WORLD FAMOUS WRITERS -JOHN KEATS

 John Keats, (born October 31, 1795, London, England—died February 23, 1821, Rome, Papal States [Italy]), English Romantic lyric poet who devoted his short life to the perfection of a poetry marked by vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal, and an attempt to express a philosophy through classical legend.

 

  Keats was an English Romantic lyric poet whose verse is known

  for its vivid imagery and great sensuous appeal. His reputation grew after his early death, and he was greatly admired in the Victorian Age. His influence can be seen in the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and the Pre-Raphaelites, among others.

  Keats wrote with great insight and emotion about art and beauty, love and loss, suffering and nature. His famous poems include 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' and 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'.

 

Themes in Keats's Major Poems

• transient sensation or passion / enduring art.
• dream or vision / reality.
• joy / melancholy.
• the ideal / the real.
• mortal / immortal.
• life / death.
• separation / connection.
• being immersed in passion / desiring to escape passion.
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• Keats' deeply reflective poetic attempts to explore and understand beauty as it exists in all things inspired countless writers to pursue a similar program for writing poetry.
• Pursuit of Beauty. 
• Focus on Familiar Things. 
• Removal of Self.
• Keats's diction is highly connotative. His writing style is characterized by sensual imagery and contains many poetic devices such as alliteration, personification, assonance, metaphors, and consonance. All of these devices work together to create rhythm and music in his poems.
•  The poetry of Keats is characterised by a style "... heavily loaded with sensualities", most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of the Romantic poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through an emphasis on natural imagery.
• Some  famous poems  by keats

• • Ode to Psyche.

  Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

       In some untrodden region of my mind,

       Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

       Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind

   

   

  • Bright Star

    Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —

       Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night.

•  

  • Endymion.

     A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

       Its loveliness increases; it will never

   

   
  

  • The Eve of St. Agnes.

      She hurried at his words, beset with fears,

       For there were sleeping dragons all around,

       At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears—

       Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.—

  • Ode to a Nightingale.

   A nightingale built its nest near Keats’ home in the spring of 1819 and inspired by its song, Keats wrote this famous ode in a single day. In the poem Keats describes a nightingale that experiences a type of death but does not actually die. The bird is able to live through its song, a fate which is impossible for a human to achieve.

      Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

       Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

       Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep

       In the next valley-glades:

       Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

       Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

   

  • The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy.

   

  This ballad tells the story of a melancholy knight who is enchanted and enslaved by a beautiful woman without pity. Though simple in structure, it has been a subject of numerous interpretations and is considered an English classic.

  
  

       And this is why I sojourn here,

       Alone and palely loitering,

       Though the sedge is withered from the lake,

       And no birds sing

   

  • To Autumn

  Keats wrote ‘To Autumn’ after a walk near Winchester one autumnal evening. The poem marks the end of his poetic career as his efforts were not giving him enough financial returns. ‘To Autumn’ describes three aspects of the season in its three eleven line stanzas. It is Keats’ most famous poem and is considered as one of the most perfect short poems in the English language.
  

      Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

       Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

       Conspiring with him how to load and bless

       With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

  • “Ode on a Grecian Urn.
  • Keats believed that classical Greek art was idealistic and captured Greek virtues. This led to him writing ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ which has five stanzas of 10 lines in which he has discoursed on the design of a Grecian urn. At the time of its publication, the poem was not received well by the critics but it is now considered one of the greatest odes in the English language.
  •   “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all

         Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

    Frances "Fanny" Brawne Lindon was   the fiancée and muse to  John Keats.

     

     Keats,  died early in 1820 of tuberculosis at the age of 25, after travelling to Italy in search of a better climate to help cure him of the disease.

    JOHN KEATS