John Keats

1. John Keats Mortality, Love and Beauty "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

2. Outline • Introduction • The Eve of St. Agnes • Keats’ 1819 Odes • Next Week

3. John Keats (1795-1821) : His Life • 1804 -- father fell off a horse and cracked his skull when Keats was 8 • 1810 -- his mother died of tuberculosis when he was 14; • Started out as a surgeon, but chose then to write poetry. • Struggle with money problems all his adult years; worried about his brother’s health. • 1819– his brother Tom died of TB. • 1820 – symptoms of TB • 1821 -- Died of TB at the age of 25.

4. Keats and His Contemporaries • introduced to Percy Shelly and William Wordsworth by Leigh Hunt • supported by his friend Charles Brown, falling in love with Fanny Brawne. • Negative influences: his declining health and predominantly negative reviews (with the exception of Shelley’s) source

5. Mortality, Art and Love • The Romantics – Eternity (36:17) • “Nightingale” • “Grecian Urn” • Bright Star -- 4:42 conflicts between a fashion designer and two poets -- 0:51 Nightingale -- 30:30 Negative Capability*; ““A poem needs understanding through the senses.” -- 53:47 “Nightingale” (01:22 La Belle Dame Sans Merci) -- 01:40:22,216 --Let's pretend I will return in spring.

6. Keats’ Letters • 30:30 “A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity - he is continually in for - and filling some other Body - The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute - the poet has none; no identity - he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures.” • 1:00:54 “I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”

7. The Eve of St. Agnes • What is the story about? • How is it different from • Romeo and Juliet? • 2. What function does the • St. Agnes custom play? • And Madeline’s dream? • 3. How is the story structured? • What are the narrative frames? • 4. Is Porphyro a voyeur or a lover?

8. Structure and Plot • Frame (1-5): Beadsman, cold and stormy weather and sounds of festivities. • 6-8: Madeline, who is oblivious to the festivities, waits for the night. • 9-10: Porphyro, wanting to see Madeline, enters the castle. • 11-20: meets Angela, who warns him off and tells him the legend; P. asks Angela to help him find Madeline. • 21-27: Madeline enters, prays, and undresses and goes to sleep, the moon shining on her.

9. Structure and Plot • 28-33: Porphyro sneaks out of closet, prepares a table of foods, and wakes M up, first with words and then with music. • 34 -36: Madeline wakes up, realizes that it’s no dream, and thinks he's a traitor • 38-39 --P wants her to be his bride and to run away with him. • 40-42 They escape while everyone is still asleep. The Beadsman dies.

10. Keats’ 1819 Odes • Theme: human mortality and Sentiments (melancholy, indolence); artistic beauty • Ode to Psyche –be a singer of Psyche • Ode to a Nightingale – dynamic art • Ode on a Grecian Urn –plastic art • Ode on Melancholy • Ode on Indolence • To Autumn

11. Keats’ 1819 Odes (2) • Ode as a poetic form (see note) • process of empathy (Giving up on drugs or wine, emphasis on five senses, with Personification, Direct address and apostrophe) (Using apostrophe to speak to the object in order to enter its realm--or bring it nearer). • disappearance of the speaker in “To Autumn.” John Keats in 1819, painted by his friend Joseph Severn

12. Ode to a Nightingale • Keats, reveling in the fact that the bird sings so happily in the forest, wants to “fly” away with it on the wings of poetry. But he cannot make it, being reminded of his mortal self. • Where are the turning points in the poem? • Analyze Keats’ use of paradoxes. • What does the nightingale represent? In what ways is it different from Shelley’s sky lark?

13. Ode on a Grecian Urn • How is the urn represented, with the patterns on its two sides? • How is the speaker related to it? • The process: question empathy confirmation  differentiation between the human and the artistic.

14. Ode on Melancholy How is Melancholy defined? What is she associated with, and not associated with? Why does Melancholy have her shrine in the temple of Delight? The Soul of the Rose by John William Waterhouse (source)

15. Ode on Indolence • Why does the three figures pass by three times? • How does the speaker describe his indolence? Frank SkipworthIndolence, Oil on canvas, 1884

16. Ode • -- lengthy, serious in subject matter, elevated in its diction and style, and often elaborate in its stanzaic structure. • -- two classical prototypes: • Greek or Pindaric Ode – “irregular stanza” (Meditative Odes by the Romantics) • and Roman or Horatian Ode– uniform stanza (e.g. “To Autumn”) (source: Meditative Romantic Ode from Keats Syllabus)

17. Meditative Romantic Ode • combine the stanzaic complexity of the irregular ode with the personal meditation of the Horatian ode, usually dropping the emotional restraint of the Horatian tradition. • subject matter: • the description of a particularized outer natural scene; • an extended meditation, which the scene stimulates, over a private problem or a universal situation or both; • the occurrence of an insight or vision, a resolution or decision, which signals a return to the scene originally described, but with a new perspective. • (source: Meditative Romantic Ode from Keats Syllabus)

18. Next Week • Felicia Hemans “The Switzer’s Wife”, "Cabianca," and Letitia Elizabeth Landon “Revenge” -- Quiz (and Keats’ poems) • Two Group Reports • (Elizabeth Barret Browning –probably not)