John keats as a romantic poet.

                                "John keats as a romantic poet"

Name : Radha B. Ghevariya 

Std. : M.A. SEM-2

Sub : Romantic Literature

Roll no : 22 

Topic : "John keats as a romantic poet"

Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English 

Introduction

                      John keats was born on 31^st octomber ,1795 in London . the oldest of four children he lost both his parents at a young age. His father , a livery-stable keeper died when keats was eight ; his mother died of tuberculosis six years later . after his mother’s death , keat’s maternal grandmother appointed two London merchants Richard abbey and John Rowland as guardians , abbey a prosperous tea broker , assumed the bulk of this responsibility , while sandell played only a minor role , whem keats was fifteen , abbey withdrew him from the Clarke school , enfield to apprentice with an apothecary surgeon and study medicine in a London hospital. In 1816 keats became a licensed apothecary but he  never practised his profession deciding instead to write poetry . john keats was an English romantic poet . he was one of the main figure of the second generation of romantic poet along with lord Byron and percy bysshe Shelley despite his work having been in publication for only four years before his death. John keats poems were not generally well received by critics during his life , his reputation grew after his death so that by the end of the 19^th century , he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poet and writer.

              Jorge luis borges stated that his first encounter with keats was the most significant literary experience of his life.the poetry of keats is characterised by sensual imagery most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature. His parents were afford eton or harrow , so in the summer of 1803 , he was sent to board at john Clarke school in enfield , close to his grandparents house . the small school had a liberal outlook and a progressive curriculum more modern than the larger more prestigious schools.in the family atmosphere at clerk’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 , also became an important mentor and friend , introducing keats to renaissance literature , including tesso , spenser ,and chapman’s translaters.the young keats was described by his friend Edward holmes as a volatile character “ always in extreme” given to indolence and fighting . however at 13 he began focusing his energy on reading and study , winning his first academic prize in midsummer 1809.

           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 vocing his own egoism and the political measure , worshiping beauty like a devotee , perfectly content to write what was in his own heart , or to reflects some splendour of the natural worlds as he saw or dreamed it to be . he had , moreover the novel idea that poetry exists for its own sake , and suffers loss by being devoted to philosophy or politics or , indeed, to any cause , however great or small . as he says in “lamia”

“………..do not all charms fly at the mere touch of cold philosophy there was ab awful rainbow once in heaven : we know her woof , her texture ; she is given in the dull catalogue of common things , philosophy will clip an angel’s wings , conquer all mysterious by rule and line , empty the hunted air , and gnomed mine –unweave a rainbow , as it erewhile made the tender – person’s lamia melt into a shale”

             Partly because of this high idea of poetry , partly because he studied and unconsciously imimated the greek classics and the best works of the Elizabethans , keat’s last little volume of poetry is unequied by the work of any of his contemporaries . when we remember that all his work was published in three short year. From 1817 to 1820 , and that he died when only 25 years we must judge him to be the most promising figure of the early 19^th century , and one of the most remarkable in the history of literature .

              Keats’s life of devoting to beauty and to poetry is all the remarkable in yiew of  his lowly  origin he was the son of a hostr and stable keeper and was born in the stable of the swan and hoop inn London in 1795. One has only to read the  rough stable scenes from our first novelists or even from pidcens of rs in understand how little there was in such an atmosphcre to develop poetic gifts. Before keats was fifteen years old both paents died, and he was placed  with his brothers and siste in charge of guardians.

           Their first act eems to have been to take keats from school at enfield , and to blind him him as an appreanties to a surgeon at Edmonton . for five years he sevd his apprenticeship , and for two years more he was surgeon’s helper in the hospitals ; but though skilful enogh to win approval he disliked his work and his thought were on other things “the other day , during a lecture’ , he said to a friend “ there came a sunbeam into the room , and with it a whole troop of creatures floating in the ray of  ; and I was off with them to Oberon and fairyland”.

· Characteristics of his poetry

-   Sensuousness

-   Treatment of nature

-   Romance

           Though he died at the young age of 25 and had only been publishing poetry for four years , john keats remains one of the most influrntial poets of the most era of poetry. In this lifetime , keats sold only about 200 copies of his poetry books , but his reputation and influence grew substantially following his 1821 death. Keats deeply reflective poetic attempt to explore reflective poetic attempt to explore and understand beauty as it exists in all things inspired countless writes to pursue a similar program for writing poetry.

·  Pursuit of Beauty

             As with other romantic poets , keats focused his writerly attention on understanding and exploing beauty ; for keats , all things possessed potential beauty , and it was his job as a poet to find this beauty and capture it in his poetry.

“ Beauty is truth and , truth is beauty –that is all / ye know earth , and all ye need to know”

·  Foremost work of John Keats

1)       Ode to Autumn

               This poem was written by keats in September ,1819. He was greatly struck by the beauty of the season.here is a poem in which  a season has been personified and made to live . in the first stanza , the poet describes the fruit coming to maturity in readiness for harvesting . in the second stanza , autumn is personified as a woman present at the various operations of the harvest and at cider –pressing . in the last stanza , the end of the year is associated with sunset the songs of spring are over and night is falling but there is no feeling of sadness because autumn has its own songs. The close of the ode , though solemn , breathes the spirit of hope.

2)      Ode on a Grecian Urn

      In the ode on a Grecian urn , the duality of the theme is indicated , in the  very opening stanza where keats gives us a contrast between something unchanging because it is alive . this equipoise is continued in the second stanza but the poet continues to toy with his dual matter without asserting or implying that lifeless permanence is superior or transient reality . nor does he indicates any preference in emphasis here , as in the second stanza is upon the warmth and the turbulence of life , we have not been made to feel that keats has any distinct preference for an unraised but permanent love over an actually experienced but transient but actual passion . in the fourth stanza , we are carried into a world that is permanent , but permanently empty , just as the figures on the urn are permanent , but permanenting lifeless. In the final stanza , the poet ends his duals game . here he emphatically addresses this thing of beauty as just what it is a grecian urn . this work of art , he says .has teased  us out of the actual world into an ideals world where we can momentarily and imaginatively enjoy the life that is free from the imperfections of our lot here but this ideals world is not free of all imperfections : it has very grave deficiencies because it is lifeless , motionless , cold , and unreal......

Conclusion

             “I have lov’d the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered,” Keats wrote to Fanny Brawne in February 1820, just after he became ill. In Keats’s work the struggle with aesthetic form becomes an image of a struggle for meaning against the limits of experience. His art’s very form seems to embody and interpret the conflicts of mortality and desire. The urgency of this poetry has always appeared greater to his readers for his intense love of beauty and his tragically short life. Keats approached the relations among experience, imagination, art, and illusion with penetrating thoughtfulness, with neither sentimentality nor cynicism but with a delight in the ways in which beauty, in its own subtle and often surprising ways, reveals the tries.....