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JOHN KEATS (1795-1821) - Coggle Diagram
JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)
LIFE
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1817 he gave up medicine for poetry, helped by the editor of The Examiner Leigh Hunt
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his brother died of tuberculosis and his own health deteriorated, reason why he couldn't marry Fanny Brawne
1820 he travelled to Italy to try to recover his health but he died of tuberculosis in Rome in February 1821
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WORKS
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Great odes exploring the relations between pleasure and pain, happiness and melancholy, art and life, reality and imagination (1819)
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Hyperion (1820)
published unfinished, it shows the influence of Milton in its blank verse
REPUTATION
hardly known after his death, he was re-evaluated by the Victorian critic Matthew Arnold, who said: "He is with Shakespeare"
POETRY
use of "I" as a universal "I", not an individualist one
no mystery, no Wordsworth's pantheism
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imagination crucial to create poetry, to give the vision of what he would like human life to be
the poet has the negative capability of denying his certainties and putting aside reason to identify with the object that is his source of inspiration, so that he can find sensations leading to beauty and truth and can create poetry thanks to his imaginative power
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TEXTS
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
O what can ail thee, knoght-at-arms, /
alone and palely loitering? /
The sedge is wither'd from the lake, /
and no birds sing ...
La Belle Dame sans Merci /
Thee hats in thrall! : he is under the Lady's spell
the meeting between a knoght and a lady becomes a metaphor of illness and love consummation. The knight wanders in a desolate wasteland and tells about a faery's child with wild eyes who speaks a strange language
Ode on a Grecian Urn
celebration of the immortality of the urn, probably originated by Keat's immagination, immortality as a perfect work of art that can be acquired through art
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, /
thou foster-child of silence and slow time, /
Sylvan historian, who cants thus express /
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme
the difference between the eternal perfection of art and the mutability and suffering of human existence
the scenes depicted on the urn will never change. Since the urn fixed a moment of beauty and happiness, it symbolises art that offers a refuge from time and decay
Ode to a nightingale
the poet meditates on the immortal beauty of the nightingale's song which contrasts with the sadness of the poet, who must face his own sorrow and mortality