How Does John Keats's Poetry Reflect the Romantic Era Essay

Imagine a candle-lit dinner on a starry night in Paris, the Eiffel Tower just in view with dazzling lights shining into the night. This image is probably what you think of when you hear the word “romantic,” correct. However, this image is a stumbling block when people think of the “Romanticism Period” in literature. Where “romantic” means having a lovely time with the person you love the most, “Romanticism” is a piece of literature written with key themes in mind. Those themes tend to be a strong emotion, imagery or worship of nature, and individuality and subjectivity. The peak of inspiration for these pieces was in the years 1800-1850, and there are famous poems that are well loved today from this period. Many of the poets that you enjoy reading and know are, in actuality, Romanticism writers, and instill the themes above in our minds.

Poetry is used to express several different mediums through: structure, tone, imagery and rhyme schemes. John Keats’s ode “To Autumn” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” or, a Vision in a Dream” will be critically analyzed, compared and contrasted to each throughout this paper to further dissected the meaning of each poem.

John Keats, in his Romantic poem, “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” (1819), reveals that the ability to feel the rush of love, while still experiencing the steadfastness of a star, would make for an ideal life. He develops this theme by first using an apostrophe, addressing the star directly to praise its permanence; by second, employing negative connotation in the second line with “not” to emphasize all the qualities of the star that the speaker does not wish to possess; by third, personifying the star with the phrase “watching, with eternal lids apart” to give the star human qualities, therefore making it easier for the speaker to relate to the star, yet still not desiring this; by fourth, utilizing the allusion to an “Eremite,”

Keats focus is on the romantic attributes of the star,

The poems “Bright Star” by John Keats and “Choose Something Like a Star” by Robert Frost are apostrophes that compare the desired and undesired qualities of a star with an aspect of their lives. The authors use personification, diction, metaphor and allusion and both poems address a theme of steadfastness and perpetuity in love and life. Both poems are apostrophes but differ in to whom the speaker of each poem is speaking to and what each speaker wants from the star its self. In Keats’ poem, the speaker directly addresses the star, “Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art--” (1).

In Bright Star, Keats utilises a mixture of the Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnet forms to vividly portray his thoughts on the conflict between his longing to be immortal like the steadfast star, and his longing to be together with his love. The contrast between the loneliness of forever and the intenseness of the temporary are presented in the rich natural imagery and sensuous descriptions of his true wishes with Fanny Brawne.

The twenty-four old romantic poet John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” written in the spring of 1819 was one of his last of six odes. That he ever wrote for he died of tuberculosis a year later. Although, his time as a poet was short he was an essential part of The Romantic period (1789-1832). His groundbreaking poetry created a paradigm shift in the way poetry was composed and comprehended. Indeed, the Romantic period provided a shift from reason to belief in the senses and intuition. “Keats’s poem is able to address some of the most common assumptions and valorizations in the study of Romantic poetry, such as the opposition between “organic culture” and the alienation of modernity”. (O’Rourke, 53) The irony of Keats’s Urn is he likens

A brilliant American poet, Henry David Thoreau, once claimed, “This world is but a canvas to our imagination”. This idea that everything can be interpreted differently using creativity is evident in many of John Keats’ poems. However, how does “Ode on a Grecian Urn” reveal the beauty of art? Keats uses different images of melodies, love, and happiness to show that the idea of true beauty of art is within the eye of the beholder.

Through his poem, “Ode on Melancholy”, Keats tries to find the balance between happiness and show his readers how to achieve it. He tells the readers that by accepting the sadness, one can find happiness, even if it is only temporary. Through his allusions and lyrical language, Keats is able to paint the image of happiness and sadness through comparisons to poisonous drugs and beautiful sceneries as well as convey his message to his

For this source, the focus was on a section of the book that was about John Keats. The problem this source is addressing is an emphasis on Keats and what he was focusing on when he wrote. It opens with a quote from Keats: “Difficulties nerve the spirit of a man.” (298) This is a problem that this source presents: the difficulties that Keats dealt with in his short life, specifically in the end, and how it affected his poetry. The source speaks mostly about Keats’ love for nature and how sensuous he was about it. Even though that is the opposite of the poems I want to focus on in my project, I still felt like this source was informative in the ways of which Keats was inspired in his other works. He’s stated to having an “intense and faithful”

Comparing Wordsworth and Keats’ Romantic Poetry. Both Wordsworth and Keats are romantic Poets, they express ideas on nature and send us the message to respect it. They say we have to admire the beauty of nature in different ways. Wordsworh uses simpler language in his poems wether to express simple or complex ideas, by which we understand he aimed his poems to lower classes. Keats instead, uses much more complex language to describe and express his ideas, so we know he aimed his poems to the educated.

The Romanticism era of 1785-1825 was an age of which many people had their own idea of how the period worked. Writers, philosophers, poets, artist and musicians all explored their mediums of music, art and writing to express their own concepts. The key themes and ideas of romanticism involves emotional expression, nature/natural worlds, imagination and individualism.

Romanticism was away for poets to express their feelings emotions and their personal views of nature. Romanticism started in the mid-eighteenth century and achieved its stature in the nineteenth century. The Romantic writing of the nineteenth century holds in its themes the goals of the day and age, focusing on feeling, nature, and the articulation of "nothing." The Romantic time was one that centered around the shared trait of mankind and, while utilizing feeling and nature; the writers and their works shed light on individuals' all inclusive natures. According to Merriam Webster dictionary the definition of Romanticism is “a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th century, characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and an emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and marked especially in English literature by sensibility and the use of autobiographical material, an exaltation of the primitive and the common man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a predilection for melancholy, and the use in poetry of older verse forms”(Webster) some of the greatest poets where Wordsworth, Keats, and Lord Byron. Such as I wandered lonely as a cloud, Ulysses, and She walks in beauty, are  all examples of of Romanticism.

The word Romantic has been used to mean several different things, but in England at the end of 18th century it meant a complete change in style and subject from the poetic practice of the previous 150 years. It was the lavishness of the Elizabethans cannot excel that of this age. The development of new ideas brought fresh inspiration for poetry. In the new race of poets the observation became more matured and intimate. Some of the eminent writers of this period are Keats, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. This was indeed the return of nature and was the most fertile period of English

The poets of the Romantic period wrote during the tumultuous era of the French Revolution. It is because of the time period in which they lived and created that these writers came to value that which is common and serene and beautiful. One of the elements that the Romantics valued is the imagination. Poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge called upon the powers of imagination to bring relief and peace to their chaotic worlds. John Keats illustrated what effects the imagination can have when it is allowed to permeate reality. Both of these poets demonstrate how imagination shapes reality and how these images are projected onto the natural world.