AO1: key vocabulary & terms AO2: key poems A03: key context links A05: key critical views Trepidation Anxiety Liberty Spontaneity Distress Transcendence Sublime Vast Mortality Sorrow Longing Alienation Sensual Rich Exotic Sensory Pathos Radical Spiritual force Aesthetic Devotion revolutionary Imitation of Spenser On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer On Seeing the Elgin Marbles On the Seat On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again When I have fears that I may cease to be Isabella On Visiting the Tomb of Burns The Eve of St Agnes La Belle Dame sans Merci To Sleep Ode to Psyche Ode to Grecian Urn Ode to a Nightingale Ode on Melancholy Lamia Bright Star! To Autumn The Romantics highlighted the healing power of the imagination- they believed it enabled people to transcend their troubles and their circumstances They wanted to regenerate mankind’s spirituality The Enlightenment view was more like a mirror – works of literature reflected and commented on the world around them. Interested in the relationship between art and the universe. Romanticism was more like a lamp. The artists were the lamps, spilling out their soul to help illuminate the world. Literature became an exploration of the relationship between art and the artist’s journey. They admired nature’s vastness, mortality, power and beauty Sublime: elicits feelings of admiration and fear For a thorough summary of Keats’ life: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keats TB was prevalent and many died from it. Signs: pale, emancipated, aversion to sunlight, coughing up blood, fatigue, fever, etc. Keats’ poetry was highly criticised for most of his life and he was only valued after his death His epitaph says: 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water' Keats poets are fanciful dreaming tea-drinkers… so back to the shop Mr John, back to plaster and pills: Lockhart Keats uses the female figure to represent a visionary experience”: Wolfson Keats’s ambiguous depiction of Madeline has not attracted the attention it deserves… she appears variously as an innocent dreamers, an object of rap devotion… of ridicule, and a tart: Wolfson His deepest anxieties take shape in confrontations with power in a female form: Wolfson TEOSA was written in the first confident flush of [Keats’s] love for Fanny Brawne: Ward Lamia has lavishly sensual descriptions, yet gives way to bitterness and sarcasm: Motion Lamia embodies two kinds of elegy (like a funeral song) its’ to do with the imagination… the other is person… it is a prelude to death itself: Motion Lamia proves that Keats cannot do without Fanny: Motion Ode to a Nightingale is about his ambivalent feelings about Fanny: Motion OTAN his reference to the hungry generations may have depended on his jaundiced view of contemporary politics… compel us to read the poem as an account of historical tribulations: Motion Tragic Insight Beauty Divine Celestial Mythical Ambivalence Ambiguous antinomies Enchanting Haunting

AO1: key vocabulary & terms AO2: key language & dramatic techniques A03: key context links A05: key critical views Trepidation Anxiety Liberty Spontaneity Distress Transcendence Sublime Vast Mortality Sorrow Longing Alienation Sensual Rich Exotic Sensory Pathos Radical Spiritual force Aesthetic Devotion revolutionary Rich, exotic and sensory imagery Metaphorical prose Ambiguous tone (Negative Capability) Synaesthesia Natural imagery Mythical imagery Semantic fields Pathetic fallacy Musical tone Cynical tone Dreamy tone Spenserian stanza Ballad: simple poem, usually a story, usually medieval Sonnets: usually 14 lines with iambic pentameter Odes: usually a formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea. Keats’ father died in 1804 in a riding accident Mother died to TB in 1810 1810 Keats left home to train as an apprentice surgeon and apothecary 1814 writes Imitation of Spencer 1815 becomes a dresser (surgeon’s assistant) 1817 Hunt begins publishing and showing Keats’ poetry (he becomes associated with the Young Poets/Romantics) 1817 Sees Elgin Marbles and is inspired 1818 Keats’ poetry is attacked and begins his walking tour of Scotland with Charles Brown (when critics believe he became ill). Returns to find his brother, Tom, ill with TB; he later dies Probably met Fanny Brawne about a month before his brother dies 1819 writes a lot of his major works, such as the Odes and La Belle and Eve of St Agnes Later that year (September), Autumn is one of his last poems written December he gets engaged to Brawne February his illness gets worse and Brawne refuses to end their engagement. June it gets worse again July his dr orders that he go to Italy 1821 Keats dies in Rome, Spain Many of the odes are ambitious to transmute or escape history: Motion Keats was concerned with poetry and its power over the passion and imaginations, its moral bearings: Motion Keats’ voice is in all her music (nature’s): Shelley (Poems are) attractive because of their uncertainties and doubts without an irritable reaching after fact and reason: Stillinger Truth is founded on a knowledge of past suffering: Motion Pain is an integral part of Keats’ vision of the world: Smith Keats portrays Death as somehow beautiful: Stillinger Keats uses a female figure to represent visionary experience. His anxieties are revealed through confrontations with power in a female form: Wolfson OTAN shows his experience as a doctor… the weariness, the fever, and the fret… his depression in 1819: Motion Tragic Insight Beauty Divine Celestial Mythical Ambivalence Ambiguous antinomies Enchanting Haunting Ecstatic