Keats AO3

Keats Context (AO3)

Influences

Life

Romantic Poetry

Themes

Clarke's Academy in Enfield

Introduced to Chapman's Translations

Renaissance Literature

Strong interest in classical literature

Greek mythology & translated the Aeneid into English

Progressive attitude & emphasis on free thinking

Spenser's Poetry - Nature

Relationship with Fanny Brawne

Solitude as "sublime"

Joy & Suffering

Finanical difficulties made marriage impossible

Described love as his "religion"

Richness of inner life rendered him immune to the need for companionship

Said he "melt[s] into the air" and is "content to be alone"

Struggled to stay out of debt

Negative Capability

Mysteries > intellectual reasoning

Capable of being uncertain about the meaning of life

Without barrier to beauty (trying to work everything out)

Truth = multi-faceted - cannot be reduced to a single perspective

"Beauty overcomes every other consideration"

Beauty, Truth & Imagination

Truths - not grasped until they are experienced

Sensory experience for perceiving truth & beauty

Rich use of imagery & manipulation of sound patterns

Poetry should have a "fine excess" - sensuous imagery

More reliable gateway to transcendental truth than intellectual

Transcending one's own identity & remaining in a state of openness

Role of the imagination in accessing truth

Truth = not a property of objective reality

Dwells in operations of intuitive perception & sensory experience

Power to create one's own reality - no single "truth" - only the individual's perception of reality

Believed that suffering refined the individual

Shaped awareness of philosophical dimension & granted them access to the "chamber of Maiden Thought"

Pleasure & pain were inseparable - suffering as an escapable fact of human existence

He was prone to bouts of depression - feared that he would never be a poet