John
Keats
1795-1821
“They will explain themselves - as all poems should do
without any comment.”
John Keats to his brother George, 1818
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
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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
 Keats first met Fanny Brawne sometime between September
and
November
1818, when
he was nursing his brother Tom.
and
Isabella
Jones)
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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
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"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)
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
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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'.
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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
Sonnets
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:
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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
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Trends
Stressed reason and
judgment
Valued society
Followed authority
Maintained the
aristocracy
Interested in science
and technology
 Romantic
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Trends
Stressed imagination
and emotion
Valued individuals
Strove for freedom
Represented
common people
Interested in the
supernatural
Romanticism
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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.)
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Characteristic Attitudes of the Romantic Movement:
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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
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“taste the warm South”
“sunburnt mirth”
“taste the music of that vision pale”
Negative Capability
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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.
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“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.”
Sources Cited
 http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry.html