Talk:John Keats
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"Finishing his epic poem 'Endymion'..."
Though Keats intended to write Endymion as an epic, the critical consensus is that Keats did not succeed at epic poetry until Hyperion. At the very least, you might mention that Endymion's status as an epic poem is debatable (esp if we accept the categorical "boundaries" worked out by M. Bakhtin in the Dialogic Imagination)
" Oscar Wilde, the aestheticist non pareil was to later write: "[...]" this is split-infinitive and hurts my eyes greatly.
The following paragraph is ridiculous. The first part is irrelevant, and the last part inaccurate (he moved to the isle of wight...the reason for his criticial rejection is more complicated...)
- "It should be remembered that the Romantic movement flowered during a period of major catharsis in world history: the American War of Independence and the French Revolution had cast long shadows across the existing world order; existing bourgeois values were being challenged as never before. Romanticism was the very cultural epitome of this rebellion, and its adherents work became the target of critical denigration. Keats' poetry was consequently not well received, and he moved to the Isle of Man."
Yeah, you're right. I don't think that the parts about the French revolution are irrelevant however. The Romantics were hopeful that the French revolution would spread to England. I know Keats was at the end of that era, but other people in the group like Mary Stone-Wool... whatever her name was, who wrote the Rights Of Women were doing so because of the unrest caused by the French and American revolutions. CGS 11:22, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC).
- "the reason for his criticial rejection is more complicated" is true - most of his early work is unreadable. CGS 11:25, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC).
"The rejection of Keats' poetry, particularly the early work such as "Endymion" has very little to do with his position as a romantic. In fact Keats' panning was as said above because his early work is generally awful, but also because Keats, unlike many of his contempories did not deal with the politics of the day. It was his continual use of escapism and indulgence which riled his critics, not his politics." Cbs
Escapism and indulgence in Endymion yes, but also his politics to a degree: the Tory critics at Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1818 associated Keats politically with the radical Leigh Hunt, the author of the Story of Rimini, a key poetic influence on Keats but also the editor of the oppositionalist Examiner. For Blackwood's, Keats was a politically 'seditious' voice: 'We had almost forgot to mention that Keats belongs to the Cockney School of Politics, as well as the Cockney School of Poetry. It is fit that he who holds Rimini to be the first poem should believe The Examiner to be the first politician of the day. We admire consistency, even in folly. Hear how their bantling has already learned to lisp sedition'. (Baviad)
It is fit that he who holds Rimini to be the first poem should believe The Examiner to be the first politician of the day
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[edit] Fanny Brawne merge
The article for Fanny Brawne should be merged into this article, as it does not have enough information to stand on its own, and is only 3 sentences. BonsaiViking 20:20, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Fanny Brawne Merge
Fanny Brawne can stand just fine by herself. Perhaps her section should be expanded. Throw a picture of her on! Or maybe the famous lines that were written about her?
Not to mention the inaccuracy (or rather, the misleading nature) of "the romance was not successful"; She was also in love with him (I would have changed this but did not see the "edit" link on that article), and they did become engaged. The only reason the romance didn't work was because of Keats's health--he had to leave for warmer climes and died while abroad. Otherwise he would no doubt have married her. Douglas Bush cites Brawne's apparent reciprocation of love in his book "John Keats: His Life and Writings."
- Is Fanny Brawne famous for anything except being being loved by Keats? I'd say merge.
[edit] Fanny Brawne Merge
Fanny Brawne can stand just fine by herself. Perhaps her section should be expanded. Throw a picture of her on! Or maybe the famous lines that were written about her?
It will soon be 1 year since someone suggested merging Fanny Brawne's entry, and during this time no one has added much to Brawne's own article in defense of its autonomy. I am sure there is a lot that could be said about Brawne, but during the past year no one has known what it is. So let's merge the two. Bigturtle 21:32, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
- Merge! The only reason why people know about this girl is because a famous poet was in love with her. It's not like she was a Laura or a Beatrice, inspiring his poetry in any way. Though I don't think having a picture of her on Keats' page would hurt anything.
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- I vote merge. There is only one link to her that is not connected to Keats. Jlittlet 16:56, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Link to WikiSource?
Should we have a link to WikiSource here, possibly instead of the one for Wikiquote, as that seems to have some works by him and not most like WikiSource does? Wikiquote has a better looking style than WikiSource, but isn't Wikiquote for quotations, things he said, and WikiSource for works by and about him? Feel free to change as you see appropriate. --209.7.171.66 20:21, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
I've always been astouded at how poets like Keats get smaller sections than lesser poets like Emily Dickinson
- I agree, but part of it's probably how little we know of his life. Or maybe all the Keats fans out there just haven't gotten around to this page yet.
Keats's request regarding the inscription on his gravestone ("here lies one who's name was writ in water") was rather unfortunately disregarded by Severn, etc. The actual gravestone (based on a design by Severn) features a lyre with half the strings unstrung, and a bathetic blurb about a "young English poet" who had been driven to such misery by harsh reviews that he asked for the line "here lies..&c." to be carved on his headstone. Maybe dude was just cranky from..., umm..., *dying*? Random note: I hate this sentimentalized vision of Keats as this delicate, wilting little sensitive p-ssy, this loser who was indeed "snuffed out by an article". Keats was actually a courageous, pugnacious character, as the testimony of his friends and the evidence of his own poetry and letters prove.
- I agree. He'd hate to see how everybody sentimentalizes his life and poetry today. He had a lot of that zest for life in him. In fact, he was often his own most harsh critic.
[edit] Interesting idea
I'm not suggesting it needs to be included in the article at all, but here's something to think about: An English professor of mine once said that if Keats had lived, he would undoubtedly be remembered as a Victorian poet. How strange!
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I think about that sometimes too. Of the younger generation of major Romantics, it's likely that Byron would have turned political reactionary had he lived past 36; I can see him as a sardonic MP in old age, wryly savaging his social enemies over port at the club while men like Arnold and Dickens nod admiringly in assent. Keats and Shelley would have likewise aged into Grand Old Men of letters, and their continued presence in the Victorian era would have prevented the moronic establishment of that 'beautiful ineffectual angel' myth. Ah well, one can dream - think of all the lost poems!
Byron as an MP? Ha! When the British govt. would have had him dead if they could? Byron was too much the deviant politically, sexually, socially, to become his generation's Wordsworth. Now Keats and Shelley as Victorians? I dunno. Hemans is the only remaining figure before Browning and Tennyson come in. But they start from somewhere else then K and S. You know, I think the Modernists pick up where Keats and Shelley abruptly break off. Just read the Triumph of Life and the Fall of Hyperion. From those two poems you can make up all sorts of trajectories.-FM (talk) 08:01, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Onaya
In an episode of Star Trek: DS9 entitled "The Muse", there is a character named Onaya who can (vaguely, at least) be described as a type of psychic vampire. She befriends someone with artistic talents, and stimulates something in them which greatly enhances their talent and output, while providing her with some sort of energy. This "feeding" sustains her, but if it goes on for too long, kills her protoge. After she's confronted (because she almost killed the son of the station's commander) she lists some of the great names that she has touched in the past, and suggests that even though they died young due to her interference, it was worth it for them because they gained immortality through their works thanks to her. Of course, the reason I mention this is that Keats is among the victims she names. I thought that it might be a worthwhile trivia item to add somewhere (if nothing else, it's a sci-fi "theory" regarding his death), but I'm not good at summarizing, as evidenced by the above explanation, so I'm mentioning it here in hopes that someone can reduce it to a 2-sentence blurb and add it somewhere appropriate. - Ugliness Man 17:04, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Removed some vandalism
I removed some vandalism under Lord Byron's poem on Keats' death. I am commenting here to let others know and because I am new to wikipedia (as editing something). Moosehead Mike 12:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] John "Doctor" Keats (1795-1821)
John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 (probably), first child of Thomas Keats and Frances Jennings Keats, who had apparently eloped1. Everything was pretty ordinary for all concerned for a while--the Keatses had three more sons (George and Thomas, plus Edward who died as a baby) and one daughter, Frances, by 1803. That was also the year when John went away to school at Enfield. In 1804, John's father was killed in a fall from a horse. Just over two months later, for mysterious reasons, Frances remarried, to a London bank clerk named William Rawlings. Frances quickly decided she'd made some sort of terrible error and left, taking nothing with her since the laws of the time decreed that all her property and even her children belonged to her husband. Frances' mother, Alice, swept in and took custody of the children, but she could do nothing about the Swan and Hoop, which Rawlings sold immediately before disappearing. It was around this time that John became prone to fistfights, which he rarely lost even though he was small for his age2.
Frances reappeared suddenly in 1809, ill and depressed from many years of depending on the kindness of strangers3. John was overjoyed to see her and took care of her devotedly, but it was soon obvious that she had consumption4. She died in 1810, a year or so after her brother died of the same disease. John was crushed, and turned from fighting to studying. A year later, one of his financial guardians, a man named Abbey, sat him down and asked John what he'd like to do for a living. John had already considered the question, and replied that he'd like to be a surgeon5. So he was duly apprenticed to a surgeon named Hammond who lived in the neighborhood.
It was in 1813 that John first started reading lyric poetry6, most notably works by Sir Edmund Spenser like "The Faerie Queen." It was also around this time that John began to really rebel against Hammond7. The following year, Grandmother Jennings died, and the family was split up, it being improper at that time for younger sisters to live with older brothers without a parental type around. Frances was sent to live with the kids' other financial guardian and the two boys went to work. John just kept to himself and wrote really sad poems8. These poems still weren't very good, and he kept right on with learning to be a surgeon (in fact, he was doing so well, he'd jumped ahead of the curriculum) but over the next couple of years, poetry gradually became the overriding ambition of his life and medicine was left in the dust.
One of John's sonnets, called "To Solitude, " was printed in 1816, in the liberal newspaper, The Examiner9. This sonnet was good, but it wasn't until a little later in the year that he wrote "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer," which proved that he was the man to watch. His first volume of poetry appeared on 3 March 1817, and it didn't sell very well at all. John was depressed, but kept writing. Shelley had challenged him to an epic poetry writing contest over the summer, and for that contest, John wrote Endymion, though he didn't finish it within the time limit, so I guess Shelley won. But John was the sought-after young poet in London, and he lived in a whirl of parties and dances, even though he didn't much like crowds.
In June of 1818, John apparently became convinced that he would have only three more years to live10. He'd already written many of his most famous poems, but he was still convinced that he hadn't yet done enough to leave his mark on the literary world. His brother George had announced plans to emigrate to Illinois with his new wife, and his brother Tom had just started showing signs of consumption and needed John to look after him. And to top it all off, John had just fallen madly in love with a young woman named Frances Brawne. All of this overwhelmed and depressed him11. He tried to lose himself in his latest poem, Hyperion, but that's hard to do when you're spending most of your time in a sickroom.
Tom died in December of 1818. Though John should have received £500 from Tom's estate, Abbey (the guardian) decreed that he couldn't have it until his sister Frances turned 21. It wasn't until a year or so after John's death that anyone realized that Abbey had misappropriated nearly £1000 from Alice Jennings' estate. To make matters worse, brother George had gone broke12 and was begging John to send him whatever he could scavenge from the family funds. Desparate, John convinced his publishers to issue another volume of his poetry, but this was not a stunning success. Dead broke, he still allowed George to have the remnants of the family estate. John was rapidly becoming dependant on the help of his friends, people like Leigh Hunt (who'd gotten married and settled down some) and Charles Brown. John was also developing consumption, coughing up blood in February of 1820.
It was around this time that, without consulting John, Charles began arrangements for sending John to Italy13. John didn't want to be so far away from his ladylove, but he felt incapable of arguing. He left in September of1820, accompanied by Joseph Severn, an up and coming portrait artist. Once in Rome, the two men moved into lodgings across the piazza from an English doctor named Clark14. John was not allowed to write poetry and only given the dullest books to read, as emotional excitement was considered very bad for consumptive patients. John was definitely in a state; he stopped opening letters, even from his beloved Frances, after a month or so. In December, he tried to commit suicide by taking laudanum, but Severn stopped him. Later, delirious from the disease and the starvation diet Clark prescribed, John would rant at Severn for stopping him and even went so far as to accuse his friends of having poisoned him back in London.
On 23 February 1821, John died. Frances, upon hearing the news, seemed all right for a few weeks, then fell ill, and after recovering began wearing widows' weeds15. John had requested that his tomstone read only "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Charles Brown, feeling that was too brusque, had this carved on the stone instead: "This Grave contains all that was Mortal of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET Who on his Death Bed, in 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'"16.
Ward, Eileen. John Keats: The Making of a Poet. New York: Viking Press, 1963.
I hope that this helps... — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Shyamini (talk • contribs) 14:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC).
I believe the entire of section 2 Career and Criticism represents original research and ought to be removed. I also note that it appears to be a piece of post-modern criticism, with the obligatory reference to Walter Benjamin and a dense, obfuscatory prose that provides no useful information for the average reader who wants to find out about, well, Keat's Career and Criticism of it. Could someone who is interested in informing the public rather than furthering his own career rewrite this section? Please?
Ken M Quirici 19:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Lack of Influences
This does not only apply to Keats, but listing the range of literary influences to each of the literati would surely be beneficial?
To what end? Any poet who even finds him/herself on one of these wikipedias would necessarily be influenced by all Others before him/her.-FM (talk) 07:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Images
I scream at the sight of the empty space at the beginning of Life. Shouldn't these images be moved to make the article more aesthetically pleasing?! 24.131.128.231 (talk) 22:40, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
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- Done. You had the right idea, it was just a few minutes work shifting images down the article - Adrian Pingstone (talk) 22:50, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
- Looks great, thanks. Much improved. 24.131.128.231 (talk) 03:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
- Done. You had the right idea, it was just a few minutes work shifting images down the article - Adrian Pingstone (talk) 22:50, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Grammar
I don't know which of "Keats's" and 'Keats'" is the more correct, but it seems that the article is inconsistent in its use of these terms. Can someone make a decision and edit it? Indy4ever (talk) 00:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] NOT a Keats fan site
Please be aware of Wikipedia policy:
Nor is it a place for Keats fans to publish their POV. Nor does a pop figure's mention of Keats warrant inclusion. This is trivia:
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
Wikipedia is for articles, not school essays or personal reflections. If you wish to publish your insight and analysis, please find a blog. Thanks.
— J M Rice (talk) 06:10, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
