Keats’s second book, Endymion, was published in 1818. Based upon the myth of Endymion and the moon goddess, it was attacked by two of the most influential critical magazines of the time, the Quarterly Review and Blackwood’s Magazine. Calling the romantic verse of Hunt’s literary circle “the Cockney school of poetry,” Blackwood’s declared Endymion to be nonsense and recommended that Keats give up poetry.
In 1820, Keats discovered that he was ill with tuberculosis after coughing blood into his handkerchief. This affliction may have been aggravated by the emotional strain of his attachment to Fanny Brawne, a young woman with who he had fallen passionately in love. Nevertheless, the period from 1818 to 1820 was one of great creativity. In July 1820, the third (and best) of his books of poetry, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, was published. The three title poems, dealing with mythical and legendary themes of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance times, are rich in imagery and phrasing. The book also contains the unfinished poem “Hyperion,” containing some of Keats’s finest work, the lyric masterpiece “To Autumn” and three odes considered among the finest ever written in the English language, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode on Melancholy,” and “Ode to a Nightingale.”
In the autumn of 1820, under his doctor’s orders to seek a warm climate for the winter, Keats went to Rome. He died there on the 23rd of February 1821, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery. Some of his best-known poems were published after his death, including “Eve of St. Mark” (in 1848) and “La belle dame sans merci” (The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy; of which the first version was published in 1888). Note: “The Eve of St. Agnes” contains some references to “La belle dame sans merci”. Keats’s letters, praised by many critics as among the finest literary letters written in English, were published in their most complete form in 1931; a later edition appeared in 1960.
Although Keats’s career was short and his output small, critics agree that he has a lasting place in the history of English and world literature. His poetry is characterised by exact and closely-knit construction, sensual descriptions, and by force of imagination, and it gives the physical beauty of the world a new, remarkable importance.
The Romantics
Five main poets spearheaded the Romantic Movement of English poetry…
- Wordsworth (1770–1850)
- Coleridge (1772–1834)
- Byron (1778–1824)
- Shelley (1792–1822)
- Keats (1795–1821)
These poets rebelled against the established mode of thought, in all it’s divisions, be they social, moral, political or religious. In a time when formal society took precedence, and rigid class structures and rules were commonplace, to discover nonconformists who did not want to comply with the correct rôles in society was shocking! The Romantic period came after the age of scientific discovery, and after the age of reason, and the content of the new poetry, which attempted to alter, or even defy reality, was a brave new notion.
The Romantic Movement grew from the revolutionary period of history, when the people spearheading the French Revolution make a dangerous bid for freedom and liberty from tyranny. Therefore, people began to question the accepted normality, and this gave common people their dignity. Traits of romantic poetry are the uses of individual, emotional responses, rather that rational responses to things. These radical poets chose not to accept conventional views, and decided to use many different components to create this revolutionary new style of poetry. These components are listed below…
- Classical references (especially to Greek mythology)
- Ideas from the middle ages (such as ideas like chivalry)
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Gothic influences (like vaulted ceilings, soaring windows, arches and flying buttresses (which allowed huge windows, which in turn led to richly stained glass, which eventually led to the development of new, richer, more opulent colours))
- Sensuous responses to the world (which can be enhanced by dreams, drink or drugs such as opium and laudanum)
- Some supernatural influences (often inspired by dreams, drink, and drugs)
- More references to nature as the poets reacted against an increasingly industrialised age. (This is often used symbolically; e.g. drought can symbolise spiritual aridity.)
- Imagination (as it tends to give the poetry a dream-like quality, whilst providing a stream of consciousness, and grand gestures or rhetorical flushes can be used to help symbolise the feelings of the characters)
- Symbolism (which plays a big part in Romantic poetry)
