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Keats the Romantic

Dr. Marquardt, ENG 2403, WKU

Romanticism

1700

Philosophy of 19th Century

Reaction against Enlightenment

1750

Romanticism

1800

romantic (adj.)

1850

Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

A philosophy that the world could be understood through rational, scientific thought and reason.

Scientific Advancement

Challenges traditions and traditional thinking

Benefits

  • Scientific discovery
  • Steam power
  • Manufacturing

believed EVERYTHING could be understood through empircal science/reason

Detriments

reduced spirituality to reason/science

Industrial Revolution (IR)

Industrial Revolution

Anxiety for what this means for the laborer/ human

Romanticism

Reaction against the "cold science" of Enlightenment

Reaction against dehumanization of Industrial Revolution

Values

Prioritized:

  • imagination
  • creativity
  • emotion

over rationality/inquiry

Concerned about loss of beauty, humanity, spiritual self and natural world

Anxieties

We should not examine nature; we should commune with it; nature will be our creative inspiration

...is difficult!

Reading Keats

Language

Language

  • deliberately archaic

  • ornate/descriptive

allusion = reference to other works of literature

Allusion

Keats expects his reader to have a working knowledge of the classics

Frequently references classical mythology

Clarity of Plot

>

Beauty/Rhythm

Priorities

Keats' speaker often gets "side tracked" when providing a description or a history

Digressions

Keats' Legacy

Legacy

  • loss (personal and romantic)
  • embrace of beauty/supernatural
  • early death

professional failure:

  • gave up medicine to become a poet
  • work was not well-received or well-known at the time of his death

The 6 Great Romantic Poets

2nd Generation

1st Generation

In the Canon

Wordworth

Coleridge

Blake

Byron

Shelley

Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

"Bright Star"

Escaping IR

Escaping

the Industrial Revolution

in "Bright Star"

Natural/Organic

Outside

expansive

interior

downward gaze

Natural

human as machine

Personifying the star

Self is organic

Sensual

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Medieval

Mixing of reality and the marvelous

Star as knight:

- separate from society

- alone with lady/love

Medeival

dream

oppose "cold reason" of IR

Star gazing down on people

  • no longer subject to human perception/human reason
  • not subject to human mortality

Imagination

Contrasts:

  • expansive -> intimate
  • permanent -> mortal

"Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast"

"Swoon to Death"

Death & Desire

Human

  • experience pleasure
  • changing/mortal

"Ripening breast"

Ripen -> Fruit

  • temptation/desire
  • punished with expulsion from Eden

Sexual climax as death (French: "le petite morte" = little death)

Ripen -> Rot

  • death

"The Eve of Saint Agnes" (1819)

as example: don't worry, you weren't supposed to have read this

Porphyro sneaks into Madeline's families' castle in the night

Porphyro and Madeline from opposing/enemy families

they run away together

Themes

Keats is less concerned with attacking the IR

He wants to escape it

Escaping Industrial Revolution

Natural

Madeline's castle is a stark contrast to the urban factories of the IR

Reaction against Human as Machine

Sensual

  • touch
  • hear
  • taste
  • see

Section I

Section II

Section III

Knights, Damsels & Magic

Medieval

"Romance" from "Roman"

a story originally in a Romance language

translated into French

Origin

Medieval (adj.) of Middle Ages (n.)

5th Century: fall of Western Roman Empire)

to the 15th century: Renaissance and Age of Discovery

Qualities of the Medieval Story

Characteristics

Usually about Arthurian Legend

- knight (gentleman warrior) from King Arthur's court

- separated from court

- adventure (involving supernatural)

- reward: return to court, wealth and happiness/marriage to idolized woman

- concerned with the social rules of behavior:

- chilvary in love and battle

courage

honor

service

Familiar examples of the Medieval

Examples

knight/prince saves the damsel in distress

- through battle

- often with supernatural

rewarded with marriage

Parody

Parody

making fun of a source

by exaggerating its characteristics

Parodying Roles

"Shrek

the Third"

(2007)

Prince as hero

-incapable

- mean

Monster as villain

- here, Shrek is the good guy

- fights with wits, not violence

Princess as beautiful/desirable

- damsel in distress has no hair

- real princess is an ugly monster

Parodying the Quest

Lancelot (a knight) is on a quest

opportunity to save a "damsel in distress"

heroic battle to save the "damsel"

"damsel" = sometimes men need rescue, too (but not a reward for Lancelot)

"Monthy Python and the Search for the Holy Grail"

(1975)

"courage in battle"

- kills wrong people

"You killed the bride's father!"

Imagination

Top priority of the Romantics

Liberated humans to dream

  • creates authentic art
  • opposes cold reason of IR

but...

can't save us from harsh realities

forces us to confront limits of imagination

Imagination

contrast between imagination and reality

is often disappointing

waiting for holy vision of the perfect man

Imagination in "Eaves of St. Agnes"

The Eve of St. Agnes

(the patron saint of chastity):

  • 20 January
  • The superstition: on this evening, virgins dream of their future husbands.

Contrast

Idealized Porphyro vs. Actual Porphyro

Imagining Porphyro

if Prophyro were a cat cake

Idealized Porphyo

Knight in Shining Armor

Imagined Porphyro

gentleman/warrior

courteous

honorable

kind

noble

Real Porphyro

reckless

myopic

morally questionable

physical description:

"pallid, chill, and drear!"

Painful Transition

  • pallid
  • chill
  • drear

Disappointed Madeline

Madeline

Bird and Music

= imagination + art

Imagination

in "The Nightingale"

  • Speaker longs to follow bird into dreamscape of woods
  • But is unable to leave the mortal world
  • No mind powerful enough to achieve real escape

Death

a feature of Keats' life & work

lost most of his family to illness

- nursed brother as he died of Tuberculosis

- died at age 25 of Tuberculosis

Death & Desire

Sexual desire = precursor to death

(or cold, death-like emptiness)

Vitality

Mortality

Desire

Madleine disappointed to wake to real Prophyro

asks him to become like figure of her dream

- images of stars, roses and violets

- they consummate relationship

quick switch from desire to images of

Death

death and darkness

XXXVII

Return to Reality = Death

Lovers leave together = happy ending

- rising storm (the coldness we saw at the beginning of the poem)

- castle dissolves around them

Return to Reality

Lovers in Keats rarely get their "happily ever after"

'Tis dark: quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet:

"This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline!"

Tis dark: the iced gustss still rave and ebat:

"No dream, alas! alas! and woe is mine!"

A chain-droop'd lamp was flickering by each door;

The arras, rich with horsemen, hawk and hound,

Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar;

And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

XXXVIII

And there are gone; ay, ages long ago

These lovers...into

That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,

And all his warrior-guests, which shade and form

Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,

Were long be nightmar'd. Angela the old

Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform;

The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,

For aye unosught for slept among the ashes cold.

XLII

La Belle Dame San Merci

'cold hill's side'

'I met a lady in the meads'

Circular Tale

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