John Keats

         In literature and painting, Romanticism stressed the importance of feelings, imagination, self-expression and individual creativity. It also stressed originality in art and also genius (in a modern sense). Previously, the emphasis had been on reason, tradition and 'artistry' in the sense of form and craftsmanship. The Romantic Movement, which began around 1795, brought about one of the most fundamental changes in outlook in literature, music and the arts.

        Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature, and was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature.

                               1.   Love

               Love poetry of keats:

                              Hither, hither, hither
                               Love its boon (benefit, advantage) has sent---
                               If I die and wither
                             I shall die content!

                                                             (Hither, hither,  Love)

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion - I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more - I could be martyred for my religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that.]]]]]]

                                 2.  Nature

Keats is one of the greatest lovers and admirers of nature. In his poetry, we come across exquisitely beautiful descriptions of the wonder sights and senses of nature. He looks with child-like delight at the objects of nature and his whole being is thrilled by what he sees and hears. Everything in nature for him is full of wonder and mystery - the rising sun, the moving cloud, the growing bud and the swimming fish.

But Keats is not only the poet of nature. Infact, all the romantics love and appreciate nature with an equal ardour. The differnce is that Keats's love for nature is purely sensuous and he loves the beautiful sights and scenes of nature for their own sake, while other romantics see in nature a deep meaning-ethical, moral or spiritual. For example, Wordsworth claims that nature is a moral guide and universal mentor. Coleridge adds strangeness to the beauty by giving it supernatural touch. Shelley, on the other hand, intellectualizes nature. Byron is interested in the vigorous aspects of nature and he uses nature for the purpose of satire.

So, the attitude of all other romnantics towards nature is complex, but Keats' attitude is simple. He does not try to find any hidden meaning in nature and he describes it as he sees it. He loves nature for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else.

As pains and sufferings is the part and parcel of man's life, therefore, to forget his personal sorrows. He indulges in the world of natural beauty. As in the "ode to Nightingale", Nightingale and he becomes one, his soul sings in the bird which is the symbol of joy. The song of the bird transfers him into the world of imagination and he forgets his personal sorrows in the happy world of the nightingale:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leave hast never known,

The weariness the fever and the fret.

Similarly, in "Ode to Autumn" he looses himself in the loveliness of autumn. He lives wholly in the present and does not look back to the past or look forward into the future. In that state of mind, he asks:

Where are the song of spring? Ay where are they"

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too.

'I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination- What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth'

-The beauty and truth paradox

From 'Ode on a Grecian Urn':
'Beauty is truth and truth beauty,- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know'.

Keats could be saying that pain is beautiful.  It could be a philosophical statement about life or it may only make sense in context of the poem,

3) Imagination

'The setting of imagery should like the sun come natural to him'
'If poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all'.

- Poetry should be a natural thing, not forced but fluid and inspired.

4) Treatment of women

'I would rather give women a sugar plum than my time'

Suggests that he thinks women are shallow, and that they'll accept something so meaningless instead of attention. 'Sugar plum' is also a sickly reference, and perhaps suggests that women are like this too, sweet but with slightly sinister connotations; we already know that Keats didn't trust women.

                      

5) Treatment of beauty

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever"-

           6) As a realist