John Keats

(1795-1821)
John Keats, (born October 31, 1795, London,
England—died February 23, 1821, Rome, Papal
States [Italy]), English Romantic lyric poet who
devoted his short life to the perfection of a poetry
marked by vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal,
and an attempt to express a philosophy through
classical legend.
 John Keats
(1795-1821)
The son of a livery-stable manager, John Keats
received relatively little formal education. His
father died in 1804, and his mother remarried
almost immediately. Throughout his life Keats had
close emotional ties to his sister, Fanny, and his
two brothers, George and Tom. After the breakup
of their mother’s second marriage, the Keats
children lived with their widowed grandmother at
Edmonton, Middlesex.
 John Keats
(1795-1821)
John attended a school at Enfield, two miles away,
that was run by John Clarke, whose son Charles
Cowden Clarke did much to encourage Keats’s
literary aspirations. At school Keats was noted as
a pugnacious lad and was decidedly “not literary,”
but in 1809 he began to read voraciously. After the
death of the Keats children’s mother in 1810, their
grandmother put the children’s affairs into the
hands of a guardian, Richard Abbey.
 John Keats
(1795-1821)
At Abbey’s instigation John Keats was apprenticed
to a surgeon at Edmonton in 1811. He broke off his
apprenticeship in 1814 and went to live in London,
where he worked as a dresser, or junior house
surgeon, at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ hospitals. His
literary interests had crystallized by this time, and
after 1817 he devoted himself entirely to poetry.
From then until his early death, the story of his
life is largely the story of the poetry he wrote.
 John Keats
(1795-1821)
In the summer of 1818 Keats went on a walking
tour in the Lake District (of northern England)
and Scotland with his friend Charles Brown, and
his exposure and overexertions on that trip
brought on the first symptoms of the tuberculosis
of which he was to die. On his return to London a
brutal criticism of his early poems appeared in
Blackwood’s Magazine, followed by a similar
attack on Endymion in the Quarterly Review.
 John Keats
(1795-1821)
Keats met these reviews with a calm assertion of
his own talents, and he went on steadily writing
poetry. But there were family troubles. Keats’s
brother Tom had been suffering from tuberculosis
for some time, and in the autumn of 1818 the poet
nursed him through his last illness. About the
same time, he met Fanny Brawne, a near
neighbour in Hampstead, with whom he soon fell
hopelessly and tragically in love.
 John Keats
(1795-1821)
The relation with Fanny had a decisive effect on
Keats’s development. She seems to have been an
unexceptional young woman, of firm and generous
character, and kindly disposed toward Keats. But
he expected more, perhaps more than anyone
could give, as is evident from his overwrought
letters.
 John Keats
(1795-1821)
Both his uncertain material situation and his
failing health in any case made it impossible for
their relationship to run a normal course. After
Tom’s death (George had already gone to America),
Keats moved into Wentworth Place with Brown,
and in April 1819 Brawne and her mother became
his next-door neighbours. About October 1819
Keats became engaged to Fanny.
 John Keats
(1795-1821)
There is no more to record of Keats’s poetic career.
The poems “Isabella,” “Lamia,” “The Eve of St.
Agnes,” and Hyperion and the odes were all
published in the famous 1820 volume, the one that
gives the true measure of his powers. It appeared
in July, by which time Keats was evidently
doomed. He had been increasingly ill throughout
1819, and by the beginning of 1820 the evidence of
tuberculosis was clear.
 John Keats
(1795-1821)
He realized that it was his death warrant, and
from that time sustained work became impossible.
His friends Brown, the Hunts, and Brawne and
her mother nursed him assiduously through the
year. Percy Bysshe Shelley, hearing of his
condition, wrote offering him hospitality in Pisa,
but Keats did not accept.
 John Keats
(1795-1821)
When Keats was ordered south for the winter,
Joseph Severn undertook to accompany him to
Rome. They sailed in September 1820, and from
Naples they went to Rome, where in early
December Keats had a relapse. Faithfully tended
by Severn to the last, he died in Rome.
 John Keats
Ode to a Nightingale
Published in 1819
Permanence of Nature
Temporariness of Human Life
Escapism
Imagination
Tone of Bird
Sensuousness
 John Keats
Characteristics
Beauty
Nature
Escapism
Imagination
Sensuousness
Hellenism
Negative Capability
 John Keats
Negative Capability
I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is
capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries,
doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact &
reason.
John Keats
 John Keats
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Published in 1820
Permanence of Art
Temporariness of Human Life
Escapism
Imagination
Hellenism
 John Keats
Ode to Autumn
Published in 1820
Nature
Importance of Autumn
Imagery
Cycle of Life
 John Keats
Ode to Psyche
Published in 1819
Hellenism
Gardens of the Mind
The Union of Body and Soul
Intellectual Creativity
An Understanding of Suffering
 John Keats
Ode on Melancholy
The three stanzas of the “Ode on Melancholy” address the subject of
how to cope with sadness. The first stanza tells what not to do: The
sufferer should not “go to Lethe,” or forget their sadness (Lethe is
the river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology); should not commit
suicide (nightshade, “the ruby grape of Prosperpine,” is a poison;
Prosperpine is the mythological queen of the underworld); and
should not become obsessed with objects of death and misery (the
beetle, the death-moth, and the owl). For, the speaker says, that
will make the anguish of the soul drowsy, and the sufferer should
do everything he can to remain aware of and alert to the depths of
his suffering.
 John Keats
Ode on Melancholy
In the second stanza, the speaker tells the sufferer what to do in place of the
things he forbade in the first stanza. When afflicted with “the melancholy fit,”
the sufferer should instead overwhelm his sorrow with natural beauty, glutting
it on the morning rose, “on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,” or in the eyes of
his beloved. In the third stanza, the speaker explains these injunctions, saying
that pleasure and pain are inextricably linked: Beauty must die, joy is fleeting,
and the flower of pleasure is forever “turning to poison while the bee-mouth
sips.” The speaker says that the shrine of melancholy is inside the “temple of
Delight,” but that it is only visible if one can overwhelm oneself with joy until it
reveals its center of sadness, by “burst[ing] Joy’s grape against his palate fine.”
The man who can do this shall “taste the sadness” of melancholy’s might and “be
among her cloudy trophies hung.”
 John Keats
Ode on Indolence
The chief event of the ode is a morning vision of three figures in Classical dress, passing before
the poet as if they were ancient drawings on a spinning urn. The poet recognizes them as Love,
Ambition, and Poesy, and their fleeting presence sadly reminds the poet of his recent idleness.
Chronologically, the “Ode on Indolence” was probably the second ode. It was composed in the
spring of 1819, after “Ode on Melancholy” and a few months before “To Autumn.” However, when
the odes are grouped together as a sequence, “Indolence” is often placed first in the group—an
arrangement that makes sense, considering that “Indolence” raises the glimmerings of themes
explored more fully in the other five poems, and seems to portray the speaker’s first struggle with
the problems and ideas of the other odes. The story of “Indolence” is extraordinarily simple—a
young man spends a drowsy summer morning lazing about, until he is startled by a vision of
Love, Ambition, and Poesy proceeding by him. He feels stirrings of desire to follow the figures,
but decides in the end that the temptations of his indolent morning outweigh the temptations of
love, ambition, and poetry.
 John Keats
Hyperion 1818-19
The Titans are a pantheon of gods who ruled prior to the Olympians, and are now
destined to fall. They include Saturn (king of the gods), Ops (his wife), Thea (his
sister), Enceladus (god of war), (in Greek mythology, a Giant rather than a Titan),
Oceanus (god of the sea), Hyperion (the god of the sun) and Clymene (a young
goddess). The poem opens with Saturn bemoaning the loss of his power, which is
being overtaken by Jupiter. Thea leads him to a place where the other Titans sit,
similarly miserable, and they discuss whether they should fight back against their
conquest by the new gods (the Olympians). Oceanus declares that he is willing to
surrender his power to Neptune (the new god of the sea) because Neptune is more
beautiful (this is worth bearing in mind in relation to the Romantic idea that beauty
is paramount). Clymene describes first hearing the music of Apollo, which she found
beautiful to the point of pain (another Romantic idea). Finally, Enceladus makes a
speech encouraging the Titans to fight.
 John Keats
Hyperion 1818-19
Meanwhile, Hyperion's palace is described, and we first see Hyperion himself, the
only Titan who is still powerful. He is addressed by Uranus (old god of the sky,
father of Saturn), who encourages him to go to where Saturn and the other Titans
are. We leave the Titans with the arrival of Hyperion, and the scene changes to
Apollo (the new sun god, also god of music, civilization and culture) weeping on the
beach. Here Mnemosyne (goddess of memory) encounters him and he explains to her
the cause of his tears: he is aware of his divine potential, but as yet unable to fulfill
it. By looking into Mnemosyne's eyes he receives knowledge which transforms him
fully into a god.
 John Keats
Endymion 1818
Endymion, one of John Keats’s most substantial poetic works, advanced his goal of
creating a fully developed Romantic poetry that brought classical themes into his
own times. In four books, each about 1,000 lines long, he combines description,
narrative, classical allusion, and emotional-intellectual analysis into the story of one
man’s quest and self-discovery. The sweet language, while it demonstrates Keats’s
mastery, is also well-suited to the themes. The story is framed by the real
environment of a terrestrial location, but at the end Endymion’s fulfillment it
removes him from this realm. In between, he must conquer many obstacles in
mysterious subterranean and subaquatic environments.
 John Keats
Endymion 1818
Endymion, a shepherd high in the Greek mountains, is a dreamy, melancholic sort
of man. A simple existence tending sheep is not very fulfilling and, after he sees an
ideal woman in a vision, his life is transformed. Nothing will satisfy him but to
pursue this illusory woman, whom he believes is his spiritual mate. This desire
takes him away from home, forcing him to take bold, decisive actions.

In Book II, his journey into a cavern deep into the earth brings him into contact with
Venus, goddess of love, and Adonis. Riding deeper still on an eagle, he finds his
dream lover and is drawn into her embrace. However, she tells him it is too soon for
them to stay together. He sees they are separate like two streams, Alpheus and
Arethusa.
 John Keats
Endymion 1818
Book III takes the hero to the ocean deeps, where he meets a condemned man,
Glaucus. His tale of thwarted love concerns the jealousy of the sorceress Circe, who
cast a spell on his lover Scylla. He is spending a thousand years placing drowned
lovers’ bodies into a crystal shell. Deducing from a prophecy that Endymion is his
savior, they perform the proper rituals to get the curse lifted off him and the other
lovers.
In the fourth book, Endymion comes back to the surface and meets the lovely Indian
Maiden. Although he falls in love with her too, he feels this betrays his true love for
Cynthia. After a contemplative episode alone, as well as talking with his sister, he
comes to terms with the futility of earthly love. When he does so, the Indian Maiden
reveals that she is actually Cynthia. Now they can be together, and ascend into the
skies together.
 For More Content:
Subscribe my YouTube Channel
www.youtube.com/c/jahanzebjahan

Like my Page on Facebook