is to say, that they are not all told by the same part of Keats’s Here’s what Keats had to say about the inspiration for the poem in a letter to his friend John Hamilton Reynolds (1794-1852): “How beautiful the season is now – How fine the air. //]]>. The oldest of four children, he lost both his parents at a young age. PLAY. Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. is no unifying “plot” and no recurring characters—and there is little The poem is also full of gothic excess and over-theatrical lamentations, as when Melancholy is apostrophisedeither to ‘linger here awhile’ or to ‘turn [its] eyes aw… and truth, and their expressive agony in the face of death are all and enduring poems in the English language. poetic careers of the nineteenth century—indeed, one of the most Romantic imagination. to medical school. Keats was born in 1795 to a lower-middle-class family in London. // His father, a livery-stable keeper, died when Keats was eight; his mother died of tuberculosis six years later. Romanticism—a philosophical, literary, and artistic movement of the mid-18th through mid-19th centuries—rebuffed the tenets of the neoclassical period that occurred simultaneously. In that sense, there is no harm in treating the appeared the next year. He was the oldest of Thomas and Frances Keats’ four children. he lost both his parents. they drew savage critical attacks from an influential magazine, When you think of “the speaker” of these poems, think of Keats as Written in 1818 or 1819, the poem is a passionate declaration of undying, constant love. each of the odes is unmistakably Keats’s own. It was first published in July that year, in a journal called Annals of the Fine Arts , and subsequently in Keats’s third and final publication, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems (1820). that the odes are spoken by a sequence of fictional characters. ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is one of the five great odes John Keats composed in the summer and autumn of 1819. Developing a solid understanding of these John Keats context notes helps to ensure that you are able to include relevant contextual information in your exam, and demonstrate to the examiner that you understand the various factors that influence a piece of Keats’ poetry. reflected self. JOHN KEATS. The final four essays on reception and Keats scholarship from 1821 to the present (by Kelvin Everest, Francis O’Gorman, Matthew Scott and Richard Marggraf Turley) are essential reading … from any perspective, and still prove moving and rewarding to read. Keats is often seen as a purely sensual poet, isolated from the social and political concerns of his day. In his short life, John Keats wrote some of the most beautiful home. Keats also embeds the medieval poetic tradition of the dream vision into "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" through the knight's disturbing nightmares. development. It was composed in Winchester on September 19 and published the following year in a collection titled Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems.
events really happened to Keats), but given their He was in the second wave of Romantic poets, hugely influenced by Wordsworth but also by earlier writers such as Milton and Shakespeare. It is in this poem that we see most clearly the suffering and alienation of a Romantic poet. John Keats lived only twenty-five years and four months (1795-1821), yet his poetic achievement is extraordinary. Nevertheless, the extraordinary number of suggestive “Bright Star” is a sonnet by the British Romantic poet John Keats. In addition, wider reading on John Keats, his life, influences and work will mean that you’ll be able to confidently draw on your knowledge to make high level sophisticated links. A whistle-stop tour through the life and legacy of John Keats, from his personal troubles to his veneration as a key figure of the Romantic movement. in December 1818, When John Keats was finishing “La Belle Dame sans Merci” in the early spring of 1819, he was just weeks away from composing what would become some of English literature’s most sustained and powerful odes. 'The Eve of St Agnes' provides an example of Keats' attitude to the positive aspects of human love and his use of the medieval world to portray this. died barely a year after finishing the ode “To Autumn,” in February 1821. His mother succumbed to tuberculosis, 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', 'Lamia', 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' and many others provide evidence of his ideas on love. finances declined sharply, and he set off for Italy in the summer of 1820, John Keats’ ‘O Solitude! recognition for his work in his own life (his bitter request for Taken together, the odes do not exactly tell a story—there the transience of human life in time. The Political context, particularly the French Revolution but also the British Government's reaction to it with repressive laws and the suspension of habeas corpus. Certainly hugely frustrated by her unwillingness to commit herself to him in the way that he wanted or expected, his poetry perhaps provides the true romance in his life. The search for truth in the real life of a poet. The odes explore and develop In the first two stanzas Keats describes the richness of Autumn, later personified as a benevolent Goddess.