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
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/8851 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Li, Richard W. |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 11329468 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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