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Visions Beyond Reality: Keat's Poetic Rejection of Enlightenment Philosophy

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Visions Beyond Reality: Keat's Poetic Rejection of Enlightenment Philosophy AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Corey J. Plett for the degree of Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies in English, English, and Sociology presented May 19, 1995. Title: Visions Beyond Reality: Keats's Poetic Rejection of Enlightenment Philosophy. Redacted for privacy Abstract approved: - Dr. Cheryl Glenn John Keats, as a principal figure in the Romantic movement in Europe, reacted against the philosophy of the Enlightenment. His poetry and letters are testament to his distrust of, and resistance to, an ever increasingly clinical and "reasonable" society. Keats's poetic thought- imaginative, speculative, dialectic--is the antithesis of an Enlightenment philosophy which put its faith in science, objectivity, and logical deduction. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the letters and poems of Keats through the lens of Enlightenment philosophy; it will gauge Keats's theories of the imagination in terms of that philosophy. As I move through Keats's literary response to the enlightenment, I am also examining Keats's professional progression from surgeon's apprentice--a trade strongly associated with the Enlightenment -to a primary figure in the movementaway from Enlightenment and toward Romantic philosophy. This study focuses on the writings of Keats, both his letters and poetry, contextualizing his poetic thought and work while answering the critical question: How does Keats's writing reveal his reaction to Enlightenment philosophy? Visions Beyond Reality: Keats's Poetic Rejection of Enlightenment Philosophy by Corey J. Plett A THESIS submitted to Oregon State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies Completed May 19, 1995 Commencement June 1996 Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies thesis of Corey J. Plett presented on May 19, 1995 APPROVED: Redacted for privacy Major Professor, representing English Redacted for privacy Minor Professor, representing English Redacted for privacy Minor Professor, representing Sociology Redacted for privacy Head of Department of English Redacted for privacy Dean of Gra, e Scho I understand that my thesis will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University libraries. My signature below authorizes release of my thesis to any reader upon regt st. Redacted for privacy y J. Plett, Author TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 1 Background 1 Critical Question 5 The Solution 8 Methodology 9 2. THE ENLIGHTENMENT 11 Romantic Reactions to the Enlightenment 11 The Polarization of Science and Poetry 15 3. KEATS'S POETIC IMAGINATION 22 Visionary Imagination 22 Sympathetic Imagination 29 4. CONCLUSION 34 REFERENCES 36 VISIONS BEYOND REALITY: KEATS'S POETIC REJECTION OF ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHY 1. INTRODUCTION Background I found that I cannot exist without poetry--without eternal poetry--half the day will not do--. (18 April, 1817, John Keats to John Hamilton Reynolds)1 The literary movement long refered to as Romanticism which took root in Germany and spread through Europe to France and England roughly between 1770 and 1848,can be characterized by its violent reaction to the Enlightenment, its assertion of the self, and its value of individual experience. As one of the principal figures in the Romantic movement, John Keats's stature as a poet has continued to grow steadily since the 1848 publication of the first biography about him, Life, Letters and Literary Remains, by Richard Monckton Milnes. The biography made clear how extraordinarily rapid Keats's development had been and what immense natural endowment he must have brought to bear. His contemporary, Alfred Lord Tennyson, considered Keats the greatest poet of the nineteenth century, and the twentieth-century poet T.S. Eliot found 'All quotations from Keats's lettersare taken from Hyder Edward Rollins', The Letters of John Keats. Page references will not be cited, rather all quotations will be identified with the date and recipient of the letter in parentheses. 2 Keats's work worth praising in his commentary. Keats's letters, published in 1848 and 1878, are now regarded with the same admiration given his poetry, with many of the letters themselves adding as valuable commentary to the poetry. Eliot describes the letters as "certainly the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet" (qtd. in Bate 11). Keats's thinking about philosophical matters is perhaps as far from dogmatic as any of his contemporaries. As he speculates on any large question, such as the meaning of life and death, the answer he formulates is soon challenged by an opposite, but possibly equally compelling and true answer that he has also formulated. The struggle within him sometimes caries him to oxymoronic extremes in his poetry, as in these lines spoken by Apollo in "Hyperion": Most like the struggle at the gate of death; Or liker still to one who should take leave Of pale immortal death, and with pang As hot as death's is chill, with fierce convulse Die into life. (lines 126-130)2 2All quotations from Keats's poemsare taken from Jack Stillinger's, John Keats's Complete Poems. Page references will not be cited, rather all poems will be identified with the lines quoted in parentheses. 3 His apparent struggle between antithetical beliefs, or perhaps possibilities of belief, is due, in part, to his speculative nature. Keats reacts against the defining order of logic which pervaded the thought of the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century society. Instead of logically deducing, he prefers to delve into further experience, dialectically, speculatively. Keats understands that ultimate answers regarding notions of truth and reality are unattainable, but a genuine increase in awareness, understanding and wisdom, as Keats shows through Oceanus in "Hyperion," remains open to us all: So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty, born of us And fated to excel us, as we pass In glory that old Darkness: nor are we Thereby more conquer'd, than by us the rule Of shapeless Chaos. (212-217) He understands too, that the adventure of intellectual growth and worldly experience is in itself deeply gratifying. This understanding is evidenced specifically in two poetic concepts of imagination which have become synonymous with Keatsian poetry: the sympathetic and the visionary. 4 The sympathetic imagination can be directed to points of view or beliefs as well as to objects or persons, and often, for Keats, the vividness of conception merges into direct empathy or sympathetic participation with the imagined object as it does with the nightingale in "Ode to a Nightingale." The visionary imagination reveals truth which lies beyond ordinary sensory perception as evidenced in "Ode to a Indolence" as Keats is drawn into the world of the figures which "pass'd, like figures on a marble urn." For Keats, this truth is just as vivid as the reality those of the Enlightenment associated with sensory perception. His claims of poetic "visions," however, seemed suspect to those of Enlightenment inclination who preferred to think in terms of logic. The cool reception his poetry received by critics of his day is testament to this suspicion. "Negative Capability," as Keats termed it in a letter to his brothers George and Tom, or the ability of being in "uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason," is perhaps the key to acceptance of his poetic thought. In Keats we do not generally find a cautious analysis of a proposition. Rather, he is quick to enter into ideas, exploring them by adopting and believing in them. In other words, although he is dialectical and speculative, Keats is, at the same 5 time, quick to commit himself to an idea. Thus, his speculations are only so in light of the fact that commitments are not final, dialectical only in the sense that they can be opposed. Enlightenment thought, on the other hand, demands factual answers arrived at through observation and analysis, whether the questions be philosophical or scientific. Critical Question When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. "Ode On a Grecian Urn" (46-50) Keats often leaves the reader of his poetry with many questions. David G. Reide, in Oracles and Hierophants: Constructions of Romantic Authority, agrees saying, "Many of Keats's best known poems resist closure, insist on open- endedness of experience and on their own indeterminacy" (253). This ambiguity is attributable, in part, to a struggle in his own mind between critical judgment, an idea associated with Enlightenment thought, and imagination, generally associated with Romantic thought. After all, though Keats lends his loyalty to Romanticism, he was, for more than four years, a surgeon's apprentice and avid 6 attender of scientific lectures, and must have developed to a great extent the scientific and philosophical skills he later rejects in his poetry. Indeed, seemingly unanswerable philosophical questions related directly to the role of poetry in society and on the psyche pervade his work: Should poetry offer a dreamy escape from the reality associated with everyday happenings and be made up of a copious amount of delightful sensation? Or is poetry an instrument of social consciousness by which the poet should dwell on the truth of human suffering and the complexity of human experience, diversity and conflict? Is it enough to reflect the truth of human sensation and experience or should poetry be humankind's and society's greatest achievement?What is true, beautiful, real? These are just a few of the questions Keats raises in and through his poetry. They are important questions because they show Keats's struggle with a changing society; a society wrestling with the opposing paradigms represented by Enlightenment and Romantic philosophies.
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