Context Flashcards
Sensations
Wrote a letter to Benjamin Bailey stating ‘O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts’
Astronomical
In July 1819, refers to Fanny Brawne as ‘my Bright Star’ in letter
Other contemporaries
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley
Keats profession
Surgeon
Tom
Brother Tom died from tuberculosis in 1818 - Keats attempted to nurse him - Tom was only 19
Father
Father died when he was only 9
‘The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;’
Reference to Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream - Oberon states - ‘‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine’
Bright star influence
‘it is the star to every wondering bark’ - sonnet 116
River of Lethe
River of forgetfulness in Ancient Greek Mythology
Romantic ideas about alienation
modern civilisation and industrialisation has alienated humanity from the earth and everyone from themselves
Romantic ideas about sincerity
Romantic ideals of sincerity and honesty and purity of emotion - desire to be natural
Romantic ideas about nature
- Key Romantic idea - natural world is a place of great beauty that performs a very important function to humanity
- ^^ humanity’s natural place is to be surrounded by and interacting with the natural world
‘full-throated ease’ (Nightinagle)
alludes to Wordsworth and Coleridge’s ‘Lyrical Ballad’
Hippocrene
fountain - greek myth - on Mount Olympus - drink for inspiration
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
- These lines very similar to Hamlets lines - ‘O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!’ - character of Hamlet full of existential despair and can’t see point of carrying on - Keats inspiration from Shakespeare
Psyche and Eros/Cupid
Goddess of soul/mind and God of love/desire
Recent discovery
Recent discovery of Uranus
‘silent upon a peak in Darien’
when Cortez and crew discovered Pacific Ocean
Keats marry Fanny
Keats could never marry Fanny due to his financial instability
Keats view on Ancient Greece
saw it as time of great creativity and hope - would contrast with modern age which he sees as corrupt and money oriented
O Solitude!
wrote Solitude when working/training as a surgeon - before met Fanny
Solitude in Romanticism
common trope within Romanticism - individual self communicating with the natural world - ‘I wonder lonely as a cloud’ - Wordsworth
- ^^ celebration of being by oneself in nature
Chapman’s Homer
- Keats read Chapmans homer for first time at night 1815 Cowden Clarke
- Next morning Clarke found the sonnet at 10’o clock
St Agnes
In 1819, Keats was in Winter in Sussex - initial cold and isolation of poem reflects environment in which he was in
Shakespeare parallel Eve of St Ag
Parallels Romeo and Juliet, yet has more ambiguous ending as Keats is more focused on the emotions between the lovers, not a dramatic ending
Hecate
Witch-like figure of the sea (also appears in Macbeth)
Sea nymphs
nymphs or Nereids often accompanied Poseidon and were said to be friendly and helpful to sailors
Keats death
23rd Feb 1821
Keats diagnosis
early 1820
Hamlet in WIHFTIMCTB
spirit of Shakespeare ’to be’ - Hamlet when pondering on value of staying alive
Romantics idea about logic
- ‘magic hand of chance’ - implies creativity is quite a mysterious and unpredictable process - part of life
- ^^ common Romantic idea that if one has an overly mechanical/scientific view of life, you can’t capture the full complexity of life
