The Masks of Keats: The Endeavour of a PoetOxford University Press, 2000 - 244 pages This book surveys the poetic endeavour of John Keats and urges that his true poetry is uniquely constituted by being uttered through three artificial masks, rather than through the natural voice of his quotidian self. The first mask is formed by the attitudes and reality that ensue from aconscious commitment to the identity of poet as such. The second, called here the Mask of Camelot, takes shape from Keats's acceptance and compelling use of the vogue for medieval imaginings that was sweeping across Europe in his time. The third, the Mask of Hellas, eventuated from Keats'senthusiastic immersion in the rising tide of Romantic Hellenism. Keats's great achievement, the book argues, can only be ascertained by means of a resuscitation of the defunct critical category of 'genius', as that informs his use of the masks. To validate this category, the volume is concernedthroughout with the necessity of discriminating the truly poetic from the meretricious in Keats's endeavour. The Masks of Keats thus constitutes a criticism of and a rebuke to the deconstructive approach, which must treat all texts as equal and must entirely forego the conception of quality. |
Table des matières
The Two Masks I | 1 |
The Mask of Camelot | 26 |
Life Mask and Death Mask | 59 |
Aspects of the Mask of Hellas | 77 |
The Narrative Line | 119 |
The Churning of Genius | 164 |
The Great Achievement | 179 |
| 229 | |
Expressions et termes fréquents
achievement actual adieu Agnes Apollo Apollonius ardour Autumn awareness beauty Belle Dame Bertha Byron castle Coleridge commitment compression criticism death dialexis dramatic dream dyingness Elgin Marbles endeavour Endymion essentia Eve of St existence eyes fact Fall of Hyperion Fanny Brawne feel Gothic Grecian Urn happy Haydon Hellenic human Ibid insistent intense Isabella John Keats Keats Circle Keats's Keats's genius Keatsian Lamia Letters Lycius Mask of Camelot Mask of Hellas McFarland medieval imagining Milton narrative line nature never night Nightingale Ode on Indolence Ode on Melancholy Ode to Psyche Otho pain palpable passage passion perhaps philosophical poem's poet poet's poetic Porphyro Psyche reality realm reference Robert Gittings Romantic Romanticism Saturn sexual Sleep and Poetry sonnet speak Spenser Sperry stanza Stood Tip-toe sweet thee thing thou tion truth University Press utterance Vendler verse vision wonder word Wordsworth writing wrote