John Keats
1795–1821
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the
main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron
and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only
four years before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25.
Although his poems were not generally well received by
critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the
end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English
poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers.
The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery,
most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of romantic poets, as they
aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through an emphasis on natural imagery.
Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analyzed in
English literature. Some of the most acclaimed works of Keats are "Ode to
a Nightingale", "Sleep and Poetry", and the famous sonnet
"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".
Keats published three books of poetry in his lifetime but
was dismissed as a middle-class interloper by most critics. He had no
advantages of birth, wealth or education; he lost his parents in childhood,
watched one brother die of tuberculosis and the other emigrate to America.
Poverty kept him from marrying the woman he loved. And he achieved lasting fame
only after his early death in 1821. Yet grief and hardship never destroyed his
passionate commitment to poetry.
References: www.englishhistory.net/keats
, www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats
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