John Keats and the Ideas of the Enlightenment

Porscha Fermanis

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2009

John Keats and the Ideas of the Enlightenment

Porscha Fermanis

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748637812

Overview
Contents

About this book

John Keats is generally considered to be the least intellectually sophisticated of all the major Romantic poets, but he was a more serious thinker than either his contemporaries or later scholars have acknowledged. This book provides a major reassessment of Keats's intellectual life by considering his engagement with a formidable body of eighteenth-century thought from the work of Voltaire, Robertson, and Gibbon to Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith.

The book re-examines some of Keats's most important poems, including The Eve of St Agnes, Hyperion, Lamia, and Ode to Psyche, in the light of a range of Enlightenment ideas and contexts from literary history and cultural progress to anthropology, political economy, and moral philosophy. By demonstrating that the language and ideas of the Enlightenment played a key role in establishing his poetic agenda, Keats's poetry is shown to be less the expression of an intuitive young genius than the product of the cultural and intellectual contexts of his time.

Key Features

The first book-length consideration of the relationship between Keats and the ideas of theEnlightenment
New and distinctive argument about Keats reassessing his intellectual life and contexts
Contributes to our understanding of the relationship between the Romantic period and the eighteenth century/Enlightenment, currently one of the most important debates in literary scholarship
Wide appeal to scholars, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates of eighteenth-century and Romantic period literature, history and philosophy; cultural and intellectual historians; historians of ideas

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Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Introduction: Keats, Enlightenment and Romanticism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1 Ancients and Moderns: Literary History and the ‘Grand March of Intellect’ in Keats’s Letters and the 1817 Poems Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
Chapter 2 Civil Society: Sentimental History and Enlightenment Socialisation in Endymion and The Eve of St. Agnes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
Chapter 3 The Science of Man: Anthropological Speculation and Stadial Theory in Hyperion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
Chapter 4 Political Economy: Commerce, Civic Tradition and the Luxury Debate in Isabella and Lamia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
Chapter 5 Moral Philosophy: Sympathetic Identification, Utility and the Natural History of Religion in The Fall of Hyperion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
Afterword: Ode to Psyche and Ode on a Grecian Urn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 232
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: September 23, 2009
ISBN: 9780748637812