John Keats Essay

“John Keat’s presents abstract ideas in a style that is clear and direct”

In this essay I will give my honest opinion on the above statement. I will back up my views with help from my studies of John Keat’s poems for example ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’, ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and ‘To Autumn’.

Keat’s poetry focuses on imagery such in the subjects of nature, love, travels/journeys, discovery and science. He tends to take the longer route to explaining his points and ideas of his poems. For that reason, I disagree with the above statement because I found it quite difficult to understand what each of his poems were about until it was explained to me or I carried out some research which would explain for my disagreement of it being “clear and direct”.

In the poem ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ Keat’s explains how his reading on Chapman’s Homer played a huge part in his inspiration to write. But at first reading it is very difficult to figure out what he is writing about. Especially since at first I didn’t know what Chapman’s Homer was.

 “Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen” 

At first glance of the above quote you would be spectical that the opening of the poem indicates that he will write about some sort of travels. But as you read on he begins to bring in imagery of Space and discovery and because I did not know what Chapman’s Homer was it was very unclear to me what the poem itself was about.

‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ is yet another example of Keat’s presentation of abstract ideas in his poetry but, although it is more clear in this poem it (in my opinion) is not direct. This poem is an iconic piece from the romantic period. It is about a knight who meets a woman, and as he sleeps injured or sick, he dreams of all the men who have fallen for this lady before him and have come under her supernatural spell. These men are trapped and scream for him to escape. But, although I now know what the poem was about and had little difficulty with the language used, the story being told was not very direct. I believe that the beginning of the poem was easy to understand but as he began to write about the dream the knight was having, he did not indicate it was a dream very clearly and so it was hard to understand what the entire poem was about as a whole.