John Keats Essay Sample free essay sample

John Keats lived merely 25 old ages and four months ( 1795-1821 ) . yet his poetic accomplishment is extraordinary. His composing calling lasted a little more than five old ages ( 1814-1820 ) . and three of his great odes–â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale. † â€Å"Ode on a Greek Urn. † and â€Å"Ode on Melancholy†Ã¢â‚¬â€œwere written in one month. Most of his major verse forms were written between his 23rd and 24th old ages. and all his verse forms were written by his 25th twelvemonth. In this brief period. he produced verse forms that rank him as one of the great English poets. He besides wrote letters which T. S. Eliot calls â€Å"the most noteworthy and the most of import of all time written by any English poet. † His mastermind was non by and large perceived during his life-time or instantly after his decease. Keats. deceasing. expected his poesy to be forgotten. as the epitaph he wrote for his gravestone indicates: â€Å"Here lies one whose name was writ in H2O. We will write a custom essay sample on John Keats Essay Sample or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page † But 19th century critics and readers did come to appreciate him. though. for the most portion. they had merely a partial apprehension of his work. They saw Keats as a animal poet ; they focused on his vivid. concrete imagination ; on his portraiture of the physical and the passionate ; and on his submergence in the here and now. One 19th century critic went so far as to asseverate non simply that Keats had â€Å"a head constitutionally awkward for abstract thought. † but that he â€Å"had no head. † Keats’s much-quoted call. â€Å"O for a life of Sensation instead than of Ideas! † ( missive. November 22. 1817 ) has been cited to back up this position. With the 20th century. the perceptual experience of Keats’s poesy expanded ; he was and is praised for his earnestness and thoughfulness. for his covering with hard human struggles and artistic issues. and for his ardent mental chase of truth. Keats advocated populating â€Å"the ripest. fullest experience that one is capable of† ; he believed that what determines truth is experience ( â€Å"axioms are non maxims until they are proved upo n our pulses† ) . The publication of Keats’s letters. with their acute intellectional inquiring and concern with moral and artistic jobs. contributed to this re-assessment. His letters throw visible radiation on his ain poetic patterns and supply penetration into composing in general. John Keats was born on October 31. 1775 in London. His parents were Frances Jennings and Thomas Keats. John Keats was educated at Enfield School. which was known for its broad instruction. While at Enfield. Keats was encouraged by Charles Cowden Clarke in his reading and authorship. After the decease of his parents when he was 14. Keats became apprenticed to a sawbones. In 1815 he became a pupil at Guy’s Hospital. However. after measure uping to go an apothecary-surgeon. Keats gave up the pattern of Medicine to go a poet. Keats had begun composing every bit early as 1814 and his first volume of poesy was published in 1817. In 1818 Keats took a long walking circuit in the British Isles that led to a drawn-out sore pharynx. which was to go a first symptom of the disease that killed his female parent and brother. TB. After he concluded his walking circuit. Keats settled in Hampstead. Here he and Fanny Brawne met and fell in love. However. they were neer able to get married becaus e of his wellness and fiscal state of affairs. Between the Fall of 1818 and 1820 Keats produces some of his best known plants. such as La Belle Dame sans Merci and Lamia. After 1820 Keats’ unwellness became so terrible that he had to go forth England for the warmer clime of Italy. In 1821 he died of TB in Rome. He is buried there in the Protestant graveyard. Keats and Romanticism Keats belonged to a literary motion called romanticism. Romantic poets. because of their theories of literature and life. were drawn to lyric poesy ; they even developed a new signifier of ode. frequently called the romantic brooding ode. The literary critic Jack Stillinger describes the typical motion of the romantic ode: The poet. unhappy with the existent universe. flights or efforts to get away into the ideal. Disappointed in his mental flight. he returns to the existent universe. Normally he returns because human existences can non populate in the ideal or because he has non found what he was seeking. But the experience changes his apprehension of his state of affairs. of the universe. etc. ; his views/feelings at the terminal of the verse form differ significantly from those he held at the beginning of the verse form. Subjects in Keats’s Major Poems Douglas Bush noted that â€Å"Keats’s of import verse forms are related to. or turn straight out of†¦inner struggles. † For illustration. hurting and pleasance are intertwined in â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale† and â€Å"Ode on a Greek Urn† ; love is intertwined with hurting. and pleasance is intertwined with decease in â€Å"La Belle Dame Sans Merci. † â€Å"The Eve of St. Agnes. † and â€Å"Isabella ; or. the Pot of Basil. † Cleanth Brooks defines the paradox that is the subject of â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale† somewhat otherwise: â€Å"the universe of imaginativeness offers a release from the painful universe of actuality. yet at the same clip it renders the universe of actuality more painful by contrast. † Other struggles appear in Keats’s poesy: †¢ transeunt esthesis or passion / digesting art†¢ dream or vision / world†¢ joy / melancholy†¢ the ideal / the existent†¢ mortal / immortal†¢ life / decease†¢ separation / connexion†¢ being immersed in passion / wanting to get away passion Keats frequently associated love and trouble both in his life and in his poesy. He wrote of a immature adult female he found attactive. â€Å"When she comes into a room she makes an feeling the same as the Beauty of a Leopardess†¦ . I should wish her to destroy me†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Love and decease are intertwined in â€Å"Isabella ; or. the Pot of Basil. † â€Å"Bright Star. † â€Å"The Eve of St. Agnes. † and â€Å"La Belle Dame sans Merci. † The Fatal Woman ( the adult female whom it is destructive to love. like Salome. Lilith. and Cleopatra ) appears in â€Å"La Belle Dame sans Merci† and â€Å"Lamia. † Identity is an issue in his position of the poet and for the dreamers in his odes ( e. g. . â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale† ) and narrative verse forms. Of the poetic character. he says. â€Å"†¦ it is non itself–it has no self–it is every thing and nothing–it has no character–it enjoys light and shade–it lives in relish. be it disgusting or just. high or low. right or hapless. mean or elevated†¦Ã¢â‚¬  He calls the poet â€Å"chameleon. † Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling sum up Keats’s universe position compactly: Beyond the sturdy sense that we are wholly physical in a physical universe. and the allied realisation that we are compelled to conceive of more than we can cognize or understand. there is a 3rd quality in Keats more clearly present than in any other poet since Shakespeare. This is the gift of tragic credence. which persuades us that Keats was the least solipsistic of poets. the onemost able to hold on the individualism and world of egos wholly distinct from his ain. and of an outward universe that would last his perceptual experience of it. They believe that Keat s came to accept this universe. the here and now. as the ultimate value. Keats’s Odes All written in May 1819. â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale. † â€Å"Ode on a Greek Urn. † and â€Å"Ode on Melancholy† grew out of a relentless sort of experience which dominated Keats’s feelings. attitudes. and ideas during that clip. Each of them is a alone experience. but each of them is besides. as it were. a aspect of a larger experience. This larger experience is an intense consciousness of both the joy and hurting. the felicity and the sorrow. of human life. This consciousness is experiencing and becomes besides thought. a sort of incubation as the poet sees them in others and experience them in himself. This consciousness is non merely experiencing ; it becomes besides thought. a sort of dwelling contemplation of the batch of human existences. who must fulfill their desire for felicity in a universe where joy and hurting are necessarily and inextricably tied together. This brotherhood of joy and hurting is the cardinal fact of human experience that Keats has observed and accepted as true. Wright Thomas and Stuart Gerry Brown In â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale† and â€Å"Ode on a Greek Urn. † Keats tries to liberate himself from the universe of alteration by placing with the Luscinia megarhynchos. stand foring nature. or the urn. stand foring art. These odes. every bit good as â€Å"The Ode to Psyche† and the â€Å"Ode to Melancholy. † present the poet as dreamer ; the inquiry in these odes. every bit good as in â€Å"La Belle Dame Sans Merci† and â€Å"The Eve of St. Agnes. † is how Keats characterizes the dream or vision. Is it a positive experience which enriches the dreamer? or is it a negative experience which has the potency to cut off the dreamer from the existent universe and destruct him? What happens to the dreamers who do non rouse from the dream or make non rouse shortly plenty? Keats’s Imagery Keats’s imagination ranges among all our physical esthesiss: sight. hearing. gustatory sensation. touch. odor. temperature. weight. force per unit area. hungriness. thirst. gender. and motion. Keats repeatedly combines different senses in one image. that is. he attributes the trait ( s ) of one sense to another. a pattern called synesthesia. His synesthetic imagination performs two major maps in his verse form: it is portion of their animal consequence. and the combine of senses usually experienced as separate suggests an implicit in integrity of dissimilar occurrences. the unity of all signifiers of life. Richard H. Fogle calls these images the merchandise of his â€Å"unrivaled ability to absorb. sympathise with. and humanise natural objects. †