biographyJohn Keats, born October 31, 1795 was one of the key thinkers of the Romantic Era, despite his work remaining unpublished until the final four years of his short life. Like most poets, it wasn’t until his death that his work was truly valued. His poems were not generally well received at the time of publishing but by the end of the 19th century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets.
Keats attended a local dame school where there was believed to be a more liberal outlook and progressive curriculum – much more modern than the larger, prestigious schools in his area. As described by a close friend, Keats was ‘a volatile character, “always in extremes,” given to indolence and fighting’ 1 Keats’ father passed away when he was 8 after falling from a horse and fracturing his skull and just 6 years later, his mother died of tuberculosis. Keats studied and practiced medicine from the early years of the 1800’s and those around him believed he had a true desire to be a doctor. As Keats matured however, so did his passion for literature. Keats was first published in a leading liberal magazine ‘The Examiner’ with his sonnet ‘O Solitude.’ The first volume of Keats poetry was published early in 1817, entitled ‘Poems.’ The publication was labelled a critical failure after generating little interest with his publishers being disappointed with his efforts. Keats made the decision to change publishers, signing with Taylor and Hessey who were much more enthusiastic about his work. Taylor and Hessey went on to be the publisher of fellow key Romantic, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Keats was forced to leave his job at the Hospital after suffering from a succession of colds in 1817 and moved to Hampstead with brothers George and Tom, who was suffering from tuberculosis and unfortunately passed away the next year. Soon after his brother’s death, Keats moved to Wentworth Place which is now known as the foreground for some of his greatest writings including 5 out of 6 of his great odes and ‘Fancy,’ inspired by the garden at Wentworth Place. Keats also had a very open love life. Keats befriended Isabella Jones in May of 1817. She was a beautiful, talented and widely read and whilst she was not in the top flight of society, she was still relatively financially well off. Keats was known never to hide his sexual attractions, especially to Isabella. In letters to his brother George, he writes that he “warmed her” and “kissed her.” Letters and drafts of poems also suggest that Keats first met his most significant love interest, Frances (Fanny) Brawne, between September and November of 1818, she was 18 at the time. Later in 1819, Fanny and her mother moved into the other half of Wentworth Place, enabling her and Keats to meet whenever they desired. Keats’ “Bright Star” is undoubtedly a declaration of his love for Fanny, a work in progress which he continued to refine until the later months of his life. Keats wrote to Fanny, “My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again – my life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb’d me … I could die for you” Tuberculosis set in and Keats left for Rome in September of 1820, knowing he would probably never see Fanny again. Keats passed away 5 months later on February 23 and the news took a month to travel to Fanny. She spent six years mourning the death of her one true love. Keats wrote his last letter on November 30, 1820, “Tis the most difficult thing in the world to me to write a letter. My stomach continues so bad, that I feel it worse on opening any book – yet I am much better than I was in Quarantine.” One of Keats last requests was to be placed under a tombstone bearing no name or date, only the words “Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water.” His grave now reads: "This Grave / contains all that was Mortal / of a / Young English Poet / Who / on his Death Bed , in the Bitterness of his Heart / at 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. 24 February 1821" |
BORN: October 31, 1795 PLACE OF BIRTH: Moorgate, London DIED: February, 23, 1821 (aged 25) |
texts
When studying Keats as a part of the 'Romanticism' elective in English Extension 1, it is a requirement that you study the following poems:
‘To Autumn' Read Here
‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ Read Here
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ Read Here
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ Read Here
‘Fancy’ Read Here
‘To Byron’ Read Here
‘On the Sea’ Read Here
‘Bright Star’ Read Here
‘To Autumn' Read Here
‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ Read Here
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ Read Here
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ Read Here
‘Fancy’ Read Here
‘To Byron’ Read Here
‘On the Sea’ Read Here
‘Bright Star’ Read Here
summary of poems
Keats’ poetry challenges the philosophical, religious, scientific and economic paradigms of the 18th century in England and Europe as he reflects on the ‘complex relationship between truth, art, pain and loss’ that captures the ‘Romantics ‘anti historical, counter-social impulse that remains extremely important to Romantic lyric.’ (Chandler J, McLane, N.p. 23). Keats’ poems are a collective expression of the Romantic valuing of nature, imagination, idealism and individualism that drove the Romantic movement and it is apparent that Keats has a strong admiration for the natural world where he was strongly influenced by his exposure to human suffering from a young age.
To Autumn idealizes nature and the beauty of Autumn as Keats emphasises the way in which nature is beautiful all year round, not just in the seasons of Spring and Summer. It can be seen as a direct rebut to the rise of Industrialisation that spread across England in the 18th century. Keats employs a calming and reassuring tone to elicit emotions of awe, respect and acceptance in readers. The tight structure and pleasing rhythm of the poem creates a drunken, hazy and almost pictorial sense as Keats’ celebrates the power of imagination, a key feature of Romantic writers. The personification of Autumn as a ‘close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; conspiring with him how to load and bless’ carries forth Keats’ overwhelming adoration of the season, adding to the overall serenity of the poem.
La Belle Dame san Merci tells the medieval story of a lone knight who ‘meet(s) a lady in the meads, full beautiful – a feary’s child.’ The Romantic valuing of the supernatural is best represented by the ballad form and so, Keats’ separates from his usual structure to adopt one more like that of Coleridge, with a well-structured plot presented in simple stanzas. Each stanza, bar the opening and closing has a tight ABCB rhyme structure, creating a smooth, lulling and almost lyrical tone. This tightly followed structure highlights the tension between the real and the imagined worlds, parallel to Coleridge in his poem ‘Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.’ Keats tells the story of his fair lady, “I made a garland for her head; and bracelets too,” “She found me roots of relish sweet … and sure in language strange she said – / I love thee true” and explains to the speaker of the poem that she “lulled me asleep … and I awoke and found me here/ On the cold hill’s side” The poem ends with the subject weeping “And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering … And no birds sing.”
Ode to a Nightingale is arguably Keats’ most successful of the Great Odes (which also includes ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn and To Autumn.’ Following the Greek form in which an Ode celebrates a person or object, in this Ode, Keats’ is celebrating the Nightingale. The Nightingale is defined as being “noted for its rich melodious song which can often be heard at night.” The poem begins with the speaker depicting a ‘drowsy numbness pain’ as if he’d ‘emptied some dull opiate to the drains.’ Opiate, the term given to any kind of drug that carries opium was a widely used drug during the 18th century. Fellow romantic Coleridge was openly addicted to opium and sourced much of his inspiration from the trances he craved. Ode was written in 1819 and is best interpreted as being a reflection of Keats’ desire to flee from the pressures of the world. The illusion is created that the speaker of the poem has an out-of-body experience where they escape the real world and enter the real of the Nightingale. Once the Nightingale’s song has lulled the speaker to sleep, they become periodically blinded and can make out only the intoxicating plants around them. It goes as far as the speaker imagining they've died and the Nightingale is signing at their funeral. The poem, in its entirety sends a timeless message: no matter your path, or your escape, we all must at some point return to reality. The poem closes with the speaker wondering ‘Do I wake or sleep?’
Ode to a Grecian Urn is just as beautifully tragic and mysterious as Ode to a Nightingale, representing again the seriousness and technical difficulties of the Grecian Odes. This Ode was also written in 1819, and it’s important to recognize that this was also the year Keats contracted tuberculosis. Keats’ feverishly expressed to those around him that he felt like a ‘ghost’ as is condition deteriorated, so it is no surprise that he became fixated on the idea of immorality. The poem follows a person who’s speaking to a Grecian pot (urn) that was made out of marble, centring itself around describing the stunning images that moulded the urn. Keats describes the most taboo of images – sex, love, nature and death. By doing this, and rebelling against the polite, quiet and structured poetic norm of 18th century UK, Keats’ is explicitly conforming to the Romantic way of life. His idealizing of nature and his passion for truth and beauty is what lead him to be one of the most respected poets of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Fancy was inspired by the garden at Keats’ residence at Wentworth Place. It’s typical to the Romantic wave in the way it appreciates nature and exercises imagination. Keats’ encourages the use of imagination to transcend reality, carrying a constant rhyme scheme that reads AABBCCDD with rhyming couplets to close. Keats’ opens the poem with a generalisation of the message he wishes to portray – “ever let the fancy roam, pleasure never is at home.” Keats personifies ‘Fancy’ as ‘the winged fancy’ who wonders, who will bring ‘in spite of frost, beauties that the earth has lost’ ultimately creating and overwhelming sense of awe and serenity early in the poem. Fancy is slightly similar to ‘To Autumn’ in the sense that Keats is urging readers to appreciate the beauty of, and reunite them with the “delights” and “wealth” of Summer and Autumn. Keats’ throughout the poem strengthens and intensifies his belief in the power, and necessity of imagination. He continues to explain that the beauties of the physical world are fading, inferior to those of the mind. Finally, Keats’ closes with a variation of the opening couplet – ‘let the winged fancy roam, pleasure never is at home,’ giving a sense of closure and completion to the poem, or in better terms, ‘brings the poem to a full circle’ representing the reoccurring seasons discussed.
To Byron is arguably the most ambiguous of Keats' HSC prescribed texts and unfortunately, there are minimal resources available to assist in the decoding of his true meaning. What we do know, however, is that Byron had a genuine dislike towards Keats and had publicly shamed his writing. To Byron can be interpreted as Keats' subtle criticism of Byron, but at the same time can also be interpreted as a means self-reflection by Keats. Either way, Keats has identified with Byron - a suffering poet and true to Romantic form has placed emphasis on the power of imagination and its ability to provide relief from reality and immorality. Keats' plea 'still warble dying swan' is a Grecian metaphorical phrase given for a final gesture, effort or performance given just before death or retirement. Given personal interpretation, this could symbolize Keats prediction that Byron's short lived fame was coming to an end, or it could signify his own belief that his career was drawing to a close. The poem, however ambiguous still highlights the Romantic conventions of individualism, imagination and nature.
On the Sea is another appreciation of nature at its finest, speaking about the solace and freedom that can be found in nature. Keats presents the sea as the embodiment of nature, contrasting it to the artificiality of urban life. This can also be interpreted as a response to the Industrial Revolution, which was in full swing at the time the poem was written. This objection was common across most Romantic writers. Whilst Keats tells us that nature is his escape, he also believes it is the solution for those wearied by modern life. Keats’ is calling out to those with ‘eyeballs vexed and tired … who’s ears are dinn’d with uproar rude’ and asking them to be at one with nature, stressing that it can ease their troubles. Keats closes the poem with one last final attempt to provoke imagination in his readers, “Sit ye near some old cavern’s mouth, and brood/ Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!”
Bright Star showcases Keats’ deep insight to human emotion and experience. Bright Star is believed to be the last poem Keats’ ever wrote and there is almost no doubt it depicts his most significant love, Fanny Brawne. Bright Star is a powerful mediation of love, death, time and nature, again, was extremely typical of Keats, the Romantic poet. Keats describes the Bright Star as “nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite.” The personification of the Star represents the Romantic valuing of individualism, nature and imagination. In short terms, Bright Star is a simple, yet stunning dedication to a probable young, beautiful women.
To Autumn idealizes nature and the beauty of Autumn as Keats emphasises the way in which nature is beautiful all year round, not just in the seasons of Spring and Summer. It can be seen as a direct rebut to the rise of Industrialisation that spread across England in the 18th century. Keats employs a calming and reassuring tone to elicit emotions of awe, respect and acceptance in readers. The tight structure and pleasing rhythm of the poem creates a drunken, hazy and almost pictorial sense as Keats’ celebrates the power of imagination, a key feature of Romantic writers. The personification of Autumn as a ‘close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; conspiring with him how to load and bless’ carries forth Keats’ overwhelming adoration of the season, adding to the overall serenity of the poem.
La Belle Dame san Merci tells the medieval story of a lone knight who ‘meet(s) a lady in the meads, full beautiful – a feary’s child.’ The Romantic valuing of the supernatural is best represented by the ballad form and so, Keats’ separates from his usual structure to adopt one more like that of Coleridge, with a well-structured plot presented in simple stanzas. Each stanza, bar the opening and closing has a tight ABCB rhyme structure, creating a smooth, lulling and almost lyrical tone. This tightly followed structure highlights the tension between the real and the imagined worlds, parallel to Coleridge in his poem ‘Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.’ Keats tells the story of his fair lady, “I made a garland for her head; and bracelets too,” “She found me roots of relish sweet … and sure in language strange she said – / I love thee true” and explains to the speaker of the poem that she “lulled me asleep … and I awoke and found me here/ On the cold hill’s side” The poem ends with the subject weeping “And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering … And no birds sing.”
Ode to a Nightingale is arguably Keats’ most successful of the Great Odes (which also includes ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn and To Autumn.’ Following the Greek form in which an Ode celebrates a person or object, in this Ode, Keats’ is celebrating the Nightingale. The Nightingale is defined as being “noted for its rich melodious song which can often be heard at night.” The poem begins with the speaker depicting a ‘drowsy numbness pain’ as if he’d ‘emptied some dull opiate to the drains.’ Opiate, the term given to any kind of drug that carries opium was a widely used drug during the 18th century. Fellow romantic Coleridge was openly addicted to opium and sourced much of his inspiration from the trances he craved. Ode was written in 1819 and is best interpreted as being a reflection of Keats’ desire to flee from the pressures of the world. The illusion is created that the speaker of the poem has an out-of-body experience where they escape the real world and enter the real of the Nightingale. Once the Nightingale’s song has lulled the speaker to sleep, they become periodically blinded and can make out only the intoxicating plants around them. It goes as far as the speaker imagining they've died and the Nightingale is signing at their funeral. The poem, in its entirety sends a timeless message: no matter your path, or your escape, we all must at some point return to reality. The poem closes with the speaker wondering ‘Do I wake or sleep?’
Ode to a Grecian Urn is just as beautifully tragic and mysterious as Ode to a Nightingale, representing again the seriousness and technical difficulties of the Grecian Odes. This Ode was also written in 1819, and it’s important to recognize that this was also the year Keats contracted tuberculosis. Keats’ feverishly expressed to those around him that he felt like a ‘ghost’ as is condition deteriorated, so it is no surprise that he became fixated on the idea of immorality. The poem follows a person who’s speaking to a Grecian pot (urn) that was made out of marble, centring itself around describing the stunning images that moulded the urn. Keats describes the most taboo of images – sex, love, nature and death. By doing this, and rebelling against the polite, quiet and structured poetic norm of 18th century UK, Keats’ is explicitly conforming to the Romantic way of life. His idealizing of nature and his passion for truth and beauty is what lead him to be one of the most respected poets of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Fancy was inspired by the garden at Keats’ residence at Wentworth Place. It’s typical to the Romantic wave in the way it appreciates nature and exercises imagination. Keats’ encourages the use of imagination to transcend reality, carrying a constant rhyme scheme that reads AABBCCDD with rhyming couplets to close. Keats’ opens the poem with a generalisation of the message he wishes to portray – “ever let the fancy roam, pleasure never is at home.” Keats personifies ‘Fancy’ as ‘the winged fancy’ who wonders, who will bring ‘in spite of frost, beauties that the earth has lost’ ultimately creating and overwhelming sense of awe and serenity early in the poem. Fancy is slightly similar to ‘To Autumn’ in the sense that Keats is urging readers to appreciate the beauty of, and reunite them with the “delights” and “wealth” of Summer and Autumn. Keats’ throughout the poem strengthens and intensifies his belief in the power, and necessity of imagination. He continues to explain that the beauties of the physical world are fading, inferior to those of the mind. Finally, Keats’ closes with a variation of the opening couplet – ‘let the winged fancy roam, pleasure never is at home,’ giving a sense of closure and completion to the poem, or in better terms, ‘brings the poem to a full circle’ representing the reoccurring seasons discussed.
To Byron is arguably the most ambiguous of Keats' HSC prescribed texts and unfortunately, there are minimal resources available to assist in the decoding of his true meaning. What we do know, however, is that Byron had a genuine dislike towards Keats and had publicly shamed his writing. To Byron can be interpreted as Keats' subtle criticism of Byron, but at the same time can also be interpreted as a means self-reflection by Keats. Either way, Keats has identified with Byron - a suffering poet and true to Romantic form has placed emphasis on the power of imagination and its ability to provide relief from reality and immorality. Keats' plea 'still warble dying swan' is a Grecian metaphorical phrase given for a final gesture, effort or performance given just before death or retirement. Given personal interpretation, this could symbolize Keats prediction that Byron's short lived fame was coming to an end, or it could signify his own belief that his career was drawing to a close. The poem, however ambiguous still highlights the Romantic conventions of individualism, imagination and nature.
On the Sea is another appreciation of nature at its finest, speaking about the solace and freedom that can be found in nature. Keats presents the sea as the embodiment of nature, contrasting it to the artificiality of urban life. This can also be interpreted as a response to the Industrial Revolution, which was in full swing at the time the poem was written. This objection was common across most Romantic writers. Whilst Keats tells us that nature is his escape, he also believes it is the solution for those wearied by modern life. Keats’ is calling out to those with ‘eyeballs vexed and tired … who’s ears are dinn’d with uproar rude’ and asking them to be at one with nature, stressing that it can ease their troubles. Keats closes the poem with one last final attempt to provoke imagination in his readers, “Sit ye near some old cavern’s mouth, and brood/ Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!”
Bright Star showcases Keats’ deep insight to human emotion and experience. Bright Star is believed to be the last poem Keats’ ever wrote and there is almost no doubt it depicts his most significant love, Fanny Brawne. Bright Star is a powerful mediation of love, death, time and nature, again, was extremely typical of Keats, the Romantic poet. Keats describes the Bright Star as “nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite.” The personification of the Star represents the Romantic valuing of individualism, nature and imagination. In short terms, Bright Star is a simple, yet stunning dedication to a probable young, beautiful women.
KEY ASPECTS OF KEATS' FORM
Paradoxical Relationships is a key theme explored by Keats in much of his poetry. Relationships between good and evil, life and death, morality and immorality and dreams, visions and reality are often presented, creating a sense of contradiction across his work. La Belle Dam sans Merci and Ode to a Nightingale both explore the paradoxical relationships between dreams and reality. In La Belle, the speaker is unable to depict what was real and what was dreamt after waking up alone on a cold hills side following an apparent rendezvous with a beautiful women. In Ode to a Nightingale, it is suggested that the subject has an out of body experience after describing a drowsy numbness pain, as if he’d ‘emptied some dull opiate to the drains.’ The idea that the subject had entered a trance and returned back to reality To question ‘do I wake or sleep?’ explicitly depicts Keats’ fascination in the relationship between dreams and reality.
Contemplation of Beauty is proposed as a way of delaying the inevitability of death across much of Keats' poetry including his Odes and poem Bright Star. Keats' ultimately creates the idea that whilst we must at some point die, we have the choice to live life in an atheistic revelry. He relies on his natural imagery and references to nature to carry forth this idea and to further demonstrate that unlike mortal beings, beautiful things will never die - they will simply remain beautiful as they endure over time. For example, in Ode to a Grecian Urn the speaker envies the immorality of the lute players and the trees because they will never stop playing their songs, nor will they wither away. Similarly, he points out that the people on the Urn, unlike the speaker himself will never stop experiencing.
Greek Mythology drove some of the most significant and well known poems written by Keats. His collection of Odes, which includes the prescribed Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to a Grecian Urn and To Autumn was respectful to the Greek mythology that an Ode is a celebration of a person or object, written in varied or irregular meter. Looking again at Ode to a Nightingale, there is an abundance of Greek myths that have been referenced throughout the poem. The Nightingale itself is a symbol of beauty, immorality and freedom where in Greek mythology, the Nightingale alludes to Philomel, whose tongue was cut off to prevent her from telling about her rape.She was later turned into a Nightingale by the Gods to prevent her from being murdered at the hands of her rapist. The reference, in like 7 to a ‘Dryad’ is another Greek allusion. A dryad is a female spirit attached to a tree. Further, in line 32, where Keats’ writes ‘Not charioted by Bacchus’ its worth noting that Bacchus is the Greek god of wine and drunkenness and that in this allusive metaphor, the speaker claims that his escape into the nightingale's world will not be due to drunkenness.
Fancy as a concept opposed to the poem represents the capacity of the imagination to create and invent pleasure which is not accessible through complete consciousness. Keats' obsession with fancy and the imagination is known to be a reflection of his desire to create and live in an imaginary world of delight and wonder and ultimately escape his world where he's been continually expose to human suffering. It is this very desire to escape that drove much of Keats' work. In simple terms, to Keats, imagination is a creative power which as fancy (the concept) can invent pleasures and provide an escape from this world into a world of delight and pleasure. It can also conceive of a transcendent beauty, immortal and ideal as well as restore the wonder, enrich and celebrate the experiences of this world and re-create such sensations and feelings for the reader in words. Finally, the imagination can explore the contradictions and frustrations of experience and create a vision of a more complex beauty, of the balance of good and ill, of dying into life. This ideal also relates to his quote in Ode to a Grecian Urn "beauty is truth, truth beauty" which has developed into one of the key Romantic concepts and in itself, is a whole new idea in its entirety.
Negative Capability and the Disappearance of the Poet and the Speaker. Negative capability was a term created by Keats that he had used once, and once only to criticize Coleridge who he thought sought knowledge over beauty. The phrase is used to describe the an artists receptiveness to the world and to reject those who tried to formulate theses or categorical knowledge. This valuing of the natural world and the human condition is what elevated Keats' to the forefront of the Romantic movement. He writes in a letter to his brother, "at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge." In the theory, Keats demanded that the artist remain receptive and avoid seeking fact or reason. Negative capability can be linked with the disappearance of the poet and the speaker in the way that the poet separates themselves from the work. The work itself depicts an experience in such a way that the reader recognizes and responds without requiring any explanation or reason, so to say from the poet. The speakers become so enshrined with an object that they erase themselves, their bias and their personal and thoughts in the depiction of the object. Looking at Ode to a Grecian Urn again as an example, since its 1820 publication, critics have theorized whether it be the poet, the speaker, the urn or one or all figures on the urn who quote the worldly famous "beauty is truth, truth beauty." The ambiguity of the true meaning behind the quote remains timeless and has well endured.
Nature is one of the most common symbols of Keats' poetry. Like all Romantics, Keats had an overpowering appreciation and admiration towards nature and the sublime. Keats' sources much of his inspiration from nature and nearly all of his prescribed texts have references to nature woven throughout them. The observation of the elements of nature gave not only Keats but fellow Romantics including Coleridge and Wordsworth the opportunity to create extended meditations and meaningful odes exploring the human condition. Keats' often uses nature as a base creating similes, metaphors and symbols to describe the spiritual and emotional states he so deeply admires.
Contemplation of Beauty is proposed as a way of delaying the inevitability of death across much of Keats' poetry including his Odes and poem Bright Star. Keats' ultimately creates the idea that whilst we must at some point die, we have the choice to live life in an atheistic revelry. He relies on his natural imagery and references to nature to carry forth this idea and to further demonstrate that unlike mortal beings, beautiful things will never die - they will simply remain beautiful as they endure over time. For example, in Ode to a Grecian Urn the speaker envies the immorality of the lute players and the trees because they will never stop playing their songs, nor will they wither away. Similarly, he points out that the people on the Urn, unlike the speaker himself will never stop experiencing.
Greek Mythology drove some of the most significant and well known poems written by Keats. His collection of Odes, which includes the prescribed Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to a Grecian Urn and To Autumn was respectful to the Greek mythology that an Ode is a celebration of a person or object, written in varied or irregular meter. Looking again at Ode to a Nightingale, there is an abundance of Greek myths that have been referenced throughout the poem. The Nightingale itself is a symbol of beauty, immorality and freedom where in Greek mythology, the Nightingale alludes to Philomel, whose tongue was cut off to prevent her from telling about her rape.She was later turned into a Nightingale by the Gods to prevent her from being murdered at the hands of her rapist. The reference, in like 7 to a ‘Dryad’ is another Greek allusion. A dryad is a female spirit attached to a tree. Further, in line 32, where Keats’ writes ‘Not charioted by Bacchus’ its worth noting that Bacchus is the Greek god of wine and drunkenness and that in this allusive metaphor, the speaker claims that his escape into the nightingale's world will not be due to drunkenness.
Fancy as a concept opposed to the poem represents the capacity of the imagination to create and invent pleasure which is not accessible through complete consciousness. Keats' obsession with fancy and the imagination is known to be a reflection of his desire to create and live in an imaginary world of delight and wonder and ultimately escape his world where he's been continually expose to human suffering. It is this very desire to escape that drove much of Keats' work. In simple terms, to Keats, imagination is a creative power which as fancy (the concept) can invent pleasures and provide an escape from this world into a world of delight and pleasure. It can also conceive of a transcendent beauty, immortal and ideal as well as restore the wonder, enrich and celebrate the experiences of this world and re-create such sensations and feelings for the reader in words. Finally, the imagination can explore the contradictions and frustrations of experience and create a vision of a more complex beauty, of the balance of good and ill, of dying into life. This ideal also relates to his quote in Ode to a Grecian Urn "beauty is truth, truth beauty" which has developed into one of the key Romantic concepts and in itself, is a whole new idea in its entirety.
Negative Capability and the Disappearance of the Poet and the Speaker. Negative capability was a term created by Keats that he had used once, and once only to criticize Coleridge who he thought sought knowledge over beauty. The phrase is used to describe the an artists receptiveness to the world and to reject those who tried to formulate theses or categorical knowledge. This valuing of the natural world and the human condition is what elevated Keats' to the forefront of the Romantic movement. He writes in a letter to his brother, "at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge." In the theory, Keats demanded that the artist remain receptive and avoid seeking fact or reason. Negative capability can be linked with the disappearance of the poet and the speaker in the way that the poet separates themselves from the work. The work itself depicts an experience in such a way that the reader recognizes and responds without requiring any explanation or reason, so to say from the poet. The speakers become so enshrined with an object that they erase themselves, their bias and their personal and thoughts in the depiction of the object. Looking at Ode to a Grecian Urn again as an example, since its 1820 publication, critics have theorized whether it be the poet, the speaker, the urn or one or all figures on the urn who quote the worldly famous "beauty is truth, truth beauty." The ambiguity of the true meaning behind the quote remains timeless and has well endured.
Nature is one of the most common symbols of Keats' poetry. Like all Romantics, Keats had an overpowering appreciation and admiration towards nature and the sublime. Keats' sources much of his inspiration from nature and nearly all of his prescribed texts have references to nature woven throughout them. The observation of the elements of nature gave not only Keats but fellow Romantics including Coleridge and Wordsworth the opportunity to create extended meditations and meaningful odes exploring the human condition. Keats' often uses nature as a base creating similes, metaphors and symbols to describe the spiritual and emotional states he so deeply admires.