In this course we will trace four threads which run through much of Keats’ work.
One is a sense of extraordinary presence, to be felt in the personal voice of his letters and in the sensuous immediacy of his poetry, which rises not infrequently to moments of quasi-sexual ecstasy or rapture. To be worth anything, all philosophy must be ‘proved upon the senses’.
A second is Keats’ concern with the imagination, sometimes figured as a dream-state not cleanly distinguishable from reality. The imagination gives Keats his most valued experiences of a Beauty which is in some sense ideal; the imagination is also a way of evading or escaping the pains of everyday life.
Then there is Keats’ intense feeling for transience and mortality, for how things change and pass away. If experience was extraordinarily present to him, it was so as something caught for a moment
Finally, there is Keats’ unwavering commitment to the vocation of poetry – no writer has ever been more dedicated to his craft – which, however, was accompanied by an insistent questioning of what poetry is worth. Trained as a doctor, Keats never ceased to ask himself what good he was doing in the world.
These are not four separate threads, but often come together in Keats’ finest writing. They are also key aspects of much Romantic poetry, and reading Keats can light up the tensions and achievements of Romanticism more generally. In the classes we shall be discussing together the whole range of his work – a selection of his letters, his narrative poetry, his shorter poems, and of course his endlessly rewarding odes.
