• Come cerco una versione di latino?
• Come richiedo una versione di latino?
• Come richiedo una versione di greco?
• Come effettuo una ricerca sul sito?
• Altre richieste di informazioni

He is the greatest member of the "Second Generation" of Romantic poets. He was able to fuse the romantic passion and  the Neo-classicism. Keats was born in London in 1795. He left the school and devote himself to literature and in 1816 he published his first poem. In 1820 the symptons of consumption became evident and a combination of family problems (their parents and his brothers died of tubercolosis) made things worse. In order to avoid the risk of another cold English winter he sailed for Italy, and he dictated his own epitaph "Here lies one whose name was  writ in water" which reflects the poet's view of himself and his art.

Works

His production can be divided into:

Early Minor Poems; On first looking into Chapman's Homer;

         Sleep and Poetry; I stood tip-toe

Narrative Poems: Endymion; 

     Hyperion; 

     The Eve of St. Agnes;

Lyrical Poems: La Belle Dame sans merci;

 The Great Odes to Psyche;

 Ode to a Nightingale;

 Ode on a Grecian Urn;

 Ode an Melancholy;

 Ode on Indolence;

 To Autumn

Features and themes

Keat's life was troubled by family tragedies, financial problems and a hopeless love affaire, and his poetry was influenced by the tragic events of his life. In fact there is a sense of melancholy, death and mortality.

Poetry as Solace

Keats conceived poetry as the only reason of life

The role of Imagination

Keat's Imagination takes two main forms: firstly the world of his poetry is artificial; isn't the result of direct experience but it's imagined by the poet. Secondly Keat's poetry originates from Imagination in the sense that most of his work is a vision of what he would like human life to be.

Beauty

Beauty is the only consolation he finds in a life of sadness and misunderstanding. Beaty could be Physical or Spiritual. These 2 aspects were related, since physical beauty was simply the expression of the spiritual love. Physical beauty is temporary and decaying, while spiritual beauty is eternal and immortal.

Negative capability

Keats formuled a theory of "negative capability": according to it the poet isn't concerned with a moral judjment, but he must have the ability to "negate" his personality and open himself to the reality around him.

Ancient Greece

Keats said that anciet Greek art and poetry represented only one thing = Beauty. He turned to this distant classical world for ispiration, but he recreated it with the eyes of a romantic.

Nature

Another source of inspiration was Nature

Middle Ages

The third great source of inspiration of Keat's poetry was the medieval past, made up of legends, magic and supernatural elements.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

The poem is about an imaginary marble Grecian Urn, with two figures carved in relief. The Ode is divided into 3 parts; 2 describes two separates scenes on the two sides of the Urn, and a conclusion.

First Stanza: the urn is out of time and to underline this concept attention is focused on 3 abstract words: "quietness, silence, slow time"; but the Urn is so beautiful that it communicates something better than words and verse.

Second Stanza: the Urn, with the power of art can go beyond the senses and lead us to a deeper level of perception. The first key point is represented by his conception of art which is the only thing that can hold a movement of happiness and make it eternal.

Third Stanza: he underline the positive consequence of immutabilty.

Fourth Stanza: there is a new scene which represents a crowd of people, led by a priest, who are going to sacrifice a heifer to the Gods.

Five Stanza: the poet turns to the Urn as a complete work of Art. Now the figures are a marble decoration and the Urn looks impassive and indifferent, The second key point is Keat's conception of Beauty which is truth. In fact truth is the essential goal of knowledge in the same way Beauty is the essential goal of Art, so they both tend to the same result.