1819, tuberculosis took hold and his doctors
advised him to move to a warmer climate.
 September 1820: Keats departs for Rome and dies there
five months later.
 His friend and travel companion, Joseph Severn, nurses him
and attempts to comfort him throughout treatment until
Keats dies on February 23, 1821 at the age of 25.
 Keats is buried in Rome. His last request was to be placed
under a unnamed tombstone which contained only the
words (in pentameter, of course), "Here lies one whose
name was writ in water."
 “This Grave / contains all that was Mortal / of a / Young
English Poet / Who / on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his
Heart / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies / Desired /
these Words to be / engraven on his Tomb Stone: / Here lies
One / Whose Name was writ in Water. 24 February 1821"
 Fanny mourns for Keats for six years, and marries in 1833,
more than 12 years after his death.
Poetry
 John Keats's literary career amounted to just three and a half
years. It began in July 1816 after he passed the apothecaries'
examination at Guy's Hospital and lasted until late 1819. He
wrote a few poems before 1816, but his career truly began
after he left his medical training.
 Keats wrote 150 poems, but those upon which his reputation
rests were written in the span of nine months, from January to
September 1819. This intense flowering of talent remains
unparalleled in literary history.
Keats published three books of verse in his lifetime:
 The first volume, Poems, was published by C and J Ollier in
March 1817. It was dedicated to Leigh Hunt and contained
thirty-one works, including 'Sleep and Poetry' and 'On first
looking into Chapman's Homer'.
 His second volume, Endymion, was published by Taylor and
Hessey in April 1818. It was savagely reviewed and sold poorly.
 His third volume, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and
Other Poems, was published by Taylor and Hessey in June
1820. It contained thirteen works, including the great odes of
1819 (though not the 'Ode on Indolence') and 'Hyperion'.
Odes
 Ode: usually a lyric poem of moderate length, with a
serious subject, an elevated style, and an elaborate
stanza pattern. The ode often praises people, the
arts of music and poetry, natural scenes, or abstract
concepts. The Romantic poets used the ode to
explore both personal or general problems; they
often started with a meditation on something in
nature, as did Keats in "Ode to a Nightingale" or
Shelley in "Ode to the West Wind."
 Keats is known for his five 'great odes' of 1819, which
are generally believed to have been written in the
following order - Psyche, Nightingale, Grecian Urn,
Melancholy, and Autumn
Sonnet form
Keats employed the irregular rhyme scheme : abc, abd, cab, cde, de.
It follows neither the Petrarchan octave nor the Shakespearean
quatrains and concluding couplet.

Keats’s sonnet addresses his theme of the traditional stanza patterns

and their rhyme schemes. The poet freely experiments with both,
leading directly to the triumphant odes of Keats’s annus mirabilis.
These odes of 1819—“To a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,”
“Ode on Melancholy,” and “Ode on Indolence”display the fruit of
Keats’s sonnet experimentation, which led directly to the new lyric
form used in the great odes. Here Keats conserves some of the
elements of both sonnet forms: the quatrain of the English form (abab)
and the sestet of the Petrarchan sonnet (cde, cde). However, he
organically extends these forms, makes them more malleable, “more
interwoven and complete/ To fit the naked foot of poesy.” In his odes,
he successfully prunes out the “dead leaves” in the bay-wreath crown,
avoiding monotony and gaining new freedom. Thus he develops the
perfect genre he had been seeking in “On the Sonnet.
 ANALYSIS OF “ ON HIS SONNET”

Keats’s poem “On the Sonnet” examines that poetic form significantly for its structural
demands and restrictions. The poet begins by positing the necessity of “dull rhymes,”
which he feels chain “our English” and “fetter” the sonnet. He offers next the image of
Andromeda, or “pained loveliness”; Ovid tells of this beautiful maiden being chained
to a rock by Jupiter to pay for her mother’s excessive boasting. Here Keats compares
the confinement of the lovely and innocent Andromeda with the sweet beauty of
poetry being fettered by the demands of rhyme. The poet seems, however, resigned
to rhyme’s fetters but insists that rhyme, like an intricate sandal, be more “interwoven
and complete/ To fit the naked foot of poesy.” The poet offers this interweaving as a
solution to what Keats in his letters calls “pounding rhymes.” He wants rhyme to be
more subtle and intricate, complementing the content of the poem as a whole and
not drawing attention to itself.

His next concern is the sonnet’s need for a metrical pattern that is carefully handled:
“Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress/ Of every chord.” The assumption here is
that the sonnet should be music, but not music of a breezy or vague sort. The
sonneteer should “inspect” and “weigh” the sound with “ear industrious, and
attention meet,” concerned that the meter and stress pattern enhance the sound of
the poem.
The poem “On the Sonnet” by John Keats stands as an
example of what is known be “imitative form” by literary
critics in which the form of the poem in some way
imitates its subject matter. The poem, written in
moderately regular iambic pentameter, is a protests
against the “dull rhymes|” and predictability of the
sonnet form and calls for a new type of sonnet in which
the rhymes, rather than forming predictable patterns, are
more “interwoven.” Thus rather than starting off with two
open quatrains (like the English sonnet) or two envelope
quatrains (like the Italian sonnet), Keats uses a sestet
based on three rhyme sounds, followed by another
irregularly rhymed quatrain, and resolving, in the final four
lines into an open or alternating quatrain.
Thematic Contrasts/Juxtaposition
 Issues of identity are common (dreamer/poet)
 Intersection of love and pain (“leopardess… I would like her
to ruin me”) and love and death
 “The Fatal Woman”
 Common contradictory ideas in Keats’ poetry:
 transient sensation or passion / enduring art
 dream or vision / reality
 joy / melancholy
 the ideal / the real
 mortal / immortal
 life / death
 separation / connection
 being immersed in passion / desiring to escape passion
Romanticism vs. Neoclassicism
 Neoclassic Trends  Romantic Trends
 Stressed reason and  Stressed imagination
judgment and emotion
 Valued society  Valued individuals
 Followed authority  Strove for freedom
 Maintained the  Represented
aristocracy common people
 Interested in science  Interested in the
and technology supernatural
Romanticism
 Romanticism: attitude or intellectual orientation that
characterizes many works of literature, music, painting,
architecture, criticism, and historiography in Western
civilization over a period from the late 18th to mid-19th
century
 Rejects precepts of calm, order, harmony, balance,
idealization, and rationality that typifies classicism (in
general) and late 18th century Neoclassicism
(specifically)
 Reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th
century rationalism and materialism
 Emphasizes the individual, the subjective, the irrational,
the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the
emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental
Romanticism (cont.)
 Characteristic Attitudes of the Romantic Movement:
 Deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature
 General exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses
over intellect
 Turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of
human personality and its moods and mental potential
 Preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the
exceptional figure in general, and focus on his passions/inner
struggles
 New view of the artist as a supremely individual creator,
whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence
to formal rules and traditional procedures
 Emphasis on imagination as a gateway to transcendent
experience and spiritual truth
 Obsessive interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural
origins, and the medieval era
 Predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the
weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the
satanic
Synaesthesia and Imagery
 Keats uses vivid, concrete imagery.
 Compressed imagery: condenses images to
heighten intensity for readers
 Pictoral: visual senses often personified
 Associated: senses evoked—literal is metaphoric
 Keats is known for using Synaesthetic
(multisensory/attributing traits from one sense to
another) Images
 “taste the warm South”
 “sunburnt mirth”
 “taste the music of that vision pale”
Negative Capability
 First appeared in a letter to his brother in December 1817. The
idea was not elaborated upon outside this letter.
 Theory invented by Keats to describe the capacity of the
human mind for accepting uncertainty and the unresolved
 Great people, especially poets, have the ability to accept
the fact that not everything can be resolved. Imagination
lends access to holy authority, and such authority cannot be
understood by man.
 “I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various
subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it
struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement
especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so
enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is
capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without
any irritable reaching after fact & 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 pursued 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 every other consideration.”
The House in
Hampstead
where John Keats
lived from 1818 to
1820 and wrote
"Ode to a
Nightingale"
under the pear
tree
 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

Ode to a nightingale' is superficially praise for the nightingale's song. In a deepest

sense it was Keats‘ search for a way to transcend this world and all the pain
associated with it. He probably wrote this ode after he became ill and when he
came to terms with his sad fate. This ode is written in the first person, which makes
this ode almost confessional. Keats first describes the immense joy that bordered
on pain that he felt on hearing the nightingale's song. This hints that he wanted the
song to help him transcend this world. Keats says that his heart was aching with a
'drowsy', numb pain. The words 'numbness pains' are an oxymoron and a paradox,
this hints at Keats' confusion as well as his intoxication. He says that his senses were
dulled as though he had drunk the juice of the hemlock- a poisonous plant or as if
he had taken 'opiate' or opium or like he was submerged in the 'Lethe' the river of
forgetfulness of the past in Greek mythology. He then says this state was brought
on not by sadness or envy but happiness at the happiness of the nightingale and
its song about summer. He compares it to a 'dryad of the trees' which is a forest
sprit in Greek mythology in the form of a young maiden. .
 ODE TO PSYCHE

"The Ode to Psyche" is not universally admired, as are "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode
on a Grecian Urn," and "To Autumn." It has been called "the least clearly organized of the
odes" and the "least coherent and most uneven of the later poems." But even its
detractors have admired Keats's skillful combining of nature and myth and his sensuous
language, as in the description of Cupid and Psyche together. Psyche is clearly a
symbol:

In Greek myth, Psyche represented the soul or mind, meanings that work well in this
poem, with its explicit references to thought and mental process.Psyche is sometimes
seen as a particular quality of mind, imagination. Psyche, like imagination, crosses the
boundary separating the mortal and the immortal, the transitory and the eternal,
because she has been both mortal and immortal.

The critic Harold Bloom suggests that that Psyche symbolizes the human-soul-in-love; hers
is a love story, her lover Cupid is the god of love, his mother is the goddess of love, the
poet encounters Psyche and Cupid between kisses, and the last line of the poem
welcomes love.

The poet feels the loss of faith or source of inspiration. Though the gods have lost their
power in modern society, the poet still desires transcendence, that is, to rise above the
limits of everyday reality for a higher reality, one which engages the higher faculties like
imagination and spirit.
"The Ode to Psyche" is not universally admired, as are "Ode to a
Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and "To Autumn." It has
been called "the least clearly organized of the odes" and the
"least coherent and most uneven of the later poems." But even its
detractors have admired Keats's skillful combining of nature and
myth and his sensuous language, as in the description of Cupid
and Psyche together.
 ANALYSIS OF ODE TO PSYCHE
The poem moves from the poet-dreamer coming upon Psyche and
Cupid in an intense moment between kisses, through his description of
two ages of disbelief i.e, Psyche's and his own--to end with his
dedicating himself to Psyche and what she symbolizes.

Stanzas I-III

At the outset of this ode, the poet wonders whether he really saw
Psyche or whether he dreamed the encounter (I, 5-6). Does the
answer to that question affect the validity of his experience? If the
encounter was a vision or waking dream, would the experience be
negated?
The description of Cupid and Psyche in stanza II and the poet's
praise of her beauty in Stanza III prepare for his conversion in stanza IV;
they help to explain it. Keats emphasizes the joyful state Psyche has
achieved and her beauty, which deserve to be worshipped, though
her age and the poet's age ignore her. The second half of stanza III
and lines 1-3 of stanza IV describe the failure of the ancients to
worship Psyche. And the poet lives in "days so far retired / From happy
pieties" (IV, 5-6).
JOHN KEAT’S POEMS
 The analysis of Keat’s poetry

There are four narrative poems not taking into account of Hyperion,
which is epic rather than narrative and these are : Isabella, The Eve of
St. Agnes, Lamia and The Eve of St. Mark. Isabella is taken from The
Decameron of Bocaccio : The Eve of St. Agnes is based on the
superstition traditionally associated with St. Agnes’ Eve ; Lamia draws its
inspiration from a medieval superstition ; while The Eve of St. Hark deals
with the superstition associated with St. Mark’s Eve.

The objective element in the poems under consideration is

unmistakable. Keats does have one of the essential characteristics of
the story-teller ; he successfully effaces himself in the story that he
narrates. The stories are intensely subjective in tone, for in them Keats
gives his own idealistic interpretation of the legends and the
superstitions that he handles. Moreover, he never misses the
opportunity of illustrating his favourite principle—the workmanship of
beauty and the supreme delight that beauty brings to the minds and
hearts of men. Undeniably, Keats’s narrative poems are of a high order
of excellence.
QUOTES
Sources Cited
 http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry.html
 wikipedia