John Keats’ life and creativity work

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Theme: John Keats’ life and creativity work

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presented by

 

Checked by

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contents:

1. Introduction

1. General Information
2. Biography
3. Work

• Early Poems (1814 to 1818)
• 1814
• 1815
• 1816
• 1818
• 1819
• Letters

 

4. Criticism
5. Poem desiccated to John Keats

3. Conclusion

4. Bibliography

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                 Introduction

This work has the purpose to get you acquainted with the greatest poet of Romanticism, John Keats. Here you can find very detailed information about his life and useful information about his work. I hope you are going to find at least one interesting thing for yourself. If you do it means that the work worths the efforts spent.

I chose John Keats for my work for some reasons:

• All three of the great “second generation” of Romantic poets died young: Byron died at the age of thirty-six, Shelley died when he was twenty-nine, but John Keats died when he was only twenty-five.
• Although John Keats had not been precocious, his earliest poems, written in his late teens, are conventional and unpromising, and, in fact, most of his great work was done in a single year, 1819, when he was twenty-three.
• In such short time, John Keats had composed poetry that places him among the five or six greatest English poets.
• John Keats’ work, in this single year, is far superior to anything Chaucer or Shakespeare or Milton had done at a comparable age.
• John Keats’ ancestry and background would have seemed hardly conductive to forming a poet. Byron was an aristocrat, educated at the best schools; Shelley also was born in an old, aristocratic family, which assured  him leisure to pursue the life of the mind; while Keats’ father was a hostler, his elder brother died and later he lost his mother. There was no Cambridge or Oxford in his life. He worked apprenticeship to a surgeon and apothecary – a profession of no prestige.
• John Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of the Romanticists. While Scott was merely telling stories, and Wordsworth reforming poetry or upholding the moral law, and Shelley advocating impossible reforms, and Byron voicing his own egoism and the political discontent of the times, Keats lived apart from men and from all political measures, worshiping beauty like a devotee, perfectly content to write what was in his own heart, or to reflect some splendor of the natural world as he saw or dreamed it to be.
• While Romantic poets including Wordsworth and Shelley describe objects, Keats actually presents them. In this way he is able to stimulate the readers’ senses as thought the object were actually present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. General information

John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.

Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his life, his reputation grew after his death to the extent that by the end of the 19th century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He has had a significant influence on a diverse range of later poets and writers: Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats was the most significant literary experience of his life.

The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and analyzed in English literature.

2. Biography

John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 to Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats. Keats and his family seemed to have marked his birthday on 29 October, however baptism records give the birth date as the 31st. He was the eldest of four surviving children; George (1797–1841), Thomas (1799–1818) and Frances Mary "Fanny" (1803–1889). Another son was lost in infancy. John was born in central London although there is no clear evidence of the exact location. His father first worked as a hostler where the growing family lived for some years.

His parents were unable to afford Eton or Harrow, so in the summer of 1803 he was sent to board at John Clarke's school in Enfield, close to his grandparents' house. The small school had a liberal, progressive outlook and a progressive curriculum more modern than the larger, more prestigious schools. In the family atmosphere at Clarke's, Keats developed an interest in classics and history which would stay with him throughout his short life. The headmaster's son, Charles Cowden Clarke, would become an important influence, mentor and friend, introducing Keats to Renaissance literature including Tasso, Spenser and Chapman's translations. Keats is described as a volatile character "always in extremes", given to indolence and fighting. However at 13 he began focusing his energy towards reading and study, winning his first academic prize in midsummer 1809.

In April 1804, when Keats was eight, his father died after fracturing his skull falling from his horse. Four children went to live with their grandmother, Alice Jennings, in the village of Edmonton. In March 1810, when Keats was 14, his mother died of tuberculosis leaving the children in the custody of their grandmother. That autumn, Keats left Clarke's school to apprentice with Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary, neighbour and doctor of the Jennings family, and lodged in the attic above the surgery at 7 Church Street until 1813. Cowden Clarke, who remained a close friend of Keats, described this as "the most placid time in Keats's life".

From 1814 Keats had two bequests held in trust for him until his 21st birthday: £800 willed by his grandfather John Jennings (about £34,000 in today's money) and a portion of his mother's legacy, £8000 (about £340,000 today), to be equally divided between her living children.  It seems he was not told of either, since he never applied for any of the money. The money would have made a critical difference to the poet's expectations. Money was always a great concern and difficulty for him, as he struggled to stay out of debt and make his way in the world independently.

In October 1815 Keats registered as a medical student at Guy's Hospital. Within a month of starting, he was accepted as a dresser at the hospital, assisting surgeons during operations, the equivalent of a junior house surgeon today. It was a significant promotion marking a distinct aptitude for medicine, the position bringing increased responsibility and workload. His long and expensive medical training with Hammond and at Guy's Hospital led his family to assume this would be his lifelong career, assuring financial security, and it seems that at this point Keats had a genuine desire to become a doctor.

Keats's training took up increasing amounts of his writing time and he felt increasingly ambivalent about his medical career. He felt presented with a stark choice. Keats's first surviving poem, An Imitation of Spenser, had been written in 1814, when Keats was 19. Now, strongly drawn by ambition, inspired by fellow poets such as Leigh Hunt and Byron, and beleaguered by family financial crises, he suffered periods of depression. 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 announced to his guardian that he had resolved to be a poet, not a surgeon.

Though he continued his work and training at Guy's, Keats was devoting increasing time to the study of literature, experimenting with verse forms, particularly at this time sonnets. In May 1816, Leigh Hunt agreed to publish the sonnet O Solitude in his magazine The Examiner. In the summer of that year he went with Clarke to the seaside town of Margate to write. There he began Calidore and initiated the era of his great letter writing.

In October, Clarke introduced Keats to the influential Hunt, a close friend of Byron and Shelley. Five months later Poems, the first volume of Keats verse, was published, which included "I stood tiptoe" and "Sleep and Poetry", both poems strongly influenced by Hunt. Keats's publishers, Charles and James Ollier, felt ashamed of the book. Keats immediately changed publishers to Taylor and Hessey on Fleet Street. Unlike Olliers, Keats's new publishers were enthusiastic about his work. Within a month of the publication of Poems they were planning a new Keats volume and had paid him an advance. Hessey became a steady friend to Keats and made the company's rooms available for young writers to meet. Their publishing lists would come to include Coleridge, Hazlitt, Clare, Hogg, Carlyle and Lamb.

At Taylor and Hessey Keats met their Eton-educated lawyer Richard Woodhouse. Woodhouse, who advised the publishers on literary as well as legal matters, was deeply impressed by Poems. Woodhouse was convinced of Keats's genius, a poet to support as he became one of England's greatest writers. Soon after they met, the two became close friends and Woodhouse started to collect Keatsiana, documenting as much as he could about Keats's poetry, an archive that survives as one of the main sources of information on Keats's work. At the end, Woodhouse would be one of the few people to accompany Keats to Gravesend to embark on his final trip to Rome.

Hunt published the sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. He introduced Keats to many prominent men in his circle, including editor of The Times Thomas Barnes, writer Charles Lamb, conductor Vincent Novello and poet John Hamilton Reynolds, who would become a close friend. He was also meeting William Hazlitt regularly, a powerful literary figure of the day. It was a decisive turning point for Keats, establishing him in the public eye as a figure in, what Hunt termed 'a new school of poetry'. n early December, under the heady influence of his artistic friends, Keats told Abbey that he had decided to give up medicine in favour of poetry.

In April 1817 Keats moved with his brothers into rooms  in the village of Hampstead.

In May 1817 Keats befriended Isabella Jones. She is described as beautiful, talented and widely read, not of the top flight of society yet financially secure, an enigmatic figure who would become a part of Keats's circle. Throughout their friendship Keats never hesitates to own his sexual attraction to her, although they seem to enjoy circling each other rather than offering commitment. It is unclear how close they were. ones' greatest significance may be as an inspiration and steward of Keats's writing.

Keats first met Frances (Fanny) Brawne between September and November 1818. During November 1818 she developed an intimacy with Keats, but it was shadowed by the illness of Tom Keats, whom John was nursing through this period.

Tom, who was suffering from tuberculosis, died on 1 December 1818.

John Keats moved to the newly-built Wentworth Place. The winter of 1818–19, though a difficult period for the poet, and marks the beginning of his annus mirabilis in which he wrote his most mature work. 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 was in reality borrowing regularly from Abbey and his friends.

He composed five of his six great odes at Wentworth Place in April and May and, although it is debated in which order they were written, "Ode to Psyche" opens the published series. Keats's new and progressive publishers Taylor and Hessey issued Endymion. It was Lockhart at Blackwoods who coined the defamatory term "the Cockney School" for Hunt and his circle, which included both Hazlitt and Keats. The dismissal was as much political as literary, aimed at upstart young writers deemed uncouth for their lack of education, non-formal rhyming and "low diction". They had not attended Eton, Harrow or Oxbridge and they were not from the upper classes.

In 1819, Keats wrote The Eve of St. Agnes, "La Belle Dame sans Merci", Hyperion, Lamia and Otho. In September, very short of money and in despair considering taking up journalism or a post as a ship's surgeon, he approached his publishers with a new book of poems. he final volume Keats lived to see, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, was eventually published in July 1820.

During 1820 Keats displayed increasingly serious symptoms of tuberculosis. Tuberculosis took hold and he was advised by his doctors to move to a warmer climate. In September 1820 Keats left for Rome. The first months of 1821 marked a slow and steady decline into the final stage of tuberculosis. John Keats died on 23 February 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request was to be placed under an unnamed tombstone which contained only the words, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Severn and Brown erected the stone, which under a relief of a lyre with broken strings, contains the epitaph:

"This Grave / contains all that was Mortal / of a / Young English Poet / Who / on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies / Desired / these Words to be / engraven on his Tomb Stone: / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water. 24 February 1821"

3. Work
• Early Poems (1814 to 1818)

Keats's first surviving poem, An Imitation of Spenser, it was written during his residence in Edmonton at the end of his eighteenth year, which would make the date in the autumn of 1813. Now, strongly drawn by ambition, inspired by fellow poets such as Leigh Hunt and 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". The poem was included in the 1817 volume, which bore on its title-page this motto:—

What more felicity can fall to creature  Than to enjoy delight with liberty?  Fate of the Butterfly.—Spenser.

On Death was assigned by George Keats to the year 1814, and first printed in Forman's edition, 1883.

To Chatterton was first printed in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, but undated. Keat's admiration of Chatterton was early and constant.

To Lord Byron, the date of December, 1814, is given to this sonnet by Lord Houghton in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, where it was first published.

Woman! When I Behold thee Flippant, Vain, in the 1817 volume, where this poem was first published, with no title, it is placed at the end of a group of poems which are thus advertised on the leaf containing the dedication: "The Short Pieces in the middle of the Book as well as some of the Sonnets, were written at an earlier period than the rest of the Poems". In the abscence of any documentary evidence, it seems reasonable to place it near the "Imitation of Spenser" rather than near "Calidore".

To Some Ladies, On Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the Same Ladies, were included in the 1817 volume. George Keats says further that the first was 'written on receiving a copy of Tom Moore's "Golden Chain" and a most beautiful Dome shaped shell from a Lady.' The exact title of Moore's poem is "The Wreath and the Chain", and it will be readily seen how expressly imitative these lines are of Moore's verse in general. The poems are not dated, but they are the first in a group stated by Keats to have been 'written at an earlier period than the rest of the Poem'; it is safe to assume that hey belong very near the begining of Keat's poetical career. It is quite likely that they were included in the volume a few years later on personal grounds.

Written on the Day that Mr Leigh Hunt left Prison, either the 2d or 3d of February, 1815, Charles Cowden Clarke, to whom Keats showed the sonnet, writes in his recollections: "This I feel to be the first proof I had received of his having committed himself in verse; and how clearly do I recollect the conscious look and hesitation with which he offered it! There are some momentary glances by beloved friends that fade only with life". The sonnet was printed in the 1917 volume.

To Hope was written in February 1815. On the verso of the holograph copy Keats wrote this fragment: “They weren fully glad of their gude hap / And tasten all the Pleasausnces of joy.” First published in 1817.

Ode to Apollo was written in February 1815 and first published in 1848.

• 1814

As from the darkening gloom a silver dove was written in December 1814. Keats told his friend Richard Woodhouse that “he had written it on the death of his grandmother, about five days afterward”. It was first published in 1876.

Fill for me a brimming bowl was written in August 1814 and first published in 1905.

On Peace was perhaps written in April 1814, or somewhat later. It was first published in 1905.

Stay, ruby breasted warbler, stay was probably written in 1814 and first published in 1876.

• 1815

Lines Written on 29 May, the Anniversary of Charles’s Restoration, on Hearing the Bells Ringing was probably written in 1814 or 1815 and first published in 1925.

Infatuate Britons, will you still proclaim  His memory, your direst, foulest shame?      Nor patriots revere?    Ah! when I hear each traitorous lying bell,  'Tis gallant Sidney's, Russell's, Vane's sad knell,      That pains my wounded ear.

To Emma was probably written in 1815. Keats's brother George copied this poem and addressed it to his later wife, Georgiana Wylie. It was first published in 1883.

To George Felton Mathew was written in November 1815 and first published in 1817.

• 1816

The sonnet O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell was written either in October or November 1815. It was written soon after Keats became a student at Guy’s Hospital. It was Keats's first published poem, appearing as "To Solitude" in Leigh Hunt's Examiner, a radical weekly newspaper, on 5 May 1816, signed 'J.K.' Charles Cowden Clarke refers to it as his friend's red letter day, first proof that Keats's ambitions were valid.

The first volume of Keats verse, was published, which included "I stood tiptoe", “On first looking into Chapman's Homer” and "Sleep and Poetry", both poems strongly influenced by Hunt. It was a critical failure, arousing little interest, although Reynolds reviewed it favourably in The Champion. Clarke commented that the book "might have emerged in Timbuctoo".

On first looking into Chapman's Homer is a sonnet written in October 1816. It tells of the author's astonishment at reading the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer as freely translated by the Elizabethan playwright George Chapman.

The poem has become an often-quoted classic, cited to demonstrate the emotional power of a great work of art, and the ability of great art to create an epiphany in its beholder. It is considered to be his first great poem and one of the greatest sonnets in the language.

This poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, or can be known as an Italian sonnet, divided into an octave and a sestet, with a rhyme scheme of a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a-c-d-c-d-c-d. After the main idea has been introduced and the image played upon in the octave, the poem undergoes a volta, a change in the persona's train of thought. The volta, typical of Italian sonnets, is put very effectively to use by Keats as he refines his previous idea. While the octave offers the poet as a literary explorer, the volta brings in the discovery of Chapman's Homer, the subject of which is further expanded through the use of imagery and comparisons which convey the poet's sense of awe at the discovery.

• 1818

"Hyperion" is an uncompleted epic poem by 19th-century. It is based on the Titanomachia, and tells of the despair of the Titans after their fall to the Olympians. Keats wrote the poem from late 1818 until the spring of 1819, when he gave it up as having "too many Miltonic inversions." He was also nursing his brother Tom

The themes and ideas were picked up again in Keats's The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream, when he attempted to recast the epic by framing it with a personal quest to find truth and understanding.

• 1819

John Keats composed six odes in a short period of time that have become some of his most famous poems. They are united and ordered as a set by various critics to form a greater truth, each depending on the original order. The first five poems were written during the spring, "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode on Indolence", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale", and "Ode to Psyche", and "To Autumn" was composed in autumn. The odes were Keats's effort to discuss the relationships between the soul, eternity, nature, and art, which he was busy contemplating throughout 1819.

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a lyric ode with five stanzas containing 10 lines each. The first stanza begins with the narrator addressing an ancient urn as "Thou still unravished bride of quietness!", initiating a conversation between the poet and the object, which the reader is allowed to observe from a third-person point of view. By describing the object as a "foster-child of silence and slow time", the poet describes the urn as both a silent object, a theme which reoccurs throughout the poem, and a stone object that resists change.

Throughout the first two stanzas, the speaker addresses the urn as a single object, taking note of its silence at several points as he discusses unheard melodies and tunes heard not by the sensual ear (line 13). In Keats, Narrative, and Audience, Andrew Bennett suggests that the discussion between the poet and the urn at the beginning of the poem leaves the reader to examine more than just the relationship between the two but also his place as a third-party observer. With line 17, the second stanza begins to change tone as the poet shifts his focus from the urn as a whole to the individuals represented in the artwork. The two lovers, whose image the unknown artist has created through his craftsmanship, appear to the poet as a couple who cannot kiss yet do not grow old. Again the narrator discusses the urn in terms of its qualities by saying, "She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss" (line 19), but he also focuses on the inability of the lovers to ever obtain sensual pleasure due to their static nature.