JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)

No less individual and unique than the poetry of Byron and Shelley is that of the third member of this group – John Keats. Keats’ first little volume of verse, published in 1817, when he was twenty-one, contained some delightful poems and clearly displayed most of his chief tendencies. It was followed the next year by his longest poem – «Endymion», where he uses one of the vaguely beautiful Greek myths as the basis for the expression of his own delight in the glory of the world and of youthful sensations. As a narrative the poem is wandering, almost chaotic; but in luxuriant loveliness of sensuous imagination it is unsurpassed. Its theme, and indeed the theme of all Keats’ poetry, may be said to be found in its famous first line – «A thing of beauty is a joy forever». The remaining three years of Keats’ life were mostly tragic. «Endymion» and its author were brutally attacked in «The Quarterly Review» and «Blackwood’s Magazine». His third and last volume, published in 1820, and including «The Eve of St. Agnes», «Isabella», «Lamia», the fragmentary «Hyperion», and his half dozen great odes, probably contains more poetry of the highest order than any other book of original verse, of so small a size, ever sent from the press.

The most important qualities of his poetry stand out clearly:

1. He is the great apostle of full though not unhealthy enjoyment of external Beauty, the beauty of the senses. Almost all of Keats’ poems are exquisite and luxuriant in their embodiment of sensuous beauty, but «The Eve of St. Agnes» must be especially mentioned.

2. Keats is one of the supreme masters of poetic expression, expression the most beautiful, apt, vivid, condensed, and imaginatively suggestive.

3. Keats never attained dramatic or narrative power or skill in the presentation of individual character. In place of these elements he has the lyric gift of rendering moods. Aside from ecstatic delight, these are mostly moods of pensiveness, languor, or romantic sadness.

4. Conspicuous in Keats is his spiritual kinship with the ancient Greeks. He assimilated with eager delight all the riches of the Greek imagination, even though he never learned the language and was dependent on the dull mediums of dictionaries and translations. It is not only that his recognition of the permanently significant and beautiful embodiment of the central facts of life in the Greek stories led him to select some of them as the subjects for several of his most important poems; but his whole feeling, notably his feeling for Nature, seems almost precisely that of the Greeks, especially, perhaps, of the earlier generations among whom their mythology took shape. To him also Nature appears alive with divinities.

5. In his later poetry, also, the deeper force of the Greek spirit led him from his early Romantic formlessness to the achievement of the most exquisite classical perfection of form and finish. His Romantic glow and emotion never fade or cool, but such poems as the Odes to the Nightingale and to a Grecian Urn, and the fragment of «Hyperion», are absolutely flawless and satisfying in structure and expression.

LECTURE 3. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY – RSEUDO-CLASSICISM AND THE BEGINNING OF MODERN ROMANTICISM. THE ROMANTIC TRIUMPH (1798 to about 1830). THE GREAT WRITERS OF 1798-1830. THE CRITICAL REVIEWS.

1. The general spirit of the period.

2. Daniel Defoe and his masterpiece.

3. Jonathan Swift and “The Travels of Lemuel Gulliver”.

4. The Romantic Movement. Its Peculiar Features.

5. Romantic poets: James Thomson, Oliver Goldsmith, Robert Burns.

6. The Novel of the 18^th century.

7. Samuel Richardson and the main traits of his novels.

8. Henry Fielding and his novels.

9. Historical and “Gothic” Romances. Feminine Novels of Manners.

10. Walter Scott. Poetry and prose.

11. The last group of the romantic poets. Lord Byron.

Suggested reports:

1. The feminine novels of manners. “Evelina” by Frances Burney.

2. “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen.

3. Walter Scott. “Ivanhoe”.

4. Most famous Lord Byron’s poetry. “Childe Harold’ Pilgrimage”

Поиск по сайту: