John Keats was an English Romantic poet born in 1795 in London. He had a difficult childhood, losing both his parents to tuberculosis by age 15 and caring for his brother Thomas who also died of tuberculosis in 1818. Despite working as a surgeon, Keats dedicated himself to poetry and published his first collection in 1817. His most productive period was 1819 when he wrote his famous odes. Keats was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1820 and died later that year at age 25. He emphasized beauty, the senses, and the concept of "negative capability" in his poetry.

1. Prepared By:
Taqdees Hira

2.  Keats born on 1795 in London.
 His father died in 1804, and mother died in 1810 due to
tuberculosis.
 His brother Thomas died in 1818 due to tuberculosis. Keats
was the one who looked after his brother. During that
period he started writing Hyperion.
 Keats became a junior House surgeon before becoming a
poet. He worked in Guy Hospital, London.
 His first poem published in 1816.
 His first collection of poem was published in 1817.
 He proposed Fenny Brawn in 1819.
 Most productive year of his life was 1819 when he wrote
his most famous odes and also wrote some part of
Hyperion.
 He was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1820.
 Died in 1820 at the young age of 26.

3. “Here lies one
whose name was
writ in water.”

4.  “Wordsworth spiritualizes nature, Shelly
intellectualizes nature, Keats is content to express
nature through senses.” Compton Rickett
 “He is thus completely and frankly sensuous in his
attitude towards nature.” Stopford A. Brooke
 “Keats was so preoccupied with beauty, that he
turned a blind eye to the actualities of life around
him.” Sidney Colvin
 “The poetry of earth is ceasing never, infact in
warmth increasing ever.” Keats
 “A poet’s mission is to be a humanist and a
physician to all men.” Keats
 “Wordsworth and Shelley both had theories, but
Keats has none.” T.S.Eliot
 “With a great poet, the sense of Beauty overcomes
every other consideration.” Keats

5.  Negative capability is the capacity of the
writer to identify himself with the thing he is
writing about, or the ability of the writer to
subtract his own identity for the identity of
the surroundings around him.
 Keats himself said about this: “If a
sparrow come before my window, I
take part in its existence and pick
about the gravel.”

6.  For Keats, the necessary pre-condition of
poetry is the submission to things as they
are, without trying to intellectualize them
into something else. Keats find this quality at
its fullest in Shakespeare. Negative capability
consists of the following aspects:
1. Intensity in contemplating the world
2. Process of artistic creation

7.  Negative capability involves a fusion of oneness. In
the heat of imagination, every identity is mingled,
every thought, feeling and emotion is mixed and all
uncertainties, doubts and mysteries become
elements of beauty and no longer subject to logical,
factual and analytical examination.
 In one of Keats letters to Reynolds, he referred to
human mind as a mansion with several chambers,
only two of which are visible to him.
1. Infant or thoughtless chamber
2. Chamber of maiden thoughts (
here we can see misery, pain, sickness, strife, heart
break in human world)

8.  Melody
 Sensual imagery
 Dignity
 No spiritual significance in Nature
 No moral meaning in Nature
 All 5 senses ( eye, ear, taste, touch, smell)
 Synesthesia: “Figurative language that
includes a mixing of senses.”