John Keats

John Keats

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Pietro Berrettini, Carlo Cavazzoni, Giorgio Meattelli, Angelo Valentini.

Life and works

John Keats was born in London in 1795.He trained as a surgeon's apprentice, but abandoned hismedical career to devote himself to poetry. Keats was fascinated by Greek art which profoundly influenced his poetry. In 1818 he published Endymion, a long mythological poem about the love of shepherd Endymion for the moon goddess Diana. It’s an immature work, full of somewhat obscure allegory.He fell in love with Fanny Brawne, to whom he wrote passionate love letters. 1819 is known as Keats' annus mirabilis, as in just a few months he composed a series of poems whose success earned him everlasting fame.

Timeline

John Keats

1816-1817

Lyrical Poems

1818-1819

Narrative Poems

1820

Hyperion

1820

The Eve of St Agnes, Lamia

1820

Fanny Browne

1820

Got Tuberculosis and moved to Italy (milder weather)

1821

Dies in Rome

John Keats' poetry explores beauty, nature, mortality, and love, blending vivid imagery, emotional depth, and reflections on life's transience.

Keats' tomb

His production can be roughly grouped into: EARLY MINOR POEMS 1816-1817.NARRATIVE POEMS (1818-1819) : Endymion, it’s about on the love of the shepherd Endymion for the moon goddess Diana. In 1820 he published Hyperion, but other important works were: The Eve of St. Agnes, Lamia LYRICAL POEMS La Belle Dame sans Merci, The Great Odes PROSE-Letters including the ones written to Fanny Brawne. In 1820, ill with tuberculosis, he went to Italy, where the climate was milder .He died in Rome in 1821

Here lies one whose name was writ in water

John Keats' Engraving on his Tomb

The Concept of Beautyis the central theme of all Keats’s poem Keats talks about physical beauty and spiritual beauty .Physical beauty is perceived through the five senses, producing a joy that leads to spiritual beauty. «A thing of beauty is a joy for ever» (opening lines of Endymion)Physical beauty is destined to fade, spiritual beauty is eternal. Keats identifies beauty with truth.

An artist can in fact die, but the beauty he has created lives on

John Keats

Features and themes

The imagination. Imagination, recognises Beauty in existing things, but also creates Beauty. The poet is able to seek sensations and through imagination he can see the beauty of things and create poetry. Negative Capability: Ability of the poet to cancel his own identity when observing an object in order to identify with it. He is not concerned with a moral judgment, but he must have «the ability to escape from or deny his own personality and thus open himself fully to the complex reality around him»

For Keats, poetry is a source of joy and consolation. It arises from the depths of the soul, overcomes the fleeting nature of life and becomes immortal, something absolute as the only reason for life. The beauty is the fundamental theme of Keats's poetry.Poetry does not have to have a didactic purpose.

Urn Pic

It is the song dedicated to the beauty of a timeless artefact: a Greek urn decorated with classical motifs. Ode on a Greek Urn was written in 1819. The fundamental theme of this poem is the relationship between art, death and life. The poet describes the scenes represented on the urn.On one side there is a Dionysian festival with music and dance.On the other side the inhabitants of a village are represented who are going to a sacrifice.Keats believes that the figures represented on the urn are made eternal by art which has the power to stop time.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

The metrical scheme of the ode is that of an irregular Pindaric ode. The Ode on a Grecian urn is in fact composed of 5 stanzas of 10 decasyllable lines in alternate rhyme ABAB, followed by a combination of three other rhymes CDE – CDE

Analysis

Art and Eternity: The urn, as a piece of art, exists in a timeless realm. It captures moments of beauty and life, frozen in time. Keats contrasts the transience of human life with the permanence of art.Beauty and Truth: The famous concluding lines—"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"—suggest a complex idea that the pursuit of beauty is a form of truth, and vice versa. This reflects Keats' belief that art transcends the imperfections of reality, offering a more perfect truth.Immutability vs. Change: The scenes depicted on the urn are forever unchanging: lovers caught in an eternal moment before a kiss, musicians playing songs that are unheard but everlasting. In contrast, human life is fleeting, subject to decay and death.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

The poem tells us about the meeting between a nameless knight, lost in a sterile and desolate landscape, and the poet. The knight tells of the day he came across a mysterious and beautiful woman, "with wild eyes". The beautiful lady claims to be “the daughter of a fairy” and that she loves him. He, completely enchanted, lets her lead him to the "Cave of the Elves", where he falls asleep.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

During his sleep, the knight has a vision of very pale princes and kings, who warn him: "the beautiful lady without mercy" has now caught him in her net, as she did with them, and he is now in her power. When the knight wakes up, he realises that he has been abandoned by the beautiful lady, who will never return, while he will have to remain waiting for her, wandering dejectedly.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Analysis

Love and Seduction: The knight is enchanted by the "beautiful lady," who lures him into a dreamlike state. She gives him "roots of relish sweet" and "wild honey," symbolic of sensual pleasure.Illusion and Deception: The knight is deceived by the lady, who ultimately abandons him, leaving him desolate. She is a symbol of untrustworthy beauty or an unattainable ideal.Death and Desolation: The poem begins with the knight "alone and palely loitering," a haunting image of his physical and emotional decline. His encounter with the woman has left him in a state of paralysis, unable to return to life.

Analysis

The Knight: Represents the romantic hero, undone by his idealization of love and beauty.The Lady: A femme fatale, embodying the destructive allure of beauty. She might also symbolize death or the unattainable ideal.Nature: Keats juxtaposes the initial vibrant imagery of nature with the later barren, cold landscape to reflect the knight's emotional journey.

The Knight and the Lady

The female figure comes from a mysterious "beyond" and is an expression of a primordial nature, creating a suspended atmosphere, full of charm but full of drama. Its ambiguous beauty underlines the magic, but also the dismay and drama of love. The motif of love as an absolute value is thus introduced (La belle Dame sans merci is the personification of death, who with her beauty dragged kings, warriors and princes into the kingdom of love and death. )

THE FEMALE FIGURE

In the conclusion, the melancholy silence of nature reappears and the initial image of the knight who - after the encounter with Death - resumes wandering alone in the lake environment.

Bibliography

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urnhttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44475/la-belle-dame-sans-merci-a-balladhttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keatshttps://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Keats

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