28 December 2018
John Keats
Born October 31, 1795 John Keats was born to Thomas and Frances Jennings was one of four children. Growing up in a particularly poor family his parents could not afford the higher class schools like eton or harrow so in 1803 his parents send him off to attend john clarkes school where he meets the headmaster’s son, Charles Cowden Clarke who becomes a good friend of keats. At the age of 13 Clarke introduces Keats to Renaissance literature which helps his writing career take off. He soon begins to focus greatly on reading and writing and wins his first academic award in 1809.
Childhood was difficult for Keats his father dies of a skull fracture in 1804 when he is only 9 years old and his mother shortly follows in 1810 of tuberculosis when he is 15. Shortly after the passing of his mother Keats leaves John Clarkes schools and goes to become an apprentice of Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary. After completing his surgical apprenticeship Keats registers as a medical student at Guy’s Hospital which is now recognized as king’s college. There he takes a six month long course of study required for him to become a licensed surgeon and apothecary. In the meantime he acquires money from his deceased mothers legacy £8000 and £800 willed by his grandfather John Jennings.
Troubled by all the death surrounding him keats turned to writing. He comes into contact with his brother george and he introduces keats to his friends Caroline and Anne Matthew and their cousin who aspired to be a writer, George Felton Mathew. There becomes a very brief friendship between keats and George Felton Mathew which is a stimulant to some of his writing. As for the sisters, Keats keeps a close literary friendship with them. In 1815, keats writes his longest poem yet. Addressed to George Felton Mathew, the poem modeled on the Elizabethan verse epistle suggests how poets work in a “brotherhood of genius” representing political figures fighting for “the cause of freedom”.
By 1816, keats had been studying at guy’s hospital and had caught on and learned quicker than anyone. He does so well and gets the title of “dresser” incredibly quick. Although he had done so well he became restless at poetry. In 1815 he became interested in a sort of new modern poetry of Wordsworth of which he had obtained as he had entered Guy’s its naturalism and direct appeal to the secular imagination so different from Spenser’s romance. There was a huge influence by Hunt, whose homey poetic diction with its colloquial informality, seemed daring to the twenty-year-old Keats, who would have associated Hunt’s 1816 poems in The Examiner with a politically anti authoritarian movement of which modern poetry was a part. By this time medical knowledge was “something of the past” as his life continued to flood with writing poetry.
On July 25 1816 keats took and passed the examination allowing him to practice surgery. After the completion of this he leaves london to relax at a seaside resort in margate, he was in desperation to get out of the lifelessness of borough. This getaway brings out the struggle he had went through to become a poet in the first place. He greatly expresses this through his writing Epistle to My Brother George. After returning to London in late September keats rooms at 9 deans street and began his work as a dresser once again until he could formally take to the job of a surgeon on his twenty-first birthday in October. December 1st of that year keats tries to convince himself to give up medicine entirely and focus himself completely on poetry. Many believed this had to do with the fact that keats was scared that he may not be good enough for the job of a surgeon and didn’t want to bring grief upon someone like he had once suffered through.
On March 3 1817 Keats’s first volume was published with a dedication sonnet to Leigh Hunt. Hunt placed Keats as an emerging new poet of a second wave, though his praise of Keats’s actual poetry was rather reserved. Even with this “praise” the volume was a complete disaster and very few copies were sold. George keats, john keats’ brother, even received a letter stating, “We regret that your brother ever requested us to publish his book… By far the greater number of persons who have purchased it from us have found fault with it in such plain terms, that we have in many cases offered to take the book back rather than be annoyed with the ridicule which has, time after time, been showered upon it.” March 1 Hunt invited keats home to celebrate the publication.
During the winter of 1817 and 1818, Keats went back to using Shakespeare and to Wordsworth with a different perspective and a new aesthetic judgment.he began to attend William Hazlitt’s lectures on poetry at the Surrey Institution. In the midst of his own poetry developments he tended to sort of go against Hazlitt’s ideas of poetry. Towards the end of January 1818 he wrote his first Shakespearean sonnet, “When I have fears that I may cease to be”. Written with great fluency this poem shows the poetic aspect of his life. Keats shows he is scared of dying young in the very beginning of the poem and goes to say that he also fears that he will not fulfill himself as a writer lines and finally that he will lose his beloved. Keats resolves his fears by asserting the unimportance of love and fame in the concluding two and a half lines of this sonnet.
Keats fell sick with a sore throat that would stay with him for months after. This was not connected to the tuberculosis he would later acquire. Though he was always aware of the consumption, which is what tuberculosis was called back then, that seemed to curse his family, there seemed to be no reason to believe that sore throats were dangerous or that he would soon reach the end of his poetic career. Early in august, Keats returned home to Hampstead finding his brother Tom incredibly sick with tuberculosis. In June, George, immigrated to America to try his luck as a farmer after many, many incidents he finally made something of himself as a miller in Louisville, Kentucky in the 1830’s; Keats was by himself with Tom until his death on December 1. During the autumn of 1818 Keats found himself writing his best work yet, a poem even the people who wanted him to fail as a poet saw as an obdurate grand achievement, Hyperion. In November 1820, accompanied by Joseph Severn, Keats went to Rome.In his last weeks he suffered terribly and hoped for the peace of death. He was in too much pain to look at letters, especially from Fanny Brawne, believing that frustrated love contributed to his ill health. He asked Severn to bury her letters with him.
On February 23 1821, Keats died in Severn’s arms. His last words were to comfort Severn: “Severn—lift me up—I am dying—I shall die easy—don’t be frightened—be firm, and thank God it has come!” ()Buried in the protestant cemetery, he made a request stating his headstone should bear no name just this, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” Severn granted his wish.
Works cited
“John Keats.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keats.
Academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu, academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/fear.html.
2019-1-9-1547004377