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M.A. (English) / John Keats (31 October.1795 - 23 February 1821) is prominent among the younger generation of poets of the Romantic period. From the early admiration of his contemporaries to the present much attention has been paid to the nature of Romanticism in his work. A member of the "Keats circle," Joseph Ritchie, as early as November 1817 wrote to a friend that he thought Keats "might well prove to be the great poetical luminary of the age to come."l In an essay entitled "On the Development of Keats' (sic) Reputation," (1968), J. R. MacGillivray discusses this ongoing admiration of Keats as central to the embodiment of . Romanticism, and refers also to the veneration of the poet by members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 2 MacGillivray states that they had a natural affinity for the poet's work because of the "romantic medievalism" in some of his poems, and because of the sensuous richness of some of his description...

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1932 R61

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Bibliography: leaves 304-316 / 316 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 1994

The present dissertation proposes a fresh approach to Keats's remarkable growth and development as a poet by assessing his works in relation to four different but interrelated contexts: the tradition of poetry as a "speaking picture," Lacanian interpretations of that tradition, the related nature of classical Chinese poetry, and parallels between Keatsian themes and Taoist principles. Chapter one seeks to assess Keats's poetry by articulating the relationship between "ut pictura poesis" on the one hand, and psychoanalysis and Taoist philosophy on the other. Chapter two deals with the invisible ground of the sympathetic imagination. Chapter three discusses Keats's philosophy of "negative capability" with reference to the Taoist philosophy of the "Middle Path." Chapter four compares Keats's Lamia to the Chinese legend The White Snake. Chapter five concludes the work by showing how the poet matures into "poethood" through an anamorphotic process of developing from the imaginary to the symbolic. The focus of this dissertation is on the pictorial and sculptural qualities of Keats's poetry in comparison with many poems in the Chinese and western traditions. Efforts have also been made to combine psychoanalytical theory and Taoist philosophy and poetics to shed light on the discussion. Even though the dissertation seeks to assess Keats's poetry through an analogy with the plastic arts and to extend this assessment through conceptual categories provided by psychoanalysis (with reference to the poet's maturing into "poethood") and Taoist philosophy (with reference to the poet's philosophy of "negative capability"), it does not assert that Keats is a psychoanalyst nor does it claim that he is a Taoist. Keats is mainly a poet dealing with human emotion, love, beauty, truth, and imagination — a poet with "no self," a poet who can be regarded as "the perfect man" (Tao Te Chinq, 18) in the truest sense of a Taoist.

Starting with Jerome McGann's landmark 1979 essay "Keats and the Historical Method in Literary Criticism," the recent sixteen-plus years of Keats criticism brims to overflowing with the dominance of New Historicism and its archaeological recovery of the political, historical Keats against the previous preeminence of a formalist, aesthetic Keats. The grip of New Historicism now holds tightly enough, perhaps, to the point where it suffers from a lack of attention to formalist, aesthetic, stylistic differentials and peculiarities. A critical position, then, that addresses this lack of attention looks to be an assessment of the relationships between New Historicism and formalism: how, in fact, New Historicism owes a debt to the formalist ways of reading it works to overcome. Such ways of reading find one of their most powerful statements in Keats himself--and, in a startlingly close twentieth-century analogue, the reader-response theory of Wolfgang Iser. The readings here of Keats's poetry consider how it reveals that Keats, like Iser, holds the germ of New Historicism's methodology, as it falls under the general taxonomy of Iser's theory but for how it actually dramatizes and predicts that theory. Reading, for Keats, ultimately places one in a dynamic relationship with history--a relationship always of potential, perpetually "widening speculation" to "ease the Burden of the Mystery" that is history.

Critics have declined to acknowledge the influence of Platonism on Keats' poetry except in its most rudimentary form. Close analysis of a contemporary translation of Plato's Timaeus, however, reveals many connections between Keats' thought and the mythology of the dialogue. This thesis contends that Thomas Taylor's translation of and commentaries on the Timaeus underlie much of the mythological structure of Keats' Hyperion and the system of salvation which Keats later develops in his vale of soul-making letter. It is true that the poet before 1818 decries the importance of "philosophy," but when the problem of evil comes to haunt him, he is forced to confess his need to understand the world within a philosophical framework. The mythology of the Timaeus provides him with such a framework. It cannot be proven absolutely perhaps that Keats was dependent upon the Timaeus in his own myth-making, but there appears to be a number of very direct influences of the dialogue on his letters and on Hyperion -- these are outlined in Chapters Two and Three. What is of most importance in the study of Keats' mythology is the way in which the poet eventually reshapes and moves beyond Platonism to answer the problem of evil and to establish a mythology of his own, a mythology which finds embodiment in the vale of soul-making and in the odes of 181°. Chapter One traces the growth of Keats from a poet who prefers to delight in sensations to one who seeks philosophic truth. It establishes his religious and philosophic beliefs before and after the problem of evil (recorded in March 1818) is brought home to him, and indicates how he modifies on ^'builds upon those beliefs. In the Mansion of Many Apartments and the March of Intellect letter, Keats introduces the allegories which later become the basis of the mythology of Hyperion. Chapter Two explores the process of Keats' myth-making in Hyperion and reveals to what extent the poet depends upon the Timaeus to answer the problem of evil. Keats is determined to show how the Principle of Beauty is inherent in the world, and he adopts the Platonic world-view to explain that mortality and mutability are really calculated towards a greater good, are not to be considered evils. The philosophic argument, sustained in the structure of the poem, falls apart on the emotional level, however: Keats' tragic vision as exemplified in the Titans is not compensated by the philosophic argument. The failure of Hyperion to build a mythology induces the poet to reassess the problem of evil, to rework its parameters, and the effort leads finally to the resolution of the problem and to Keats' own mythology. The final chapter establishes how, from the Pythagorean concept of soul found in the Timaeus, Keats develops his theology of soul-making. His- system of spirit-creation moves far beyond Platonism and becomes the basis of the poet's own, independent mythology. But although Platonism is abandoned, its contribution to the thought of Keats should not be underestimated: in measuring his own ideas against it, Keats is able finally to define his own philosophy, to answer the problem of evil. The odes of 1819 are a series of myths which develop and sustain Keats' vision. In each one Keats illustrates the weaknesses of traditional Greek theology, offering in its stead one more appropriate to modern England, one which explains the role of evil in man's personal salvation. If we are to know Keats' mythology, it is to the odes that we must turn. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

The present dissertation proposes a fresh approach to Keats's remarkable growth and development as a poet by assessing his works in relation to four different but interrelated contexts: the tradition of poetry as a "speaking picture," Lacanian interpretations of that tradition, the related nature of classical Chinese poetry, and parallels between Keatsian themes and Taoist principles. Chapter one seeks to assess Keats's poetry by articulating the relationship between "ut pictura poesis" on the one hand, and psychoanalysis and Taoist philosophy on the other. Chapter two deals with the invisible ground of the sympathetic imagination. Chapter three discusses Keats's philosophy of "negative capability" with reference to the Taoist philosophy of the "Middle Path." Chapter four compares Keats's Lamia to the Chinese legend The White Snake. Chapter five concludes the work by showing how the poet matures into "poethood" through an anamorphotic process of developing from the imaginary to the symbolic. The focus of this dissertation is on the pictorial and sculptural qualities of Keats's poetry in comparison with many poems in the Chinese and western traditions. Efforts have also been made to combine psychoanalytical theory and Taoist philosophy and poetics to shed light on the discussion. Even though the dissertation seeks to assess Keats's poetry through an analogy with the plastic arts and to extend this assessment through conceptual categories provided by psychoanalysis (with reference to the poet's maturing into "poethood") and Taoist philosophy (with reference to the poet's philosophy of "negative capability"), it does not assert that Keats is a psychoanalyst nor does it claim that he is a Taoist. Keats is mainly a poet dealing with human emotion, love, beauty, truth, and imagination — a poet with "no self," a poet who can be regarded as "the perfect man" (Tao Te Chinq, 18) in the truest sense of a Taoist. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate