England in the nineteenth century was a time of change, as people were migrating from farms to cities. Many worked as laborers and farmers to maintain a living, but by mid century there was a shift in the work force. As machine were introduced to the fields of industry, England entered its industrial revolution. Not only were people changing where they lived, but also how they viewed life. The nineteenth century was also known as the Romantic Period, when poets often wrote about economic and social changes in society. John Keats was a daring, Romantic lyric poet who wrote about life in a way that other poets would not. Many romantic poets, also known as natural poets, wrote literature that spoke about psychological experiences, the beauty …show more content…
At an early age, John Keats followed his dad’s footsteps and assisted him with the farm that provided for his parents and three siblings. However his home life quickly became disastrous when his father was killed by a horse. This tragic occurence may have sparked his perspective on life that allowed him to develop his romantic style of writing. After his father’s died, Keat’s mother walked out on her children and remarried leaving them with their grandmother. After a while, the mother of the family returned home but tragedy struck again and the woman died of tuberculosis when the child was fourteen in 1810. Perhaps because of the chaos of his life, Keats turned to literature and art to distract him from the difficulties at home. When he studied at Enfield Academy growing up, he was an avid reader. However, in 1816, his time at the academy ended when he left to work to study as an apothecary in a London Hospital to become a surgeon. Although he had a new career in a disciplined field, his desires remained with literature and writing. He met Leigh Hunt, publisher of The Examiner, to become his first publisher. Hunt had a notable story as a writer because he almost went to jail for libeling Prince Regent (“Keats, John”). Maybe Keats acquired the characteristic of writing not what the public wanted, but his own truth, from …show more content…
Iambic pentameter is a rhythmic pattern that has five meters or iambs that consist of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. The rhyme scheme for a Shakespearean sonnet includes pairs of rhyming lines that alternate for twelve lines and then the last two rhyme make up the rhyming couplet (Kennedy, Elements of Poetry 841). Sometimes a poet may chose to write in unrhymed iambic pentameter, called blank verse, as John Keats did in his poem This Living Hand, Now Warm and Capable (Kennedy, Elements of Poetry 855). Many poets were around during the Romantic period that were beginning to write differently about the changes in society during the nineteenth century. The combination of syntax, rich language and imagery makes John Keats’ publications recognizable even in current times. Not all poets were able to write about life the way this author did, even with the tragedies that he experienced. John Keats produced some of the finest works of poetry to capture the upcoming ideas of imagination and changes in society during his
Keats’ poetry explores many issues and themes, accompanied by language and technique that clearly demonstrates the romantic era. His poems ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘Bright Star’ examine themes such as mortality and idealism of love. Mortality were common themes that were presented in these poems as Keats’ has used his imagination in order to touch each of the five senses. He also explores the idea that the nightingale’s song allows Keats to travel in a world of beauty. Keats draws from mythology and christianity to further develop these ideas. Keats’ wrote ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ as an immortal bird’s song that enabled him to escape reality and live only to admire the beauty of nature around him. ‘Bright Star’ also discusses the immortal as Keats shows a sense of yearning to be like a star in it’s steadfast abilities. The visual representation reveal these ideas as each image reflects Keats’ obsession with nature and how through this mindset he was able
Ezra Jack Keats: A Virtual Exhibit. The University of Southern Mississippi De Grummond Children's Literature Collection. Web. 19 July 2010. .
White, Keith D. John Keats And The Loss Of Romantic Innocence.(Costerus NS 107). Minneapolis: Rodopi BV Editions, 1996. Print.
John Keats’s illness caused him to write about his unfulfillment as a writer. In an analysis of Keats’s works, Cody Brotter states that Keats’s poems are “conscious of itself as the poem[s] of a poet.” The poems are written in the context of Keats tragically short and painful life. In his ...
Keats, John. “The Eve of St. Agnes”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic
Imagery and symbolism merged to express his imagination, he became a unique poet in an evolving world where Romanticism was quickly expanding globally, not into a movement, but a way of thinking. Keats’ mother and brother, and eventually he too, passed away of tuberculosis. At the time of his brother 's passing, he developed ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’. ‘La Belle’ expressed Keats’ intellect and creativity, although at the same time he himself expressed his angst and depression for the loss of his brother. His poem ‘Bright Star’ was written in a part of his life in which a woman had influenced Keats’ greatly, so much in fact that he was driven to write ‘Bright Star’ in appreciation and celebration of the love of his life. These poems reflect Keats’ intellect, originality, creativity, and his ability to merge the contextual aspects of his life and his imagination with the ideals and concepts of Romanticism to create powerful
Throughout Keats’s work, there are clear connections between the effect of the senses on emotion. Keats tends to apply synesthetic to his analogies with the interactions with man and the world to create different views and understandings. By doing this, Keats can arouse different emotions to the work by which he intends for the reader to determine on their own, based on how they perceive it. This is most notable in Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, for example, “Tasting of Flora, and Country Green” (827). Keats accentuates emotion also through his relationship with poetry, and death.
John Keats is an early nineteenth century Romantic poet. In his poem “When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be,” Keats makes excellent use of a majority of poetry elements. This sonnet concentrates merely on his fear of death and his reasons for fearing it. Though Keats’ emphasizes his greatest fear of death, he offers his own resolution by asserting that love and fame lacks any importance. Keats uses articulate wording to exemplify his tone, while using images, figures of speech, symbols, and allegory to illustrate his fear of death. His use of rhythm, sounds, and patters also contribute to his concentration of fear and the effects on his life. As one of the most famous Romantic poets, John Keats utilizes the elements of poetry in “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” to convey his fears and allow the reader to realize how much these fears affect him.
Arguably one of John Keats’ most famous poems, “Ode to a nightingale” in and of itself is an allegory on the frail, conflicting aspects of life while also standing as a commentary on the want to escape life’s problems and the unavoidability of death. Keats’ poem utilizes a heavy amount of symbolism, simile and allusion to idealize nature as a perfect, almost mystical, world that holds no problems while using imagery taken from nature, combined with alliteration and assonance, to idealize the dream of escape from the problems life often presents; more specifically, aging and our inevitable deaths by allowing the reader to feel as if they are experiencing the speaker’s experience listening to the nightingale.
In order to experience true sorrow one must feel true joy to see the beauty of melancholy. However, Keats’s poem is not all dark imagery, for interwoven into this poem is an emerging possibility of resurrection and the chance at a new life. The speaker in this poem starts by strongly advising against the actions and as the poem continues urges a person to take different actions. In this poem, the speaker tells of how to embrace life by needing the experience of melancholy to appreciate the true joy and beauty of
In the early 19th century there were two different period’s Age of Reason (ending) and the Romantic period (beginning). The Age of Reason was the highest ideals about life, art and literature were the only things they mainly focused on. The industrial revolution was the biggest turning point of England creating factories jobs, bring wealth and prosperity to the country. On the website scholieren.com, stated that “young people over Europe thought freedom and equality was very important.”
John Keats was born in London on October 31, 1795. He was the son of a stable attendant who married the owner's daughter and later inherited the stable for himself. The elder Mr. Keats died when John was eight, leaving the family tied up in legal matters that lasted the rest of John's life. He was fourteen when his mother died of tuberculosis, and fifteen when his guardian apprenticed him to an apothecary-surgeon. Soon after, John left the medical field to focus primarily on poetry.
Overall the Victorian Period was an interesting literary portion of time. It brought about many works of poetry that deal with characteristics of Realism and Naturalism in the authors’ own respective ways.
When talking about poetry and Romanticism, one of the most common names that come to mind is John Keats. Keats’ lifestyle was somewhat different from his contemporaries and did not fit the Romantic era framework, this is most likely the reason he stood out from the rest. Keats wrote many poems that are still relevant, amongst them Ode to a Nightingale, which was published for the very first time in July, 1819. The realistic depth and lyrical beauty that resonates in Ode to a Nightingale is astounding. Though, his career was rather short, Keats expressed a deep yearning to rise above misery and celebrate life via his consciousness and imagination. Themes of life and death play out in a number of his poems. This essay seeks to discuss Keats’s representation of mortality and immortality, specifically in his poem Ode to a Nightingale.
However, underneath the surface, Keats has finally begun to accept the difficult truth that death is inevitable. Through the poem “To Autumn”, Keats urges humankind to accept death as a natural part of human life and to recognize the beauty in death. The first stanza is crowded with sensual and concrete images of nature and its ripeness during the first stages of Autumn. Autumn is characterized as a “season of…mellow fruitfulness” (1).