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John Keats Research Paper

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John Keats was a significant English Romantic poet, who explores the interplay of imagination and the human experience in his poetry. During the late 18th century and early 19th century, the idea of Romanticism established as a response to the Enlightenment period. The term ‘romantic’ often evokes images of ‘love’, ‘passion’ and ‘sentimentality’, however Romantic poets, such as John Keats explored a much deeper idea and aims to understand life. They were driven and inspired by the longing for nature, desire for liberty and the importance of individuality. Their idea counters the Enlightenments as Romantics urged people to overlook conventions and societal norms and follow their ideals instead. John Keats’s poems; “Bright Star”, “Ode to a Nightingale” …show more content…

Reality and imagination is in debate as Keats questions what art without life is. The carvings on the ancient urn, exhibits a story, suggested by the questions Keats asked; “What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?” In Keats imagination, these people and world are immortal and frozen in time. The characters in the story “never canst thou kiss” but his lover’s beauty “cannot fade” because they are unaffected by time. This is an intriguing paradox for the characters: they are free from the prison of time and aging but at the same time they are frozen in time. They may not need to confront death and the unchanging world, but neither will they be able to have the human experience. The lovers will never be able to experience the kiss. The two domains of the transient reality and the permanent idea. Keats is balanced between the two facets as life recompenses for the incompleteness of art and art recompense for the transience of life. Keats concludes the poem with the chiasmus, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” saying that art educates humans. Through his “beauty”, he discovered that neither the beauty of life nor the beauty of the art can console for the distress of

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