John Keats is a mythopoeic poet who created his own mythical substructure, often adapting traditional figures from mythology to give a special meaning to the entire canon of his major work. The early poems are hesitant, imitative, and groping, but the mature poems receive a large part of heir symbolic meaning from the substructure of Keats's myth of the poet on which they rest. In the works of John Keats, then, the reader finds a touchstone of experiences common to all humanity, shaped into Keats's central myth of the poet. He left the testament of a poet who could "see as a god sees, and take the depth/ Of things" recorded in his major poems and in some of the most sensitive letters ever written by a poet.

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Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa

This analysis of Keats's poem proffers evidence and arguments to support the contention that The Eve of St. Agnes presents allegorically the poet's speculations regarding the relationship between eros and agape, speculations which include a sharp criticism of Christianity and a model for a new, more "humanistic" system of salvation. The union of Madeline and Porphyro symbolizes the reconciliation of the two opposing types of love in an apocalyptic marriage styled on the Biblical union of Christ and the Church. The irony inherent in the poem arises from Keats's use of Christian myths, symbols, and sacraments to accomplish this purpose.

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Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa

The origin of the story of Narcissus is unknown, and the circumstances of his death are uncertain, but the most popular version of the tale as told by Ovid has been read, translated, explained, moralized and disputed by innumerable writers and alluded to by many more. Renaissance writers in England, such as Golding, Edwards and Sandys, were interested in first introducing the myth into their own language and then, in explaining its meanings, lessons and moralizations. Later poets paraphrased their translations, often adding their own point of view or else using only the skeleton structure of the myth for their own poetic purposes. The simple story of a youth who died by a pool after falling hopelessly in love with his own reflection acquired a significance and immortality worthy of a Greek god. The Eighteenth Century writers, who were less interested in the gods than their predecessors had been, almost completely ignored Narcissus in their poetry, but later poets such as Blake, Shelley and Keats revived him once again and transformed the faded youth into a Romantic. In The Book of Thel Blake explores the consequences of self-love, and anticipates the fuller development of this theme in The Four Zoas. He uses the archetypal pattern of the Narcissus myth for portraying the fading Thel, who refuses to enter the state of Generation because she is afraid of the voice of experience that she meets in her own grave when she descends into the underworld. Her sterile separation from her Spectre is similar to the unconsummated relationship between Narcissus and Echo. Thel fleeing from her grave escapes back to non-existence, fading by the river like Narcissus and Echo. An understanding of the function of the Narcissus story in Shelley's poem, Alastor, is indispensable to an interpretation of this controversial poem. Shelley's allusions to the myth are faithful to the Ovidian version of Narcissus as a youth who sighs away his life after seeing his own shadow in a well. Shelley associates the Poet's quest with the Narcissus myth by generally paralleling the narrative structure of Ovid's story, and by employing much of its imagery. Chapter II argues that Shelley's poem is both unified and consistent when it is interpreted in terms of the Narcissus theme. Keats primarily uses the popular myth of Endymion and Cynthia in his poem, Endymion, but also includes other myths in the manner of the Renaissance epyllion. The most significant addition to the main myth is the story of Narcissus as a comment on the nature of Endymion's quest. Keats pictures the hero at the well, viewing the reflection of the vision, in order to establish the specific parallel to Ovid's story. Endymion, however, unlike Narcissus or the Poet in Alastor, recognizes his illusion and proceeds towards accepting his responsibility to his kingdom and to the Echo figures in the poem. The analysis concludes with a comparison of the specific handling of the Narcissus myth in the three poems in terms of the various versions of the myth, the treatment of the metamorphosis of Narcissus Into a flower, and the development of the theme of self-love. The thesis establishes the significance of the Narcissus myth in The Book of Thel, Alastor and Endymion, and evaluates Blake's, Shelley's and Keats's contribution to the attempts of the Renaissance writers to introduce the Ovidian story into English literature. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis proposes two distinct but connected ideas: that John Keats’s idiom of friendship was haunted by “sequestered” longings and that he ultimately valued specific, one-on-one partnerships as a basis for his poetical character. The Introduction places the thesis within its critical context and outlines “paradoxical solitude,” a concept the poet expressed by joining a “kindred spirit” in a wilderness retreat in “O, Solitude.” I begin by examining the evolving role of solitude in Keats’s literary predecessors (Chapter I). I then trace the development of ideas of creativity and solitude from his 1814-1815 verse, including his first association with a coterie and the influence of Wordsworth (Chapter II). Building on these findings, I explore the poet’s introduction to the Hunt circle in 1816, assessing his relationships with its members and their overstated roles in the production of Poems (Chapter III). I then discuss how Keats regarded the composition of Endymion in 1817 as a poetic “test,” specifically tailored to reinforce his identity as a solitary poet (Chapter IV). I contend that Keats engaged in a dialogue of independence with Reynolds, adapted the theories of Hazlitt, and restlessly travelled throughout England as a means of rejecting the highly social periods of 1818 (Chapter V). I then consider the creative gains of his northern expedition with Brown in the summer of 1818. I argue that Keats exaggerated his development into a “post-Wordsworthian” poet, positioning himself outside both the coterie’s sphere and the reach of Blackwood’s criticism, and inspiring the theme of Hyperion (Chapter VI). In closing, I analyze Keats’s advice to Shelley to be a selfish creator of his poetic identity. Only through paradoxical solitude, I argue, was Keats able to construct the poetic identity that led him to compose the poems on which his fame rests in the 1820 volume.

Tesis para optar al grado de Doctor en Literatura Hispanoamericana y Chilena / Como es sabido y Borges (1899-1986) mismo lo señala, pasó su niñez “detrás de una verja con lanzas, y en una biblioteca de ilimitados libros ingleses. Palermo del cuchillo y de la guitarra andaba (me aseguran) por las esquinas” Esta pequeña cita instala una problemática no menor en su obra y que contiene la relación siempre en tensión entre Latinoamérica (periferia) y Europa (centro). La investigación examina especialmente el diálogo interdiscursivo e intercultural entre Borges y dos románticos ingleses: William Blake (1757-1827) y John Keats (1795-1821) a través de la desterritorialización de Tyger y Nightingale del contexto romántico inglés decimonónico y su reterritorialización en la Argentina borgeana moderna / postmoderna del siglo XX. Metodológicamente, se ha realizado un análisis del poema “The Tyger” de Blake y del poema “Ode to a Nightingale” de Keats para dilucidar su significación o significaciones románticas. Posteriormente se ha examinado la obra ensayística, cuentística, lírica de Borges en búsqueda de los significados que él atribuye a tyger y nightingale descubriéndose una polisemia compleja otorgada por sus acercamientos serios o jocosos. En otras palabras, Borges desestabiliza la relación significante /significado de tyger y nightingale y su contexto romántico. Tanto tyger como nightingale diseminan rizomáticamente por la obra de Borges a través de los principios de conexión y heterogeneidad que permiten unirlos a nuevos significados diversos sin que se llegue jamás a un significado definitivo. Borges instalaría una postergación infinita del significado que asemeja un deslizamiento, un rodar, un nomadismo con múltiples entradas y salidas entre los discursos involucrados. (Kristeva, 1980; Derrida, 1975; Deleuze/Guattari, 1997; Barthes, 1974). Aunque la investigación se encuentra aún en progreso, la recodificación que hace Borges de los significantes románticos ingleses tyger y nightingale parece tener importantes implicancias desde la perspectiva del postcolonialismo, ya que el juego literario conducido por Borges establece una relación de paridad con el centro que cuestiona la sujeción periférica de América Latina al centro Europeo.

Jin, Lu. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts also in Chinese.