Jack Siler
In this incisive volume Siler traces the uneasy relationship between the content of Keats' poems and social history. In the process, he discovers that the early poems are linked with the mission statement of the radical journal Annals of the Fine Arts, whilst the poems after Endymion reveal a poet more concerned with the nature of poetic representation--its why and wherefore.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One: Poetic Language and Political Engagement
Chapter Two: The Early Poems and "Endymion"
Chapter Three: The Odes
Conclusion: "The Fall of Hyperion"
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A major aim of this study is to make Peter Burger´s way of thinking accessible in English by advancing the existing critical discourse that accompanies the poetry of Keats. Applying Burger´s aesthetic categories in an interpretation of the poetry permits the claim that Keats is one poet who drives the unique role of poetry to the point of seeing it as an end in itself, but also came to understand the need to break down the distance between poetry and society, art and politics.
