The poetry of John Keats 1795-1821

1. The poetry of John Keats 1795-1821

THE POETRY OF JOHN
KEATS
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Made by: Pulatova Aiken

2. Keats Family Background

KEATS FAMILY
BACKGROUND
October 31, 1795, John Keats is born, the first
child of Thomas and Frances Keats.
Brother George is born in 1797
Brother Tom is born in 1799
1803 Sister Fanny is born

3. Keats Education

KEATS EDUCATION
1803 enters John Clarkes School at Enfield
Becomes friends with Charles Cowden Clarke
Clarke encourages Keats interest in reading
Becomes an avid reader after death of mother

4. Keats Education

KEATS EDUCATION
1803 enters John Clarkes School at Enfield
Becomes friends with Charles Cowden Clarke
Clarke encourages Keats interest in reading
Becomes an avid reader after death of mother

5.

Compared to the education, travels, and personal
lives of Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and
Shelley, Keats experience was more limited and
his education seemed more a matter of chance than
plan. Although trained in medicine he gave up
his studies and devoted all his energy to writing
poetry.

6. Views on society, politics, and religion

V I E W S O N S O C I E T Y, P O L I T I C S,
AND RELIGION
Seems to have had no abstract, programmatic
interest in such subjects. His literary world
was very limited but not superficial.
Brief literary career characterized by a chosen
intensity and concentration of enormous talent
and energy.

7. Summation of Keats Career

SUMMATION OF KEATS
CAREER
According to Andre Maurois, biographer of Shelley
and Byron, a great man. . .finds himself modeled
by the function he has to perform. . .of making
his life a work of art, at becoming what the
world would have him be . . .and so acquires. .
.in spite of himself and whatever may be his
intrinsic worth, that. . .which makes him a fine
model for the artist

8. Keats own admission of his role

KEATS OWN ADMISSION OF
HIS ROLE
At 25, fully aware of his impending death, he
closed a letter to a friend, I can scarcely bid
you good-bye even in a letter. I always made an
awkard bow (qtd. In Heath 991). His poems and
letters were the artistic transformation of the
everyday into the extraordinary. Few poets have
ever been so definite about the connection
between life and art.

9. Keats Outline of his Literary Career

KEATS OUTLINE OF HIS
LITERARY CAREER

10.

Indulgence in Luxury (youth) poet sees himself
as a protected spectator becoming aware of the
possibilities of a nobler life
Compares himself to Wordsworth if human life is
a large mansion of many apartments, both poets
have passed through the infant (thoughtless)
chamber where they were intoxicated with the
light and the atmosphere. . .saw nothing but
pleasant wonders and thought of delaying there
forever in delight (Heath 992). Poetry viewed
as a means of self-exploration and fulfillment.

11. Last years of life and career

LAST YEARS OF LIFE AND
CAREER
In 1816, Keats had hoped for 10 years to fulfill
his poetic apprenticeship, but found that he
had less than 3 years to write four to live.
Poems show a rapidly fast-growing intensity of
concern with subject, style, and purpose. Poems
are a way of exploring and discovering.

12. Poems of this period

POEMS OF THIS PERIOD
Characterized by an intensity and urgency to
explore dreams, fantasy, reality (as in The Eve of St. Agnes) At times
seems to mock his own seriousness ex. Suggests that the destructive
ferocity of a gentle robin eating a worm is a smaller version of the
shark attacking its prey

13. Poems of this period

POEMS OF THIS PERIOD
Characterized by an intensity and urgency to
explore dreams, fantasy, reality (as in The Eve
of St. Agnes)
At times seems to mock his own seriousness ex.
Suggests that the destructive ferocity of a
gentle robin eating a worm is a smaller version
of the shark attacking its prey

14. Idea of negative capability throughout Keats poetry

I D E A O F N E G A T I V E C A PA B I L I T Y
THROUGHOUT KEATS
P O E T RY
Even before he was aware of his deteriorating
heath, Keats knew that he must choose between
half-knowledge or none. He praised negative
capability as the poets ability to exist in
uncertainties, doubts, and mystery, without
necessarily reaching for fact and reason, and
using that experience as subject for poetry

15. Appreciation was delayed

APPRECIATION WAS
DELAYED
Contemporaries were unsympathetic and unimpressed by his poems A century
later, William Butler Yeats would write:
I see a school boy when I think of him
With face and nose pressed to a sweetshop window
For certainly he sank into his grave
His senses and his heart unsatisfied
And madebeing poor, ailing, and ignorant,
Shut out from all the luxury of the world,
The coarse bred son of livery stable keeper
Luxuriant song.