John Keats
Mortality, Love and Beauty
"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
Outline
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Introduction
The Eve of St. Agnes
Keats’ 1819 Odes
Next Week
John Keats
(1795-1821)
: His Life
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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
brother’s health.
1819– his brother Tom died of TB.
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1820 – symptoms of TB
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1821 -- Died of TB at the age of 25.
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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
Shelley’s)
source
Mortality, Art and Love
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The Romantics – Eternity (36:17)
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“Nightingale”
“Grecian Urn”
Bright Star
-- 4:42 conflicts between a fashion designer and
two poets -- 0:51 Nightingale
-- 30:30 Negative Capability*; ““A poem needs
understanding through the senses.”
-- 53:47 “Nightingale”
(01:22 La Belle Dame Sans Merci)
-- 01:40:22,216 --Let's pretend I will return in spring.
Keats’ Letters
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30:30 “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.”
1:00:54 “I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd
but three summer days—three such days with you I
could fill with more delight than fifty common years
could ever contain.”
The Eve of
St. Agnes
1. What is the story about?
How is it different from
Romeo and Juliet?
2. What function does the
St. Agnes custom play?
And Madeline’s dream?
3. How is the story structured?
What are the narrative frames?
4. Is Porphyro a voyeur or a lover?
Structure and Plot
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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.
Structure and Plot
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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 it’s 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.
Keats’ 1819 Odes
Theme: human mortality and
Sentiments (melancholy, indolence); artistic
beauty
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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
Keats’ 1819 Odes (2)
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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
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.
1. Where are the turning points in the
poem?
2. Analyze Keats’ use of paradoxes.
3. What does the nightingale represent?
In what ways is it different from
Shelley’s sky lark?
Ode on a Grecian Urn
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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.
Ode on Melancholy
1.
2.
How is Melancholy
defined? What is she
associated with, and
not associated with?
Why does Melancholy
have her shrine in the
temple of Delight?
The Soul of the Rose by John William
Waterhouse (source)
Ode on Indolence
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Why does the three
figures pass by
three times?
How does the
speaker describe his
indolence?
Frank Skipworth
Indolence, Oil on canvas, 1884
Ode
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-- lengthy, serious in subject matter,
elevated in its diction and style, and
often elaborate in its stanzaic structure.
-- two classical prototypes:
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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)
Meditative Romantic Ode
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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:
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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)
Next Week
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Felicia Hemans “The Switzer’s Wife”,
"Cabianca," and Letitia Elizabeth
Landon “Revenge” -- Quiz (and Keats’
poems)
Two Group Reports
(Elizabeth Barret Browning –probably
not)