John Keats and the Loss of Romantic InnocenceRodopi, 1996 - 194 pages John Keats and the Loss of Romantic Innocencetraces Keats's use of an Appolonian metaphor. Of the nearly 150 works listed in Jack Stillinger's standard edition, approximately half contain references to the god of nature and of art. What emerges are three distinct phases in Keats's aesthetic development. From his initial fondness for bower imagery and the pastoral voices of Spenser and Hunt, to the Neo-Platonism of his poems about art and imagination, to his ultimate rejection of romantic idealism, Keats and his Apollonian metaphor are rarely separated. The poet's dismissal of romantic idealism is ultimately a rejection of Blake's God, Coleridge's of Germanism, Wordsworth's Nature, Byron's Hellenism, and Shelley's Supernaturalism. The young poet dies aware of the excesses of his empirically oriented pleasant smotherings and idealistic realms of gold. He accepts a world without Apollo and his entourage, a world unembellished by art and other gilded cheats. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Native Fire | 9 |
Pleasant Smotherings | 40 |
Realms of Gold | 96 |
Gilded Cheats | 142 |
Conclusion | 181 |
| 185 | |
| 192 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Apollo Apollonian imagery Apollonian metaphor appears argues artistic Autumn bards become bright Calidore chapter Copyright critical Cynthia dark delight dream dreamer earth Elgin Marbles empiricism Endymion English essence expression eyes Fall of Hyperion fancy Fanny Brawne fire imagery gilded cheat glorious denizen glory glow goddess golden Hazlitt heaven human Hunt's ideal beauty ideal world images imagination immortal inspiration John Keats Keats writes Keats's poetry Lamia Leigh Hunt Letters light imagery little hill lyre Milton mind misery Mnemosyne Moneta moon Muses native fire nature never night Nightingale Oceanus Ode to Psyche offers pain pastoral poetry physical world Platonic pleasant smotherings pleasure poem poesy poet poet's poetic Psyche reality realms of gold reference Romantics sense shine silver Sleep and Poetry song sonnet soul Spenser spirit stanza Stillinger stood tip-toe sweet tell thee theme things thou thought Titans visions Walter Jackson Bate wings wonder Wordsworth