John Keats Essay, Research Paper

He started at the pacific. All his men/looked at each other with a wild

surmise–/silent, upon a peak in Darien?; ?Beauty is truth, truth Beauty,

–that is all/ ye know on earth, and all ye need to know?; The author of these

and many other lines fixed permanently in the shared consciousness of those who

speak English, John Keats was an extremely unlikely candidate for poetic

immortality. Born into a working-class family two centuries ago. Orphaned in

childhood, his work was subjected to vicious attacks by established literary

critics, dead in his mid-twenties from tuberculosis, he overcame all obstacles,

not only to write some of the finest poems in the language, but also to form, in

the minds of millions of people. John Keats was born in London on October 31,

1795. The first child of Thomas Keats he was a livery-stable keeper. And his

wife Frances (Jennings) Keats was a housewife. Three more sons were born one of

whom died in infancy. A daughter was born to the couple before Thomas?s death

in April 1804 from a horse accident. With four very young children to care for.

Frances married a man named William Rawlings in 1805. The marriage was not

successful and when the couple separated in the following year she and her four

children went to live with her mother. John Keats received his earliest

education at a private school in Enfield run buy the Reverend John Clarke. Among

his classmates was the headmaster?s son, Charles Cowden clarke. Who would be

his lifelong friend. Keats?s mother died of tuberculosis in February 1810, and

in 1811 he was taken out of school and apprenticed to Thomas Hammond, a surgeon

at Edmonton hospital. It was during this time that he began to read poetry

seriously and to write it himself. His apprenticeship ended by mutual consent in

1815, and Keats went to London to study medicine at the joint school of St.

Thomas?s and Guy?s Hospitals. In July 1816, he passed his examination as an

apothecary, and worked until April of the next year as a medical practitioner.

Keats?s first volume entitled simply Poems was published in March 1817 and

failed to attract much notice beyond a favorable review from Leigh Hunt. During

that time Keats met Fanny Brawne, a young woman who throughout what appears to

have been for him at least. Rather tormented relationship was to be the great

love of his brief life and to whom he became engaged some time around the end of

the year. By December 1818 when his brother Tom died of tuberculosis. On

February 3, 1820 Keats had a coughing fit that led him to hemorrhage some dark

arterial blood. With his medical training he recognized the gravity of the

situation and he told his friend Charles Armitage Brown, ?That drop of blood

is my death-warrant; I must die.? After another relapse in June 1820 Keats

determined to go to Italy, from whose warmer and drier climate he hoped to find

some relief of his suffering. On September 18, he sailed for Naples with a close

friend the artist Joseph Severn. Keats never saw England or fanny again. The two

men took lodgings in Rome, where severn loyally cared for Keats, who retained

his gentle and uncomplaining nature until his death on February 23, 1821. He was

not quite four months past his twenty-fifth birthday. In addition to his poetry

Keats is the author of some of the most interesting letters by any literary

figure. In their aesthetic theorizing, their insights into nature of the

creative process and their constant display of a lovable and admirable

personality, his letters not only complement his poetry but shows an

intellectual grasp and penetration that is not always evident in the poems

themselves. The life of Keats to some degree mythology by biographers and other

enthusiasts has done as much as anything to fashion the popular image of the

poet as a doomed and tortured soul. Scorned by an uncaring and pouring out his

heart in spasms of unrequited love. And his work has likewise done much to shape

the common view of poetry as sensuous images expressed in rhapsodic language

that, to quote his own lines on the nightingale?s song,?oft-times hath/

charmed magic casements, opening on the foam/ Of perilous seas, in faery lands

forlorn.? The best of his poems, of course, transcend such stereotypes.

Gorgeous as their music may be, they do not traffic in pretty escapist

fantasies, but instead confront some of life?s most complex problems and

situations, with a constant awareness of irreducible sadness that lies at the

heart of human experience. My opinion I learned more of john Keats that I ever

knew about him. I learned what he went threw just to become a poet and what

hardships he went threw just to get there. And all of the sacrifices he made

just to become known as one of the best British writers that anyone has ever

lived so I end by saying that john keats in my opinion is one of the best

poet?s that I have read so far. And I give him credit for all of the hard work

and inspiration that he has put into peoples lives all over the world and if

they have not read a peace of work by john then you should go out and read some.