2/19/09 Coleridge continued, Keats

Qs on midterm? P1? R1 due before spring break

Summary of last time:

This is a powerful reading, and it sets us up nicely for Keats. I would like to spend a little time on the end of the poem, however.

Keats

In moving along to Keats, we're skipping over two decades: all of the poems that you've read for today were written in 1819. Barbauld, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and Blake when we get to him, are considered early Romantics; Keats and Shelley are late Romantics. I mention this because two decades is long enough for poets to start questioning their immediate predecessors. Keats' letters, which is where he outlined many of his ideas about poetry, question Coleridge and Wordsworth, even though Keats clearly admires both poets. Coleridge reasoned too much, Keats claimed, thinking primarily about works that we have not read in this class. As for Wordsworth--well, Keats used the phrase "egotistical sublime" to describe Wordsworth's poetry, a phrase that captures both his admiration for the grandness and intensity of Wordsworth's vision as well as Keats' own unwillingness to adopt the Wordsworthian pose. (In contrast, Keats writes that a poet has no identity--though what he means by that would be a lengthy discussion.)

But what about the imagination? Has Keats' view of the imagination changed from what Wordsworth and Coleridge believed? That's the question for today, which we'll address by looking at two related poems, "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." On Tuesday, we'll concentrate on "Ode to a Grecian Urn," and perhaps address the other two poems less thoroughly.

Note that we've already seen differences in opinion between Wordsworth and Coleridge. Very simply, Colerige has doubts that Wordsworth doesn't have: it's hard to reconcile Wordsworth's idea of the poet as someone with a more enthusiasm, more tenderness, and a "more comprehensive soul" with Coleridge's "greybeard loon," no matter how powerful and bardic the figure of the mariner is. But it wouldn't do to overstate Coleridge's skepticism: in "Kubla Khan" especially, the imagination is pictured as an extraordinarily powerful force capable of pulling together contraries like "stately" and "pleasure," "5 miles" and "measureless," "holy" and "demon lover."

So how about Keats? Letter to Benjamin Bailey, November 22, 1817: "I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination--what the imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth--whether it existed before or not...The imagination my be compared to Adam's dream--he awoke and found it truth." (ref to Paradise Lost, where Adam dreams of Eve and awakens to find that she has been created)

But that was in 1817. 1818 was a truly horrible year for Keats: there were 2 published attacks on Keats as member of "Cockney school" of poetry; his brother George (and to a lesser extent Keats himself) fell into financial distress; his brother Tom died of TB; he fell in love with Fanny Brawne but was too poor to marry; and he went of a walking tour that led to ulcerated throat--something he knew could be a sign of TB. In 1820 he coughed up blood, making it certain.

And in between there was 1819, one extraordinary year, in which Keats wrote nearly all of his best poetry. Question: did Keats still believe in "the truth of the Imagination" in 1819?

Note the likeness between his description of the imagination in the letter to Bailey and the plot of "Eve of St. Agnes": Adam awoke and found his dream truth; Madeline awakens from a dream of Porphyro to find him there. Is this a positive portrayal of imagination?

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci"