Christopher Ricks
- Published in print:
- 1984
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128298
- eISBN:
- 9780191671654
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128298.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
In this book, the author argues for the importance of embarrassment in human life and for the value of works of art which help us deal with embarrassment by recognizing and refining it. As a poet and ...
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In this book, the author argues for the importance of embarrassment in human life and for the value of works of art which help us deal with embarrassment by recognizing and refining it. As a poet and a man, John Keats was especially sensitive to, and morally intelligent about, embarrassment. This study demonstrates the particular direction of his insight and moral concern to acknowledge embarrassability and its involvement in important moral concerns.Less
In this book, the author argues for the importance of embarrassment in human life and for the value of works of art which help us deal with embarrassment by recognizing and refining it. As a poet and a man, John Keats was especially sensitive to, and morally intelligent about, embarrassment. This study demonstrates the particular direction of his insight and moral concern to acknowledge embarrassability and its involvement in important moral concerns.
Jennifer Radden
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195151657
- eISBN:
- 9780199849253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151657.003.0020
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter discusses two poems by John Keats — “Ode of Melancholy” and “What the Thrush Said.” Keats knew much suffering and died while still a young man. Consumptive and weak, he experienced many ...
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This chapter discusses two poems by John Keats — “Ode of Melancholy” and “What the Thrush Said.” Keats knew much suffering and died while still a young man. Consumptive and weak, he experienced many phases of despondency and moodiness. By the time he received recognition for his work, he was seriously ill with tuberculosis. The ode on melancholy starts with the world of darkness and pain, so vividly described that we are reminded that Keats wrote from personal experience. His evocation of the dual aspects of melancholy, the stress on the paradox uniting sensual pleasure, energy, and vitality, on the one hand, and despair, suffering, and passivity, on the other, elevates his writing on melancholy to a place beside that of Elizabethan authors.Less
This chapter discusses two poems by John Keats — “Ode of Melancholy” and “What the Thrush Said.” Keats knew much suffering and died while still a young man. Consumptive and weak, he experienced many phases of despondency and moodiness. By the time he received recognition for his work, he was seriously ill with tuberculosis. The ode on melancholy starts with the world of darkness and pain, so vividly described that we are reminded that Keats wrote from personal experience. His evocation of the dual aspects of melancholy, the stress on the paradox uniting sensual pleasure, energy, and vitality, on the one hand, and despair, suffering, and passivity, on the other, elevates his writing on melancholy to a place beside that of Elizabethan authors.
Hrileena Ghosh
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620610
- eISBN:
- 9781789629798
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620610.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The poet John Keats trained as a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital, London while simultaneously making his way as a poet. This book focuses attention on an important but hitherto neglected manuscript: the ...
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The poet John Keats trained as a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital, London while simultaneously making his way as a poet. This book focuses attention on an important but hitherto neglected manuscript: the notebook Keats maintained during this time, with the premise that in Keats’ medical Notebook exists a manuscript revealing both the true depth of the poet’s medical knowledge and the significant influence this exercised on his poetry. Reconstructing the lively medical world that played a formative role in Keats’ intellectual and imaginative development, this book explores the intriguing connections between Keats’ medical knowledge and his greatest poetry. It reveals that Keats’ two careers proved mutually enabling and enriching, with their co-existence contributing greatly to his success in both. Opening with a fully annotated edition of Keats’ medical Notebook newly transcribed from the manuscript, the book offers chapters on the provenance of Keats’ medical Notebook; the ‘hospital poems’ he wrote at Guy’s; the medical milieu of Keats’ daily life; his methods of working as revealed by his medical Notebook and other archival sources; and the medical contexts that informed his composition of Endymion and his 1820 volume, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems. It shows how the visceral knowledge of human life that Keats gained at Guy’s Hospital transformed him into the ‘mighty poet of the human heart’, with new research recovering the many ways in which Keats’ creativity found expression in both his careers.Less
The poet John Keats trained as a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital, London while simultaneously making his way as a poet. This book focuses attention on an important but hitherto neglected manuscript: the notebook Keats maintained during this time, with the premise that in Keats’ medical Notebook exists a manuscript revealing both the true depth of the poet’s medical knowledge and the significant influence this exercised on his poetry. Reconstructing the lively medical world that played a formative role in Keats’ intellectual and imaginative development, this book explores the intriguing connections between Keats’ medical knowledge and his greatest poetry. It reveals that Keats’ two careers proved mutually enabling and enriching, with their co-existence contributing greatly to his success in both. Opening with a fully annotated edition of Keats’ medical Notebook newly transcribed from the manuscript, the book offers chapters on the provenance of Keats’ medical Notebook; the ‘hospital poems’ he wrote at Guy’s; the medical milieu of Keats’ daily life; his methods of working as revealed by his medical Notebook and other archival sources; and the medical contexts that informed his composition of Endymion and his 1820 volume, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems. It shows how the visceral knowledge of human life that Keats gained at Guy’s Hospital transformed him into the ‘mighty poet of the human heart’, with new research recovering the many ways in which Keats’ creativity found expression in both his careers.
Thomas McFarland
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186458
- eISBN:
- 9780191674556
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186458.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Making life masks — which represented how something was when it was living — and making death masks — the counterpart that accounts for a being's impressions when they had died, was not an uncommon ...
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Making life masks — which represented how something was when it was living — and making death masks — the counterpart that accounts for a being's impressions when they had died, was not an uncommon practice during the nineteenth century, especially since photography had yet to become a more efficient trend. Because John Keats lived a relatively short life, both his life mask and his death mask look almost exactly alike. It is also important to note that the fact that these masks exist represents the commitment and strength of ‘the Keats circle’ — the support group which played no small part in Keats's intellectual development. Because these two masks possess the same features, these serve as significant figures in accounting for Keats's existence.Less
Making life masks — which represented how something was when it was living — and making death masks — the counterpart that accounts for a being's impressions when they had died, was not an uncommon practice during the nineteenth century, especially since photography had yet to become a more efficient trend. Because John Keats lived a relatively short life, both his life mask and his death mask look almost exactly alike. It is also important to note that the fact that these masks exist represents the commitment and strength of ‘the Keats circle’ — the support group which played no small part in Keats's intellectual development. Because these two masks possess the same features, these serve as significant figures in accounting for Keats's existence.
Yohei Igarashi
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781503610040
- eISBN:
- 9781503610736
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503610040.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
How can Romantic poetry, motivated by the poet’s intense yearning to impart his thoughts and feelings, be so often difficult and the cause of readerly misunderstanding? How did it come to be that a ...
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How can Romantic poetry, motivated by the poet’s intense yearning to impart his thoughts and feelings, be so often difficult and the cause of readerly misunderstanding? How did it come to be that a poet can compose a verbal artwork, carefully and lovingly put together, and send it out into the world at the same time that he is adopting a stance against communication? This book addresses these questions by showing that the period’s writers were responding to the beginnings of our networked world of rampant mediated communication. The Connected Condition reveals that major Romantic poets shared a great attraction and skepticism toward the dream of perfectible, efficient connectivity that has driven the modern culture of communication. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and John Keats all experimented with their artistic medium of poetry to pursue such ideals of speedy, transparent communication at the same time that they tried out contrarian literary strategies: writing excessively ornate verse, prolonging literary reading with tedious writing, being obscure, and questioning the allure of quickly delivered information. This book shows that the Romantic poets have much to teach us about living in—and living with—the connected condition, as well as the fortunes of literature in it.Less
How can Romantic poetry, motivated by the poet’s intense yearning to impart his thoughts and feelings, be so often difficult and the cause of readerly misunderstanding? How did it come to be that a poet can compose a verbal artwork, carefully and lovingly put together, and send it out into the world at the same time that he is adopting a stance against communication? This book addresses these questions by showing that the period’s writers were responding to the beginnings of our networked world of rampant mediated communication. The Connected Condition reveals that major Romantic poets shared a great attraction and skepticism toward the dream of perfectible, efficient connectivity that has driven the modern culture of communication. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and John Keats all experimented with their artistic medium of poetry to pursue such ideals of speedy, transparent communication at the same time that they tried out contrarian literary strategies: writing excessively ornate verse, prolonging literary reading with tedious writing, being obscure, and questioning the allure of quickly delivered information. This book shows that the Romantic poets have much to teach us about living in—and living with—the connected condition, as well as the fortunes of literature in it.
Porscha Fermanis
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637805
- eISBN:
- 9780748652181
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637805.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
John Keats is generally considered to be the least intellectually sophisticated of all the major Romantic poets, but he was a more serious thinker than either his contemporaries or later scholars ...
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John Keats is generally considered to be the least intellectually sophisticated of all the major Romantic poets, but he was a more serious thinker than either his contemporaries or later scholars have acknowledged. This book provides a major reassessment of Keats' intellectual life by considering his engagement with a formidable body of eighteenth-century thought from the work of Voltaire, Robertson, and Gibbon to Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith. The book re-examines some of Keats' most important poems, including The Eve of St Agnes, Hyperion, Lamia, and Ode to Psyche, in the light of a range of Enlightenment ideas and contexts from literary history and cultural progress to anthropology, political economy, and moral philosophy. By demonstrating that the language and ideas of the Enlightenment played a key role in establishing his poetic agenda, Keats' poetry is shown to be less the expression of an intuitive young genius than the product of the cultural and intellectual contexts of his time. The book contributes to one of the most important current debates in literary scholarship — the understanding of the relationship between the Romantic period and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.Less
John Keats is generally considered to be the least intellectually sophisticated of all the major Romantic poets, but he was a more serious thinker than either his contemporaries or later scholars have acknowledged. This book provides a major reassessment of Keats' intellectual life by considering his engagement with a formidable body of eighteenth-century thought from the work of Voltaire, Robertson, and Gibbon to Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith. The book re-examines some of Keats' most important poems, including The Eve of St Agnes, Hyperion, Lamia, and Ode to Psyche, in the light of a range of Enlightenment ideas and contexts from literary history and cultural progress to anthropology, political economy, and moral philosophy. By demonstrating that the language and ideas of the Enlightenment played a key role in establishing his poetic agenda, Keats' poetry is shown to be less the expression of an intuitive young genius than the product of the cultural and intellectual contexts of his time. The book contributes to one of the most important current debates in literary scholarship — the understanding of the relationship between the Romantic period and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.
Herbert F. Tucker
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199232987
- eISBN:
- 9780191716447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232987.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
British postwar epic disclosed fissures of faction within a national unity that had been artificially constrained by two decades' steady pressure from the enemy without. With the lifting of that ...
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British postwar epic disclosed fissures of faction within a national unity that had been artificially constrained by two decades' steady pressure from the enemy without. With the lifting of that pressure Scottish, Welsh, Dissenting, and female perspectives gained a fresh purchase. A new generation of Romantic poets broke with their elders' revolutionary/reactionary formation by breaking down the master narrative of trauma and healing that went with it. Instead, epic became a stylistic option, a manipulable and marketable repertory of forms. The Regency became an epic era of special effects, including Moore's epic-scented entertainment, Hunt's hedonist indulgence on Dantesque premisses, the epic resonance that Keats miraculously achieved without benefit of plot, and Shelley's utopian art of permanent revolution spinning outside history. To crown all, Byron's radical transvaluation of the genre both summed the tradition to date and, by the thoroughness of an inimitable celebrity irony, threatened to put an end to epic as his countrymen had known it.Less
British postwar epic disclosed fissures of faction within a national unity that had been artificially constrained by two decades' steady pressure from the enemy without. With the lifting of that pressure Scottish, Welsh, Dissenting, and female perspectives gained a fresh purchase. A new generation of Romantic poets broke with their elders' revolutionary/reactionary formation by breaking down the master narrative of trauma and healing that went with it. Instead, epic became a stylistic option, a manipulable and marketable repertory of forms. The Regency became an epic era of special effects, including Moore's epic-scented entertainment, Hunt's hedonist indulgence on Dantesque premisses, the epic resonance that Keats miraculously achieved without benefit of plot, and Shelley's utopian art of permanent revolution spinning outside history. To crown all, Byron's radical transvaluation of the genre both summed the tradition to date and, by the thoroughness of an inimitable celebrity irony, threatened to put an end to epic as his countrymen had known it.
Emily Rohrbach
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823267965
- eISBN:
- 9780823272440
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823267965.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Whereas Romantic studies often have focused on British Romanticism in its relations to the past—Romanticism as ruins, memory, and mourning—Modernity’s Mist draws attention to an understudied aspect: ...
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Whereas Romantic studies often have focused on British Romanticism in its relations to the past—Romanticism as ruins, memory, and mourning—Modernity’s Mist draws attention to an understudied aspect: Romanticism’s future-oriented poetics. This book explores the epistemological uncertainties that arise from the sense of an unknowable futurity at the outset of the nineteenth century. It situates that uncertainty in relation to an intellectual history of changing concepts of time and to the shifting historiographical debates in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the future was newly characterized both by its radical unpredictability and by the unprecedented speed with which it approached. In the work of John Keats, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, and William Hazlitt, Modernity’s Mist describes a poetic grammar of future anteriority—“what might will have been”—the imagining of the historical present as opening up a range of interpretive and dramatic possibilities, whereby the present becomes a process that will always remain incomplete. While historicist critics often are interested in what Romantic writers and their readers would have known, Modernity’s Mist is interested in why they felt they could not know the historical dimensions of their own age, and it describes the poetic strategies they used to convey that sense of mystery. In the poetic grammar of anticipation, these writers do not simply reflect the history of their time; their works make available to the imagination a new way of thinking about the historical dimensions of the present when faced with the temporal situation of modernity.Less
Whereas Romantic studies often have focused on British Romanticism in its relations to the past—Romanticism as ruins, memory, and mourning—Modernity’s Mist draws attention to an understudied aspect: Romanticism’s future-oriented poetics. This book explores the epistemological uncertainties that arise from the sense of an unknowable futurity at the outset of the nineteenth century. It situates that uncertainty in relation to an intellectual history of changing concepts of time and to the shifting historiographical debates in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the future was newly characterized both by its radical unpredictability and by the unprecedented speed with which it approached. In the work of John Keats, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, and William Hazlitt, Modernity’s Mist describes a poetic grammar of future anteriority—“what might will have been”—the imagining of the historical present as opening up a range of interpretive and dramatic possibilities, whereby the present becomes a process that will always remain incomplete. While historicist critics often are interested in what Romantic writers and their readers would have known, Modernity’s Mist is interested in why they felt they could not know the historical dimensions of their own age, and it describes the poetic strategies they used to convey that sense of mystery. In the poetic grammar of anticipation, these writers do not simply reflect the history of their time; their works make available to the imagination a new way of thinking about the historical dimensions of the present when faced with the temporal situation of modernity.
Jack Stillinger
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195130225
- eISBN:
- 9780199855209
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195130225.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Using the 180-year history of Keats’s “Eve of St. Agnes” as a basis for theorizing about the reading process, this book explores the nature and whereabouts of “meaning” in complex works. A proponent ...
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Using the 180-year history of Keats’s “Eve of St. Agnes” as a basis for theorizing about the reading process, this book explores the nature and whereabouts of “meaning” in complex works. A proponent of authorial intent, the author argues a theoretical compromise between author and reader, applying a theory of interpretive democracy that includes the endlessly multifarious reader’s response as well as Keats’s guessed-at intent. The author also ruminates on the process of constructing meaning, and posits an answer to why Keats’s work is considered canonical, and why it is still being read and admired.Less
Using the 180-year history of Keats’s “Eve of St. Agnes” as a basis for theorizing about the reading process, this book explores the nature and whereabouts of “meaning” in complex works. A proponent of authorial intent, the author argues a theoretical compromise between author and reader, applying a theory of interpretive democracy that includes the endlessly multifarious reader’s response as well as Keats’s guessed-at intent. The author also ruminates on the process of constructing meaning, and posits an answer to why Keats’s work is considered canonical, and why it is still being read and admired.
Nicholas Roe
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186298
- eISBN:
- 9780191674495
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186298.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This book sets out to recover the lively and unsettling voices of Keats's poetry, and seeks to trace the complex ways in which his poems responded to and addressed their contemporary world. It offers ...
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This book sets out to recover the lively and unsettling voices of Keats's poetry, and seeks to trace the complex ways in which his poems responded to and addressed their contemporary world. It offers new research about Keats's early life opening valuable new perspectives on his poetry. Two chapters explore the dissenting culture of Enfield School, showing how the school exercised a strong influence on Keats's imaginative life and his political radicalism. Imagination and politics intertwine through succeeding chapters on Keats's friendship with Charles Cowden Clarke; his medical career; the ‘Cockney’ milieu in which Keats's poems were written; and on the immediate controversial impact of his three collections of poetry. The book reconstructs contexts and contemporary resonances for Keats's poems, retrieving the vigorous challenges of Keats's verbal art which outraged his early readers but which was lost to us as Keats entered the canon of English romantic poets.Less
This book sets out to recover the lively and unsettling voices of Keats's poetry, and seeks to trace the complex ways in which his poems responded to and addressed their contemporary world. It offers new research about Keats's early life opening valuable new perspectives on his poetry. Two chapters explore the dissenting culture of Enfield School, showing how the school exercised a strong influence on Keats's imaginative life and his political radicalism. Imagination and politics intertwine through succeeding chapters on Keats's friendship with Charles Cowden Clarke; his medical career; the ‘Cockney’ milieu in which Keats's poems were written; and on the immediate controversial impact of his three collections of poetry. The book reconstructs contexts and contemporary resonances for Keats's poems, retrieving the vigorous challenges of Keats's verbal art which outraged his early readers but which was lost to us as Keats entered the canon of English romantic poets.
Thomas McFarland
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186458
- eISBN:
- 9780191674556
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186458.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This book surveys the poetic endeavour of John Keats and urges that his true poetry is uniquely constituted by being uttered through three artificial masks, rather than through the natural voice of ...
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This book surveys the poetic endeavour of John Keats and urges that his true poetry is uniquely constituted by being uttered through three artificial masks, rather than through the natural voice of his quotidian self. The first mask is formed by the attitudes and reality that ensue from a conscious commitment to the identity of poet as such. The second, called here the Mask of Camelot, takes shape from Keats's acceptance and compelling use of the vogue for medieval imaginings that was sweeping across Europe in his time. The third, the Mask of Hellas, eventuated from Keats's enthusiastic immersion in the rising tide of Romantic Hellenism. Keats's great achievement, the book argues, can only be ascertained by means of a resuscitation of the defunct critical category of ‘genius’, as that informs his use of the masks. To validate this category, the volume is concerned throughout with the necessity of discriminating the truly poetic from the meretricious in Keats's endeavour. The book constitutes a criticism of and a rebuke to the deconstructive approach, which must treat all texts as equal and must entirely forego the conception of quality.Less
This book surveys the poetic endeavour of John Keats and urges that his true poetry is uniquely constituted by being uttered through three artificial masks, rather than through the natural voice of his quotidian self. The first mask is formed by the attitudes and reality that ensue from a conscious commitment to the identity of poet as such. The second, called here the Mask of Camelot, takes shape from Keats's acceptance and compelling use of the vogue for medieval imaginings that was sweeping across Europe in his time. The third, the Mask of Hellas, eventuated from Keats's enthusiastic immersion in the rising tide of Romantic Hellenism. Keats's great achievement, the book argues, can only be ascertained by means of a resuscitation of the defunct critical category of ‘genius’, as that informs his use of the masks. To validate this category, the volume is concerned throughout with the necessity of discriminating the truly poetic from the meretricious in Keats's endeavour. The book constitutes a criticism of and a rebuke to the deconstructive approach, which must treat all texts as equal and must entirely forego the conception of quality.
Morton D. Paley
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199262175
- eISBN:
- 9780191698828
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262175.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
The interrelationship of the ideas of apocalypse and millennium is a dominant concern of British Romanticism. The Book of Revelation provides a model of history in which apocalypse is followed by ...
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The interrelationship of the ideas of apocalypse and millennium is a dominant concern of British Romanticism. The Book of Revelation provides a model of history in which apocalypse is followed by millennium, but in their various ways the major Romantic poets—Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley—question and even at times undermine the possibility of a successful secularization of this model. No matter how confidently the sequence of apocalypse and millennium seems to be affirmed in some of the major works of the period, the issue is always in doubt: the fear that millennium may not ensue emerges as a significant, if often repressed, theme in the great works of the period. Related to it is the tension in Romantic poetry between conflicting models of history itself: history as teleology, developing towards end time and millennium, and history as purposeless cycle. This subject matter is traced through a selection of works by the major poets, partly through an exposition of their underlying intellectual traditions, and partly through a close examination of the poems themselves.Less
The interrelationship of the ideas of apocalypse and millennium is a dominant concern of British Romanticism. The Book of Revelation provides a model of history in which apocalypse is followed by millennium, but in their various ways the major Romantic poets—Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley—question and even at times undermine the possibility of a successful secularization of this model. No matter how confidently the sequence of apocalypse and millennium seems to be affirmed in some of the major works of the period, the issue is always in doubt: the fear that millennium may not ensue emerges as a significant, if often repressed, theme in the great works of the period. Related to it is the tension in Romantic poetry between conflicting models of history itself: history as teleology, developing towards end time and millennium, and history as purposeless cycle. This subject matter is traced through a selection of works by the major poets, partly through an exposition of their underlying intellectual traditions, and partly through a close examination of the poems themselves.
Michael O'Neill
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122852
- eISBN:
- 9780191671579
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122852.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
In this wide-ranging study the author examines the phenomenon of the ‘self-conscious poem’ — that is, a poem concerned with poetry or, more centrally if often connectedly, a poem that displays ...
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In this wide-ranging study the author examines the phenomenon of the ‘self-conscious poem’ — that is, a poem concerned with poetry or, more centrally if often connectedly, a poem that displays awareness of itself as a poem — in the work of the major Romantic poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. The book freshly illuminates many famous lyrics and longer poems and re-values less regarded works such as The Excursion. For the author, self-consciousness is allied to the new status granted to poetry by the Romantics. His closely attentive readings suggest that self-consciousness in Romantic poetry often accompanies exploration of, even anxiety about, poetry's significance. Yet his emphasis falls on the imaginatively productive ends to which such exploration and anxiety are put. An extended coda looks at the bequest of Romantic self-consciousness to post-Romantic writers. It offers chapters comparing Yeats and Stevens, discussing later Auden's scepticism about poetry, and exploring the affecting intricacies of Amy Clampitt's Voyages: A Homage to John Keats. Throughout, the author challenges recent accounts of Romanticism by placing at the centre of his study poetry's imaginative and aesthetic value.Less
In this wide-ranging study the author examines the phenomenon of the ‘self-conscious poem’ — that is, a poem concerned with poetry or, more centrally if often connectedly, a poem that displays awareness of itself as a poem — in the work of the major Romantic poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. The book freshly illuminates many famous lyrics and longer poems and re-values less regarded works such as The Excursion. For the author, self-consciousness is allied to the new status granted to poetry by the Romantics. His closely attentive readings suggest that self-consciousness in Romantic poetry often accompanies exploration of, even anxiety about, poetry's significance. Yet his emphasis falls on the imaginatively productive ends to which such exploration and anxiety are put. An extended coda looks at the bequest of Romantic self-consciousness to post-Romantic writers. It offers chapters comparing Yeats and Stevens, discussing later Auden's scepticism about poetry, and exploring the affecting intricacies of Amy Clampitt's Voyages: A Homage to John Keats. Throughout, the author challenges recent accounts of Romanticism by placing at the centre of his study poetry's imaginative and aesthetic value.
John Kerrigan
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199248513
- eISBN:
- 9780191697753
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199248513.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This book's chapters reproduce essays on such major figures as Sir Philip Sidney and John Milton, but also less celebrated writers, including Thomas Carew and — in a new piece — William Drummond, to ...
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This book's chapters reproduce essays on such major figures as Sir Philip Sidney and John Milton, but also less celebrated writers, including Thomas Carew and — in a new piece — William Drummond, to reconfigure the familiar and help extend the canon. Shakespeare looms large; his plays and poems, and his influence on Keats, are the subject of half the book. But themes and issues are pursued from the 1580s to the late Restoration. The book reassesses the nature of early modern texts — their production and reconstruction by writers, printers, theatre companies, and readers — and their relationship with socio-political circumstance. This book shows what criticism can do when closely engaged with verbal fabric and form. It concentrates on drawing out the distinctive qualities of poems and plays.Less
This book's chapters reproduce essays on such major figures as Sir Philip Sidney and John Milton, but also less celebrated writers, including Thomas Carew and — in a new piece — William Drummond, to reconfigure the familiar and help extend the canon. Shakespeare looms large; his plays and poems, and his influence on Keats, are the subject of half the book. But themes and issues are pursued from the 1580s to the late Restoration. The book reassesses the nature of early modern texts — their production and reconstruction by writers, printers, theatre companies, and readers — and their relationship with socio-political circumstance. This book shows what criticism can do when closely engaged with verbal fabric and form. It concentrates on drawing out the distinctive qualities of poems and plays.
Michael O'Neill
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199299287
- eISBN:
- 9780191715099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299287.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter on Yeats explores the work of his mid-to-late career. It begins by examining ‘Ego Dominus Tuus’, a pivotal poem written in a crucial period for Yeats, and one in which he sharpens his ...
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This chapter on Yeats explores the work of his mid-to-late career. It begins by examining ‘Ego Dominus Tuus’, a pivotal poem written in a crucial period for Yeats, and one in which he sharpens his response to Romantic culture by setting that response in dialogue with his evaluation of Dante. It is argued that Yeats's exaltation of Dante for being able to attain ‘Unity of Being’ cannot disguise his recognition of affinity with, and indebtedness to Romantic poets such as Shelley. The chapter's second half explores in detail the nature of Yeats's self-declared status as a ‘last Romantic’ in relation to a number of later poems, including ‘Coole and Ballylee, 1931’ and ‘The Gyres’. Complex intertextual relations are discussed between Yeats and his Romantic precursors (including Keats in his Odes). The chapter concludes with the suggestion that Yeats returns to the Romantics, less for a system of belief than for examples of how to dramatize conflict.Less
This chapter on Yeats explores the work of his mid-to-late career. It begins by examining ‘Ego Dominus Tuus’, a pivotal poem written in a crucial period for Yeats, and one in which he sharpens his response to Romantic culture by setting that response in dialogue with his evaluation of Dante. It is argued that Yeats's exaltation of Dante for being able to attain ‘Unity of Being’ cannot disguise his recognition of affinity with, and indebtedness to Romantic poets such as Shelley. The chapter's second half explores in detail the nature of Yeats's self-declared status as a ‘last Romantic’ in relation to a number of later poems, including ‘Coole and Ballylee, 1931’ and ‘The Gyres’. Complex intertextual relations are discussed between Yeats and his Romantic precursors (including Keats in his Odes). The chapter concludes with the suggestion that Yeats returns to the Romantics, less for a system of belief than for examples of how to dramatize conflict.
Genevieve Liveley
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199588541
- eISBN:
- 9780191741845
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588541.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter explores an unexpected affinity between Romans and Romantics ‘on love’. It shows that one Roman poet in particular appears repeatedly reflected in the writings of the English Romantic ...
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This chapter explores an unexpected affinity between Romans and Romantics ‘on love’. It shows that one Roman poet in particular appears repeatedly reflected in the writings of the English Romantic poets (Coleridge, Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Byron, Keats) on the subject of love: Ovid, in his Amores, Ars Amatoria, and his Metamorphoses offers an uncannily Romantic image of love — not least of all in his representation of Narcissus. Challenging received readings in which Narcissus is seen as a figure for aesthetic, poetic, and emotional superficiality, it is argued that the Romantic reception of Narcissus reveals hidden depths to this Roman figure, whose love for his own image rather represents a desire for beauty, poetry, and sympathy — a Romantic Narcissus who holds up a mirror to show Romans themselves reflecting Romantics ‘on love’.Less
This chapter explores an unexpected affinity between Romans and Romantics ‘on love’. It shows that one Roman poet in particular appears repeatedly reflected in the writings of the English Romantic poets (Coleridge, Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Byron, Keats) on the subject of love: Ovid, in his Amores, Ars Amatoria, and his Metamorphoses offers an uncannily Romantic image of love — not least of all in his representation of Narcissus. Challenging received readings in which Narcissus is seen as a figure for aesthetic, poetic, and emotional superficiality, it is argued that the Romantic reception of Narcissus reveals hidden depths to this Roman figure, whose love for his own image rather represents a desire for beauty, poetry, and sympathy — a Romantic Narcissus who holds up a mirror to show Romans themselves reflecting Romantics ‘on love’.
Hrileena Ghosh
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620610
- eISBN:
- 9781789629798
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620610.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The first chapter offers an overview of Keats’ medical Notebook, discussing its provenance and bibliographic features. It explores Keats’ engagement with his medical studies at the time he took the ...
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The first chapter offers an overview of Keats’ medical Notebook, discussing its provenance and bibliographic features. It explores Keats’ engagement with his medical studies at the time he took the lecture notes, as evinced by this surviving Notebook, and finds him an attentive and successful student: he took care to keep legible notes and frequently annotated and cross-referenced them, revealing a degree of interest in his medical studies that counters traditional accounts of his indifference or disinterest. The distinctive layout of Keats’s notes is discussed, as well as the likely sources for the notes themselves. Keats’ medical Notebook was a dynamic repository of evolving knowledge to which he returned again and again: the chapter considers the only previous publication of it, as well as its treatment in popular publications including the major Keats biographies.Less
The first chapter offers an overview of Keats’ medical Notebook, discussing its provenance and bibliographic features. It explores Keats’ engagement with his medical studies at the time he took the lecture notes, as evinced by this surviving Notebook, and finds him an attentive and successful student: he took care to keep legible notes and frequently annotated and cross-referenced them, revealing a degree of interest in his medical studies that counters traditional accounts of his indifference or disinterest. The distinctive layout of Keats’s notes is discussed, as well as the likely sources for the notes themselves. Keats’ medical Notebook was a dynamic repository of evolving knowledge to which he returned again and again: the chapter considers the only previous publication of it, as well as its treatment in popular publications including the major Keats biographies.
Brian Rejack and Michael Theune (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786941817
- eISBN:
- 9781789623253
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941817.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
In late December 1817, when attempting to name ‘what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature’, John Keats coined the term ‘negative capability’, which he glossed as ‘being ...
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In late December 1817, when attempting to name ‘what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature’, John Keats coined the term ‘negative capability’, which he glossed as ‘being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason’. Since then negative capability has continued to shape assessments of and responses to Keats’s work, while also surfacing in other contexts ranging from contemporary poetry to punk rock. The essays collected in this volume, taken as a whole, account for some of the history of negative capability, and propose new models and directions for its future in scholarly and popular discourse. The book does not propose a particular understanding of negative capability from among the many options (radical empathy, annihilation of self, philosophical skepticism, celebration of ambiguity) as the final word on the topic; rather, the book accounts for the multidimensionality of negative capability. Essays treat negative capability’s relation to topics including the Christmas pantomime, psychoanalysis, Zen Buddhism, nineteenth-century medicine, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Describing the ‘poetical Character’ Keats notes that ‘it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated’. This book, too, revels in such multiplicity.Less
In late December 1817, when attempting to name ‘what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature’, John Keats coined the term ‘negative capability’, which he glossed as ‘being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason’. Since then negative capability has continued to shape assessments of and responses to Keats’s work, while also surfacing in other contexts ranging from contemporary poetry to punk rock. The essays collected in this volume, taken as a whole, account for some of the history of negative capability, and propose new models and directions for its future in scholarly and popular discourse. The book does not propose a particular understanding of negative capability from among the many options (radical empathy, annihilation of self, philosophical skepticism, celebration of ambiguity) as the final word on the topic; rather, the book accounts for the multidimensionality of negative capability. Essays treat negative capability’s relation to topics including the Christmas pantomime, psychoanalysis, Zen Buddhism, nineteenth-century medicine, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Describing the ‘poetical Character’ Keats notes that ‘it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated’. This book, too, revels in such multiplicity.
Paul Turner
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122395
- eISBN:
- 9780191671401
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122395.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter explores the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) in 1848 including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, William Morris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Dante Gabriel Rossetti wanted ...
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This chapter explores the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) in 1848 including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, William Morris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Dante Gabriel Rossetti wanted to be a painter, but did not like studying art at the Royal Academy Schools. So at twenty he stopped doing so, and with Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848). This was a gesture of revolt, in a year of political revolutions, against the academic principle that a young artist should begin by imitating the old masters, instead of obeying his own individual impulse, and acting upon his own perception of Nature. The PRB was much influenced by literature, especially the poems of John Keats and Alfred Tennyson. Its literary organ, The Germ (1850), was designed by D. G. Rossetti to be not only an artistic manifesto, but also an outlet for poetry, particularly his own.Less
This chapter explores the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) in 1848 including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, William Morris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Dante Gabriel Rossetti wanted to be a painter, but did not like studying art at the Royal Academy Schools. So at twenty he stopped doing so, and with Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848). This was a gesture of revolt, in a year of political revolutions, against the academic principle that a young artist should begin by imitating the old masters, instead of obeying his own individual impulse, and acting upon his own perception of Nature. The PRB was much influenced by literature, especially the poems of John Keats and Alfred Tennyson. Its literary organ, The Germ (1850), was designed by D. G. Rossetti to be not only an artistic manifesto, but also an outlet for poetry, particularly his own.
Jonathan Bate
- Published in print:
- 1989
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129943
- eISBN:
- 9780191671883
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129943.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Wordsworth was recognized to have an opposing attitude towards Shakespeare, and this hostility was found to have been initiated when Wordsworth articulated relatively negative criticisms in the ...
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Wordsworth was recognized to have an opposing attitude towards Shakespeare, and this hostility was found to have been initiated when Wordsworth articulated relatively negative criticisms in the repetition of the present participle in one of the lines from Shakespeare's Henry V and compared this with Milton's works. Wordsworth perceived Milton to be a meticulous poet who would automatically eliminate lines that may exude awkwardness. It is noteworthy, however, that Wordsworth to Milton expresses the same reconstitution as Keats expresses sympathy to Shakespeare and his works. Cowden Clarke and Hazlitt, among several other writers, had observed that Wordsworth did not express a genuine love for Shakespeare, and this chapter attempts to illustrate some of Wordsworth thoughts and comments regarding Shakespeare and his works.Less
Wordsworth was recognized to have an opposing attitude towards Shakespeare, and this hostility was found to have been initiated when Wordsworth articulated relatively negative criticisms in the repetition of the present participle in one of the lines from Shakespeare's Henry V and compared this with Milton's works. Wordsworth perceived Milton to be a meticulous poet who would automatically eliminate lines that may exude awkwardness. It is noteworthy, however, that Wordsworth to Milton expresses the same reconstitution as Keats expresses sympathy to Shakespeare and his works. Cowden Clarke and Hazlitt, among several other writers, had observed that Wordsworth did not express a genuine love for Shakespeare, and this chapter attempts to illustrate some of Wordsworth thoughts and comments regarding Shakespeare and his works.
