John Keats

1
John Keats

• Mortality, Love and Beauty

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
2
Outline

• Introduction
• The Eve of St. Agnes
• Keats 1819 Odes
• Next Week

3
John Keats (1795-1821) His Life

• 1804 -- father fell off a horse and cracked his
  skull when Keats was 8
• 1810 -- his mother died of tuberculosis when he
  was 14
• Started out as a surgeon, but chose then to write
  poetry.
• Struggle with money problems all his adult years
  worried about his brothers health.
• 1819 his brother Tom died of TB.
• 1820 symptoms of TB
• 1821 -- Died of TB at the age of 25.

4
Keats and His Contemporaries

• introduced to Percy Shelly and William
  Wordsworth by Leigh Hunt
• supported by his friend Charles Brown, falling
  in love with Fanny Brawne.
• Negative influences his declining health and
  predominantly negative reviews (with the
  exception of Shelleys)

source
5
Mortality, Art and Love

• The Romantics Eternity (3617)
• Nightingale
• Grecian Urn
• Bright Star
• -- 442 conflicts between a fashion designer and
  two poets -- 051 Nightingale
• -- 3030 Negative Capability A poem needs
  understanding through the senses.
• -- 5347 Nightingale
• (0122 La Belle Dame Sans Merci)
• -- 014022,216 --Let's pretend I will return in
  spring.

6
Keats Letters

• 3030 A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing
  in existence because he has no Identity - he is
  continually in for - and filling some other Body
  - The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women
  who are creatures of impulse are poetical and
  have about them an unchangeable attribute - the
  poet has none no identity - he is certainly the
  most unpoetical of all God's Creatures.
• 10054 I almost wish we were butterflies and
  liv'd but three summer daysthree such days with
  you I could fill with more delight than fifty
  common years could ever contain.

7
The Eve of St. Agnes

• What is the story about?
• How is it different from
• Romeo and Juliet?
• 2. What function does the
• St. Agnes custom play?
• And Madelines dream?
• 3. How is the story structured?
• What are the narrative frames?
• 4. Is Porphyro a voyeur or a lover?

8
Structure and Plot

• Frame (1-5) Beadsman, cold and stormy weather
  and sounds of festivities.
• 6-8 Madeline, who is oblivious to the
  festivities, waits for the night.
• 9-10 Porphyro, wanting to see Madeline, enters
  the castle.
• 11-20 meets Angela, who warns him off and tells
  him the legend P. asks Angela to help him find
  Madeline.
• 21-27 Madeline enters, prays, and undresses and
  goes to sleep, the moon shining on her.

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Structure and Plot

• 28-33 Porphyro sneaks out of closet, prepares a
  table of foods, and wakes M up, first with words
  and then with music.
• 34 -36 Madeline wakes up, realizes that its no
  dream, and thinks he's a traitor
• 38-39 --P wants her to be his bride and to run
  away with him.
• 40-42 They escape while everyone is still asleep.
  The Beadsman dies.

10
Keats 1819 Odes
                        

• Theme human mortality and
• Sentiments (melancholy, indolence) artistic
  beauty
• Ode to Psyche be a singer of Psyche
• Ode to a Nightingale dynamic art
• Ode on a Grecian Urn plastic art
• Ode on Melancholy
• Ode on Indolence
• To Autumn

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Keats 1819 Odes (2)
                        

• Ode as a poetic form (see note)
• process of empathy (Giving up on drugs or wine,
  emphasis on five senses, with Personification,
  Direct address and apostrophe) (Using apostrophe
  to speak to the object in order to enter its
  realm--or bring it nearer).
• disappearance of the speaker in To Autumn.

John Keats in 1819, painted by his friend Joseph
Severn
12
Ode to a Nightingale

• Keats, reveling in the fact that the bird sings
  so happily in the forest, wants to fly away
  with it on the wings of poetry. But he cannot
  make it, being reminded of his mortal self.
• Where are the turning points in the poem?
• Analyze Keats use of paradoxes.
• What does the nightingale represent? In what
  ways is it different from Shelleys sky lark?

13
Ode on a Grecian Urn

• How is the urn represented, with the patterns on
  its two sides?
• How is the speaker related to it?
• The process question? empathy ? confirmation ?
  differentiation between the human and the
  artistic.

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Ode on Melancholy

1. How is Melancholy defined? What is she associated
   with, and not associated with?
2. Why does Melancholy have her shrine in the temple
   of Delight?

The Soul of the Rose by John William Waterhouse
(source)
15
Ode on Indolence

• Why does the three figures pass by three times?
• How does the speaker describe his indolence?

Frank SkipworthIndolence, Oil on canvas, 1884
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Ode

• -- lengthy, serious in subject matter, elevated
  in its diction and style, and often elaborate in
  its stanzaic structure.
• -- two classical prototypes
• Greek or Pindaric Ode irregular stanza
  (Meditative Odes by the Romantics)
• and Roman or Horatian Ode uniform stanza (e.g.
  To Autumn) (source Meditative Romantic Ode
  from Keats Syllabus)

17
Meditative Romantic Ode

• combine the stanzaic complexity of the irregular
  ode with the personal meditation of the Horatian
  ode, usually dropping the emotional restraint of
  the Horatian tradition.
• subject matter
• the description of a particularized outer natural
  scene
• an extended meditation, which the scene
  stimulates, over a private problem or a universal
  situation or both
• the occurrence of an insight or vision, a
  resolution or decision, which signals a return to
  the scene originally described, but with a new
  perspective.

(source Meditative Romantic Ode from Keats
Syllabus)
18
Next Week

• Felicia Hemans The Switzers Wife, "Cabianca,"
  and Letitia Elizabeth Landon Revenge -- Quiz
  (and Keats poems)
• Two Group Reports
• (Elizabeth Barret Browning probably not)