what was john keats influenced by

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How did John Keats influence other poets?

John Keats was an English Romantic lyric poet whose verse is known for its vivid imagery and great sensuous appeal. His reputation grew after his early death, and he was greatly admired in the Victorian Age. His influence can be seen in the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and the Pre-Raphaelites, among others.

How did Leigh Hunt influence John Keats?

The critic and essayist Leigh Hunt is notable as the first to introduce Keats and Shelley to one another and to the reading public, through his liberal paper, the Examiner. Hunt, a fascinating radical figure in his own right, was a key influence on Keats, encouraging him during his life and promoting his work after his death.

Who was John Keats?

Tracing the very short career of one of England’s greatest poets. Beyond self-expression. In Keats’s finest season, even the gnats are mourning. For the poet, Sundays were not for church, but for Shakespeare. The Romantics fused poetry and science. Is there any hope for a revival? Adept across genres, Johnson made a lasting contribution to poetry.

How has Keats’s thinking changed?

Keats’s thinking, then, had matured with remarkable speed from the poet of Endymion, for whom a poetry of intense sensation was itself a model of transcendence. His maturing irony had developed into a re-evaluation and meditative probing of his earlier concerns, the relation of art and the work of imagination to concrete experience.

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What inspired John Keats?

He had been inspired by a series of recent lectures by Hazlitt on English poets and poetic identity and had also met Wordsworth. Keats may have seemed to his friends to be living on comfortable means, but in reality he was borrowing regularly from Abbey and his friends.

What did Keats believe in?

Keats believed that a poem must strive for the infinite and that there is a real world of mortality and an ideal world of permanence. Poetry, he argued, made life permanent. In the end, Keats believed that a poet is a chameleon: A poet is "the most unpoetical thing in existence," he said.

Why does Keats use Greek mythology?

Keats omits crude, ruthless incidents told in ancient mythology, choosing his material so that he makes the life of ancient Greece seem an era of ideal beauty, happiness, and love. In addition Keats uses elements of medieval romance to endow his classic tales with magic, wonder, and pensive thought.

What inspired John Keats to write the ode to the Nightingale?

The nightingale has longstanding literary associations, but Keats's famous ode was inspired by a real-life nightingale as much as by previous poetry. Stephen Hebron considers how Keats uses the bird to position poetic imagination between the mortal and the immortal.

What is the writing style of John Keats?

John Keats was an English Romantic lyric poet whose verse is known for its vivid imagery and great sensuous appeal. His reputation grew after his early death, and he was greatly admired in the Victorian Age.

What was John Keats passionate?

Poverty kept him from marrying the woman he loved. And he achieved lasting fame only after his early death in 1821. Yet grief and hardship never destroyed his passionate commitment to poetry. Reading Keats is a luxury, a rare chance to experience the English language as a work of art.

Who is poesy mythology?

Poesy is a winged mythological figure, an identity with power that transcends sensory perception. Though Keats' narrator cannot see the nightingale, he addresses it as “light-winged Dryad of the trees,” again assigning, at least temporarily, a mythological form to the invisible (Poems 279; line 7).

What are the poetic devices used in the poem a thing of beauty?

Alliteration used in the poem "A thing of beauty": A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth. Some shape of beauty moves away the pall.

What does the express train Symbolise in the poem the Express?

Introduction. The poem The Express is written in the praise of Express Train by Stephen Spender. The poem symbolizes the industrial revolution as well as the modern romantic era which is on contrary to the traditional one.

What irony is the Ode to a Nightingale?

The irony is that the woman who lost her voice (and her tongue) becomes the bird with one of the most beautiful voices in all of nature. It always amazes us how some of the most important poems in the English language were scribbled down in a matter of hours!

What does nightingale symbolize in the ode?

The superficial scope of the poem is the nightingale, which represents both nature and death. This bird flies around, and lands in a tree, forever singing its sad song, and connecting the reader as well as Keats to the ideas of immortality.

What is the meaning of Ode to a Nightingale?

Keats wants to escape from life, not by means of wine, but by a much more powerful agent, the imagination. The second main thought and the main theme of the poem is Keats' wish that he might die and be rid of life altogether, providing he could die as easily and painlessly as he could fall asleep.

Was Keats religious?

Fanny Brawne, the young woman Keats was engaged to at the time of his death in 1821, was baptized here and attended the church with her family. But Keats, apparently, never set foot inside the building. He was an atheist, after all.

What were John Keats poems about?

Ode to a NightingaleTo AutumnOde on a Grecian UrnLa Belle Dame sans MerciEndymionHyperionJohn Keats/Poems

What does Keats stand for?

The name Keats is primarily a gender-neutral name of English origin that means Shed Worker. Anglo-Saxon surname, which may have been used for a worker in a shed (cyta or cyte) or Middle English word for a bird (kete or kyte), used as a nickname for a greedy person.

What is poetry according to Keats?

In the early years of his poetic career Keats regarded poetry primarily as a form of escape. The poet, he believed, fleeing from the painful realities of life, takes refuge in a dream world of enchanting beauty and unalloyed bliss.

Why is John Keats important?

John Keats was an English Romantic lyric poet whose verse is known for its vivid imagery and great sensuous appeal. His reputation grew after his e...

What was John Keats’s childhood like?

John Keats’s father, a livery-stable manager, died when he was eight, and his mother remarried almost immediately. Throughout his life, Keats was c...

What was John Keats’s occupation?

John Keats was apprenticed to a surgeon in 1811. He broke off the apprenticeship in 1814 and went to London, where he worked as a dresser, or junio...

What did John Keats write?

John Keats wrote sonnets, odes, and epics. All his greatest poetry was written in a single year, 1819: “Lamia,” “The Eve of St. Agnes,” the great o...

How did John Keats die?

John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1821 at the age of 25.

How long did Brawne stay in mourning?

None of Brawne's letters to Keats survive. It took a month for the news of his death to reach London, after which Brawne stayed in mourning for six years. In 1833, more than 12 years after his death, she married and went on to have three children; she outlived Keats by more than 40 years.

Why did Clark put Keats on a starvation diet?

Clark eventually diagnosed consumption (tuberculosis) and placed Keats on a starvation diet of an anchovy and a piece of bread a day intended to reduce the blood flow to his stomach. He also bled the poet: a standard treatment of the day, but also likely a significant contributor to Keats's weakness.

What was John Keats' first poem?

He felt he was facing a stark choice. He had written his first extant poem, "An Imitation of Spenser, " in 1814, when he was 19. Now, strongly drawn by ambition, inspired by fellow poets such as Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron, and beleaguered by family financial crises, he suffered periods of depression. His brother George wrote that John "feared that he should never be a poet, & if he was not he would destroy himself." In 1816, Keats received his apothecary's licence, which made him eligible to practise as an apothecary, physician and surgeon, but before the end of the year he had informed his guardian that he resolved to be a poet, not a surgeon.

What happened to Keats' mother?

In March 1810, when Keats was 14, his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving the children in the custody of their grandmother. She appointed two guardians, Richard Abbey and John Sandell, to take care of them. That autumn, Keats left Clarke's school to apprentice with Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary who was a neighbour and the doctor of the Jennings family. Keats lodged in the attic above the surgery at 7 Church Street until 1813. Cowden Clarke, who remained a close friend of Keats, described this period as "the most placid time in Keats' life."

How did Thomas Keats' father die?

In April 1804, when Keats was aged eight, his father died from a skull fracture after falling from his horse, while returning from a visit to Keats and his brother George at school. Thomas Keats died intestate. Frances remarried two months later, but left her new husband soon afterwards, and the four children went to live with their grandmother, Alice Jennings, in the village of Edmonton.

What was the character of Keats?

The young Keats was described by his friend Edward Holmes as a volatile character, "always in extremes", given to indolence and fighting. However, at 13 he began focusing his energy on reading and study, winning his first academic prize in midsummer 1809.

Where was John Keats born?

John Keats was born in Moorgate, London, on 31 October 1795 to Thomas Keats and his wife, Frances Jennings. There is little evidence of his exact birthplace. Although Keats and his family seem to have marked his birthday on 29 October, baptism records give the date as the 31st. He was the eldest of four surviving children; his younger siblings were George (1797–1841), Thomas (1799–1818), and Frances Mary "Fanny" (1803–1889) who eventually married Spanish author Valentín Llanos Gutiérrez. Another son was lost in infancy. His father first worked as a hostler at the stables attached to the Swan and Hoop Inn, an establishment he later managed, and where the growing family lived for some years. Keats believed that he was born at the inn, a birthplace of humble origins, but there is no evidence to support his belief. The Globe pub now occupies the site (2012), a few yards from the modern-day Moorgate station. He was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, and sent to a local dame school as a child.

What song does Morrissey sing about Keats?

Morrissey sings about Keats (and Wilde) in ‘Cemetry Gates’, one of the songs on The Smiths’ 1986 pop masterpiece The Queen Is Dead.

What is John Keats' influence on other writers?

Since his death in 1821, John Keats has become one of the most famous and admired English poets. Not surprisingly, his influence upon other writers has also been profound. At this page, you can learn about 19th and 20th century works which were inspired by Keats’s life and poetry. For copyright reasons, none of the 20th century works can be reproduced.

How many poems did John Keats write?

Although he died at the age of twenty-five, Keats had perhaps the most remarkable career of any English poet. He published only fifty-four poems, in three slim volumes and a few magazines.

What is the theme of the poem Melancholy?

Melancholy is not just a mood associated with sad objects; in this poem, it is the half-hidden cruel logic of human desire and fulfillment. In our temporal condition the most intense pleasure shades off into emptiness and the pain of loss, fulfillment even appearing more intense as it is more ephemeral. Keats’s thinking, then, had matured with remarkable speed from the poet of Endymion, for whom a poetry of intense sensation was itself a model of transcendence. His maturing irony had developed into a re-evaluation and meditative probing of his earlier concerns, the relation of art and the work of imagination to concrete experience. But the odes also show supreme formal mastery: from the play of rhyme (his ode stanza is a brilliantly compressed yet flexible development from sonnet forms), to resonance of puns and woven vowel sounds, the form itself embodies the logic of a dialogue among conflicting and counterbalancing thoughts and intuitions.

What are the odes of the spring and fall?

The great odes of the spring and fall— Ode to Psyche, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy, To Autumn (written in September), Ode on Indolence (not published until 1848, and often excluded from the group as inferior)—do not attempt to answer these questions. They rather explore the ironies of our attempts to answer them and of poetry’s attempts to articulate them. The order of the odes has been much debated; it is known that Ode to Psyche was written in late April, Ode to a Nightingale probably in May, and To Autumn on 19 September 1819, but although Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode on Melancholy are assumed to belong to May, but no one can be certain of any order or progression. In style and power the odes represent Keats’s finest poetry; indeed, they are among the greatest achievements of Romantic art.

What is the Great End of Poetry?

The “great end” of poetry is “that it should be a friend / To sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.”.

Where are the Keats papers?

The greatest collection of Keats letters, manuscripts, and related papers is in the Houghton Library, Harvard. Some holographs and other materials will be found at the British Library; Keats House, Hampstead; Keats-Shelley Memorial House, Rome; and the Morgan Library.

When did John Keats leave Enfield?

Keats left Enfield in 1811, and, perhaps at Abbey’s urging—though Clarke remembered it as Keats’s choice—he began to study for a career as a surgeon. He was apprenticed to a respected surgeon, Thomas Hammond, in a small town near Enfield, Edmonton, where his grandmother lived.

Where was Thomas Keats born?

Keats was said to have been born in his maternal grandfather’s stable, the Swan and Hoop, near what is now Finsbury Circus, but there is no real evidence for this birthplace, or for the belief that his family was particularly poor. Thomas Keats managed the stable for his father-in-law and later owned it, providing the family an income comfortable enough for them to buy a home and send the older children, John and George (1797-1841), to the small village academy of Enfield, run by the liberal and gifted teacher John Clarke. Young Tom Keats (1799-1818) soon followed them. Although little is known of Keats’s early home life, it appears to have been happy, the family close-knit, the environment full of the exuberance and clamor of a big-city stable and inn yard. Frances Keats was devoted to her children, particularly her favorite, John, who returned that devotion intensely. Under Keats’s father the family business prospered, so that he hoped to send his son, John, to Harrow.

What happened to John Keats' mother?

His father, a livery-stable keeper, died when Keats was eight; his mother died of tuberculosis six years later. After his mother’s death, Keats’s maternal grandmother appointed two London merchants, Richard Abbey and John Rowland Sandell, as guardians.

How many lines are there in Endymion?

Endymion, a four-thousand-line erotic/allegorical romance based on the Greek myth of the same name, appeared the following year. Two of the most influential critical magazines of the time, the Quarterly Review and Blackwood’s Magazine, attacked the collection.

When was John Keats born?

1795–1821. read poems by this poet. read this poet’s poems. English Romantic poet John Keats was born on October 31, 1795, in London. The oldest of four children, he lost both his parents at a young age. His father, a livery-stable keeper, died when Keats was eight; his mother died of tuberculosis six years later.

Who was the first poet to publish a book by John Keats?

Hunt also introduced Keats to a circle of literary men, including the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth. The group’s influence enabled Keats to see his first volume, Poems by John Keats, published in 1817. Shelley, who was fond of Keats, had advised him to develop a more substantial body of work before publishing it.

Who was the editor of the Examiner who published his sonnets?

In 1816 Keats became a licensed apothecary, but he never practiced his profession, deciding instead to write poetry. Around this time, Keats met Leigh Hunt, an influential editor of the Examiner, who published his sonnets “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” and “O Solitude.”.

Did you know?

Keats was only just over five feet tall, and very sensitive about his stature. Upon reading a favourable review of arch-rival Lord Byron's work, he is said to have exclaimed: "You see what it is to be six foot tall and a Lord!"

What is Keats most famous for?

Keats is most celebrated for the Odes of 1819 - 'Ode On A Grecian Urn', 'Ode To A Nightingale' and 'Ode on Melancholy' being the most famous and a good place to start reading. Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, both unfinished, show Keats at his most ambitious, and the Collected Letters are endlessly fascinating.

What is Shelley's Adonais?

Shelley's Adonais is a posthumous elegy to Keats by the contemporary to whom he was probably closest in spirit. Any reading of the Hyperion poems will be greatly enriched by visiting Milton's Paradise Lost.

What did Keats do after his mother died?

After his mother's death in 1810, Keats's guardian apprenticed him to a surgeon/apothecary. In 1814 he fell out with his master and enrolled as a student at Guy's Hospital, and by the summer of 1816 he had become a dresser of wounds and a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. By the end of the year, however, he had thrown up his medical studies altogether in order to pursue his literary ambitions, much to his guardian's dismay.

Who was Keats' greatest influence?

Keats's greatest influence was Milton, from whose long shadow he spent most of his literary career attempting to escape, but he also drew inspiration from his nearer contemporaries Wordsworth and Coleridge. He had a great fondness for the works of the mysterious 17th-century poet Thomas Chatterton, who poisoned himself at 17.

What is John Keats contribution to romanticism?

John Keats: Literary contribution to romanticism. John Keats, (1795-1821) the Adonais of Shelley's song presents a contrast of Shelley as a poet. Shelley was the poet of swift movement and impetuous energy - a poet who sought an immediate transformation of the social order. He was a dreamer and visionary. Matthew Arnold says of him: "He was an ...

How many sonnets did Keats write?

As a sonneteer Keats ranks with the greatest English poets. He wrote sixty one sonnets and of them some are worthy to be ranked with those of Shakespeare. After a strict adherence to the Petrarchan form in the 1817 volume, Keats turned to the Shakespearean form which suited him better.

How did Keats develop as a poet?

All these showed how Keats developed as a poet from sensuousness to contemplative habit of mind. Keats work as he left it has a beauty that is absolute and wholly individual. The influences of Spenser, of Shakespeare, and especially of Milton can be felt in it but they do not dominate it.

What did Keats know about Greek mythology?

He knew of Greek mythology only what he could learn from a classical dictionary and the marbles in the British Museum. In 1818 Keats published his poem Endymion written in couplets. It was a chaos of images and legends. It was harshly criticised in The Quarterly Review..

What did Keats say about beauty?

Keats delighted in the contemplation of the beauties of Nature and life. The past and the present were equally beautiful to him; for him "a thing of beauty is a joy for ever" and for him also "truth is beauty, beauty truth." He seized upon beauty wherever it had been plentiful on earth - in Greek mythology in mediaeval legend in great poetry. The analytical science which destroyed the lovely legends seemed to him horrible. He was essentially the poet of the earth; he enjoyed the beauty of the earth with all his senses wide awake. His imagery was sensuous, concrete and real; his expressions were tangible and earthy. His poetry was abundantly sensuous, yet he was a reflective poet. His poetry indicated a contrast between the real world of sufferings and frustrations and the imaginative world of ideal beauty and love.

What is Keats's substance?

The substance of his verse is light, liquid and airy; his imagination is ethereal; his imagery is abstract and intangible; his words are winged. Keats found fault with Shelley for the thinness of his verse and urged him to "load every rift with ore".

What is the theme of Hyperion?

In Hyperion (begun 1818, abandoned 1819) Keats took up the epic theme of the primeval struggle between the older race of gods such as Saturn and Hyperion and the younger divinities such as Apollo. Both in style and structure, the poem is modelled on Paradise Lost. The blank verse is Miltonic.

What did Shelley believe about Keats' work?

Like many, Shelley believed that negative reviews of Keats’ work had led to his death and Shelley himself was so affected by it that he wrote the elegy Adonais in Keats’ memory: ‘I weep for Adonais – he is dead!’. The connection between the two men was made even clearer after Shelley’s drowning in July 1822.

How did John Keats die?

Two hundred years ago, on 23 February 1821, John Keats died. He had suffered from tuberculosis since early 1820 and, after months of distress and pain, finally succumbed to the disease at the age of just 25. Keats was a failed medical student, who had swapped operations for odes after realising his poetic talent. He had been writing for six years and publishing his poetry for four. Contrary to popular belief, Keats was not considered a renowned poet during his lifetime. His verses were vilified in the press and his works had failed to sell.

When did Brawne write to Keats' sister?

The publication in 1936 of letters from Brawne to Keats’ younger sister also renewed interest in his life and poetry and ensured that later critics recognised Brawne was worthy of Keats’ love. Since the 1930s Keats has continued to epitomise our ideal of the Romantic poet, with his beautiful verses, tragic life and early death.

What audience did Keats have?

Through his poetry and paintings influenced by them, Keats’ was popularised for a Victorian audience.

Why was Keats' body burned?

After his death in Rome, Keats’ belongings were burned to prevent the spread of infection and his body speedily interred in the city’s Protestant Cemetery. All that was left of the poet were his words and the memories held dear by those he left behind. Keats himself believed his poetical efforts were for nothing.

Who was the first to introduce Keats and Shelley to one another?

The critic and essayist Leigh Hunt is notable as the first to introduce Keats and Shelley to one another and to the reading public, through his liberal paper, the Examiner. Hunt, a fascinating radical figure in his own right, was a key influence on Keats, encouraging him during his life and promoting his work after his death. His 1828 Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries included the first biographical account of Keats. In it he described Keats as:

Where was Shelley buried?

The two poets’ early deaths – both in Italy – and the burial of Shelley also in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery further entwined their legacies.

Overview

Career

Early life

Last months: Rome

Death

Reception

Letters

Major works