JOHN KEATS

(1795-1821)

Sarah Docker
 EARLY LIFE

• Born: 31st October 1795 in London

• Oldest of five children
• Son of the manager of a livery stable in Finsbury (middle
class family)
• Father died in 1804 (from an accident)
• Mother died in 1810 (from tuberculosis)
• Financially struggled
• Highly educated – went to John Clarke’s Enfield private
school
• In 1811, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and completed
medical training in 1816 but he decided to pursue poetry
instead
 EARLY POETRY

• His poetic genius was not recognised during his lifetime

• Wrote ‘Endymion’ in April-Nov 1817 (then published in
May 1818) but was subject to ridicule
• His was mocked in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
for being part of the ‘Cockney School’ of poets, a
derogatory term used by other writers of the time, such
as Byron, to denote those from lower-classes who had
no right to aspire to poetry
• One critic called the work, the "imperturbable
drivelling idiocy of Endymion.”
• Another critic not only asserted that Keats had "a mind
constitutionally inapt for abstract thinking," but that he
"had no mind."
 • Keats spent the summer of
1818 on a walking tour in
Northern England and
Scotland
• He returned home to care for
his sick brother, Tom, who
suffered from tuberculosis (the
disease that killed their mother
and would kill Keats at 25
years of age)
• Tom died in December 1818
and Keats moved to his friend
Charles Brown’s house in
Hampstead. There he met and
LATER YEARS fell in love with a neighbour,
the 18 year old Fanny Brawne.
 THE MATURE POET

• This was the beginning of Keats' most

creative period. He wrote, among
others, 'The Eve of St Agnes', 'La Belle
Dame Sans Merci’, ‘Ode on a Grecian
Urn,’ 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'To
Autumn’. These are now known as
some of the greatest poems in the
English language.
 FANNY BRAWNE

• After meeting in November 1818, the two fell madly in love

• However, their love was overshadowed by Keats’ nursing of Tom
and also Keats’ lack of finances which prevented them from
marrying
• On 18 October 1819, Keats proposed to Fanny who accepted.
They kept this a secret as they knew that Keats did not seem to
have great prospects as a poet and was hindered financially by
illness in his family and therefore, others would not approve of
their relationship
• Her mother did not outright forbid the marriage, but she withheld
her legal consent until such time as there was financial stability.
Fanny’s mother, however, was fond of Keats and she did nurse
him during his later illness.
• His friend, Brown, did not approve of their relationship. He
believed she was a distraction as she consumed Keats’ time and
thought but also deemed her feelings were too casual as opposed
to Keats’ deep attraction.
 LETTERS TO FANNY

Keats wrote a flood of love letters to his beloved. His expressions

of love and its joys are mixed with pain and death.

“I have vex'd you too much. But for Love! Can I help it? You are
always new. The last of your kisses was ever the gracefullest.
When you pass'd my window home yesterday, I was filled with as
much admiration as if I had then seen you for the first time. You
uttered a half complaint once that I only lov'd your Beauty. Have I
nothing else then to love in you but that? Do not I see a heart
naturally furnish'd with wings imprison itself with me? No ill
prospect has been able to turn your thoughts a moment from me.
This perhaps should be as much a subject of sorrow as joy–but I
will not talk of that…”

Despite the ambivalence expressed in such letters, Keats was

eager to be with Fanny; he urged Fanny "whenever you know me
to be alone, come, no matter what day."
 LETTERS TO FANNY

“My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist

without you — I am forgetful of every thing but
seeing you again — my Life seems to stop there
— I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have
a sensation at the present moment as though I
was dissolving – I should be exquisitely
miserable without the hope of soon seeing you …
I have been astonished that Men could die
Martyrs for religion – I have shudder’d at it – I
shudder no more – I could be martyr’d for my
Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for
that – I could die for you.”
 LETTERS TO FANNY

". . .I love you; all I can bring you is a swooning admiration of your
Beauty. . . . You absorb me in spite of myself--you alone: for I look not
forward with any pleasure to what is call'd being settled in the world; I
tremble at domestic cares--yet for you I would meet them, though if it
would leave you the happier I would rather die than do so. I have two
luxuries to brood over in my walks, your Loveliness and the hour of my
death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute. I
hate the world: it batters too much the wings of my self-will, and would I
could take a sweet poison from your lips to send me out of it. From no
others would I take it. I am indeed astonish'd to find myself so careless of
all charms but yours--remembering as I do the time when even a bit of
ribband was a matter of interest with me. What softer words can I find for
you after this--what it is I will not read. Nor will I say more here, but in a
Postscript answer any thing else you may have mentioned in your Letter
in so many words--for I am distracted with a thousand thoughts. I will
imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a
 HIS FINAL YEARS

• In February1820, Keats began to display

symptoms of tuberculosis. He staggered home
one night and coughed up blood, saying to Brown
“I know the colour of that blood;—it is arterial
blood...that drop of blood is my death warrant.”
• His second volume of poetry was published in
July, but he was by now very ill.
• In September, under his doctor’s orders to seek a
warm climate for the winter, Keats and his friend
Joseph Severn left for Italy, in the hope that this
would improve Keats' health.
• When they reached Rome, Keats was confined to
bed. Severn nursed him devotedly, but Keats died
in Rome on 23 February 1821. He was only 25
years old.
• He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in
Rome.
 HIS DEATH

The last few months of his life were racked with

turmoil. He was in physical pain, was separate
from his beloved and felt like a commercial and
critical failure as he old sold 200 copies of his
books.
Keats, dying, expected his poetry to be
forgotten, as the epitaph he wrote for his
tombstone indicates: "Here lies one whose name
was writ in water."
However, his reputation sharply rose and now he
is known as one of the best-loved poets.
 WHAT HAPPENED TO
FANNY?

• Fanny cut her hair short, donned black clothing, and

wore the ring Keats had given her (see left).
• She shared her grief with Keats’ younger sister (also
called Fanny). They wrote to one another for a
considerable time and developed a deep friendship.
• A few months after his death, Fanny wrote to Keats’
sister: “I have not got over it and never shall.”
• In 1827, Fanny came out of mourning. This was six
years after Keats’ death. She began wearing brighter
clothing.
• In 1833, she married and had three children.
• She died in 1865.
KEATS’ IDEAS AND BELIEFS

This is just a brief introduction to some of his ideas. We will

examine them closely as we study his poetry.
 NEGATIVE CAPABILITY

Negative capability - the willingness to remain in doubt or not to resolve conflicts or ambiguities:
" . . several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went
to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare
possessed so enormously--I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable
of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact
& reason--Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude
caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content
with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no
further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other
consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.“
Read article: John Keats and ‘negative capability’ by Stephen Hebron (on OneNote)
“Keats emphasised that the artist had to avoid looking at life from a single
perspective. He was acutely aware that to capture the intensity of life, the artist had
to reveal life’s dual nature and the futility of any attempt to fix or rationalise it.”
Source: https://crossref-it.info/textguide/john-keats-selected-poems/40/2935

“Keats’ view is that true art of poetry is about the mind and feelings in a stage of
complexity and ambiguity” (Axel Kruse).
 BEAUTY

• “John Keats is the last important poet of English Romanticism, but differently
from Byron and Shelley, he does not express rebellious or utopian ideas, and
differently from Wordsworth his poetry contains no moral and social message.
He thinks, in fact, the poet's task lies in search of beauty both in man and in
nature, since beauty is the only lasting value.”
• For Keats, the pursuit of “beauty overcomes every other consideration.”
(letter to George and Tom Keats [his brothers])
• “He believed that poetry is art driven by the imagination and a passion for
beauty” (Axel Kruse)
Source:
http://www.academia.edu/14610240/P.B.Shelley_and_keats_as_second_generation_romantic_poet
 TRUTH

Keats’s aestheticism was not only sensuous—it had an intellectual element. He

was constantly endeavoring to reach truth through beauty; he had a conviction
that “for his progress towards truth, thought, knowledge and philosophy were
indispen­sable. But he felt also that “a poet will never be able to rest in thoughts
and reasonings, which do not also satisfy imagination and give a truth which is
also beauty”.
Keats believed that beauty had the power to communicate the truth of the
human experience, i.e. to convey wisdom/insight better than any other
conveyance of meaning (e.g. science).
Source:
http://www.academia.edu/14610240/P.B.Shelley_and_keats_as_second_generation_romantic_poet
 TRUTH AND BEAUTY

Truth was something Keats talked about often in his letters. He

rarely used it in the true or false sense - he was trying to use the
word to say that the real truth, important and valuable life events,
is associated with instants of beauty, moments of transcendence,
whether associated with love, the natural world or the imagination.
Keats replied to a friend: "I am certain of nothing but of the
holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination.
What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth - whether it
existed before or not - for I have the same idea of all our passions
as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential
beauty ... O for a life of sensations rather than thoughts."
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2005/aug/20/guardianlet
ters
 IMAGINATION

• 'I am certain of nothing save the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth
of the imagination. What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be
truth, whether it existed before or not’ (letter to Benjamin Bailey)
• In a different letter to J.H. Reynolds, Keats compares human life to a mansion
of large apartments he describes the 'chamber of maiden thought' in which 'we
become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere. We see nothing but
pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight.’
• However, Keats argues that one must move on to the next phase 'of convincing
ones nerves that the World is full of misery and heartbreak, pain, sickness and
oppression - whereby this chamber of maiden thought becomes gradually
darkened - , many doors... all leading to dark passages - we see not the balance
of good and ill.'
 IMAGINATION (CONT.)

How do these extracts help us understand Keats' view of the imagination?

1. The chamber of maiden thought represents the poet's early desire to use the imagination to create a
world of delight and wonder, a world of 'Flora and Old Pan'
2. But this is not where the poet can rest. The poet's imagination can enable a perception of truth which
is immortal and transcendent (whose beauty 'obliterates all other consideration').
3. However, the most sophisticated view of the imagination conceives of it as a power which enables the
poet to perceive a truth and a beauty which does not reject or attempt to escape from reality but explores
those 'dark passages and creates a complex vision of reality: the balance of good and ill. It takes account
of the 'agony and strife of human hearts.'
I think we can understand the imagination operating in Keats' poetry in three fundamental ways:
1) As the inventions of 'Fancy' offering escape.
2) As a power to create a vision of a transcendent or ideal beauty
3) As a power which takes account of reality but transforms it into a more complex and inclusive
vision of beauty: a kind of theodicy, or belief which takes account of the role of suffering and ill in
human experience.
Source: http://www.keatsian.co.uk/revision-notes-romantic-context.php
 POETRY AND NATURE

• Keats' insistence that poetic composition ought to be

natural – it “should come natural to him"
• Poetry is a natural not an artificial product
• Poetic composition is a natural process and poetry a natural product
• Axiom: “If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it
had better not come at all.” (Keats to John Taylor)
 KEATS’ TREATISE ON POETRY

• Poetic composition comes naturally (see slide before)

• “Poetry is art, imagination and beauty, and that it is an expression of feelings and
sensations.” (Axel Kruse)
• “The true art of poetry is about the mind and feelings in a state of complexity rather
than philosophical instruction.” (Axel Kruse) – this refers back to negative capability
• See poetical character (next slide)
• “Keats’ persona as the poet of sensuousness and sweet dreams” (Axel Kruse)
• “Keats’ preoccupation with poetry as high art, as a transformation of life by
imagination, and complexity that can be defined as negative capability” (Axel Kruse)
 POETICAL CHARACTER

• Keats has an impulse to interest himself in anything he saw or heard. He accepted it and identified
himself with it “If a sparrow comes before my window,” say Keats, “I take part in its existence and
pick about the gravel.” A poet, he says, has no identity. He is continually in, for and filling some
other body. “Of the poetic character,” Keats says, “it has no self; it is everything and nothing. It
enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or
elevated. It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago [Shakespeare’s villain in Othello] or Imogene
[Shakespeare’s heroine in Cymbeline]. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the camelion
Poet.” (letter to Richard Woodhouse)
• Keats recognised the chameleon aspect of his own nature. He would watch sparrows from his
window and pick about with them in the gravel. He would imagine the delight a billiard ball might
take in its own roundness, in its smooth, rapid motion. More dramatically, he told Woodhouse how,
in a room full of people, he would quickly be ‘annihilated’ by the different identities pressing upon
him. But that was the nature of poets, of the men of genius Keats habitually measured himself
against. He told his friend Benjamin Bailey on 27 November 1817:
In passing however I must say one thing that has pressed upon me lately and increased my Humility
and capability of submission, and that is this truth – Men of Genius are great as certain ethereal
Chemicals operating on the Mass of neutral intellect – but they have not any individuality, any
determined Character.
Source: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/john-keats-and-negative-capability
 KEATS’ DISTRUST OF WOMEN

Before he met Fanny, Keats felt uncomfortable with women and contemptuous of them.

In July 1818, he wrote:

“...I am certain I have not a right feeling towards Women--at this moment I am striving to be just to them but I
cannot--Is it because they fall so far beneath my Boyish imagination? When I was a Schoolboy I thought a fair
Woman a pure Goddess, my mind was a soft nest in which some one of them slept though she knew it not--I have
no right to expect more than their reality. I thought them etherial above Men--I find them perhaps equal.... I do not
like to think insults in a Lady's Company--I commit a Crime with her which absence would have not known--Is it
not extraordinary? When among Men I have no evil thoughts, no malice, no spleen--I feel free to speak or to be
silent--I can listen and from every one I can learn--my hands are in my pockets I am free from all suspicion and
comfortable. When I am among Women I have evil thoughts, malice spleen--I cannot speak or be silent--I am full
of Suspicions and therefore listen to no thing--I am in a hurry to be gone--You must be charitable and put all this
perversity to my being disappointed since Boyhood–. . . I could say a good deal about this but I will leave it in
hopes of better and more worthy dispositions--and also content that I am wronging no one, for after all I do think
better of Womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet high likes them or not.”
 THE FOLLOWING FOUR
EXTRACTS ARE FROM JOHN
BARNARD’S INTRODUCTION

These extracts will introduce you to some of Keats’

concerns in his poetry.