John Keats Context
● Born in London
● 2nd generation romantic poet
● Keats Father died when Keats was 8 and his mother remarried 2 months later
● Keats father worked as a hostler (horses) - Proletariat
● Keats mothers remarriage was unhappy so Keats and his 4 siblings were sent
to live with their grandmother
● Keats mother died when he was 14 and he became the head of the
household caring for his younger siblings
● Educated in Enfield and found a love for poetry and prose
● He was apprenticed to an apothecary/surgeon he became a student at a
hospital and became a junior house surgeon and qualified as an apothecary
● His grandmother died at the end of 1815 and in 1816 he dropped medicine for
poetry
● Travelled far for a man of the time visiting America, Oxford and the Isle of
White
● In 1818 he fell in love with 18 year old Fanny Browne but he was too poor to
pronounce marriage and their relationship couldn’t last due to his
development of TB
● On his tombstone it was written “Here lies one whose name was writ in the
water”
● Influenced by classical / renaissance literature during his school years -
Wordsworth's naturalism appeal and Hunt’s antiauthoritarian poems
● Believed one of the principle roles of a poet was to share their own insight into
reality / ideas
● Proto-absurdist - Believed that one should not impose rigid singular meanings
onto the world and believed in the dual nature of reality that should be
embraced
● Anti-Christian - Rejected the idea of salvation and embraced paganism
believing that ancient myths contained important truths about reality
● Believed in the immortality of the soul
● Born in politically turbulent times - French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars and
the Beginning of the Regency era (Large inequality between upper and lower
classes)
● Impacted by the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 (suppression of the working
classes)
● Keats believed that sensory experience was the vehicle through which one
perceived truth and beauty
● Born in London
● 2nd generation romantic poet
● Keats Father died when Keats was 8 and his mother remarried 2 months later
● Keats father worked as a hostler (horses) - Proletariat
● Keats mothers remarriage was unhappy so Keats and his 4 siblings were sent
to live with their grandmother
● Keats mother died when he was 14 and he became the head of the
household caring for his younger siblings
● Educated in Enfield and found a love for poetry and prose
● He was apprenticed to an apothecary/surgeon he became a student at a
hospital and became a junior house surgeon and qualified as an apothecary
● His grandmother died at the end of 1815 and in 1816 he dropped medicine for
poetry
● Travelled far for a man of the time visiting America, Oxford and the Isle of
White
● In 1818 he fell in love with 18 year old Fanny Browne but he was too poor to
pronounce marriage and their relationship couldn’t last due to his
development of TB
● On his tombstone it was written “Here lies one whose name was writ in the
water”
● Influenced by classical / renaissance literature during his school years -
Wordsworth's naturalism appeal and Hunt’s antiauthoritarian poems
● Believed one of the principle roles of a poet was to share their own insight into
reality / ideas
● Proto-absurdist - Believed that one should not impose rigid singular meanings
onto the world and believed in the dual nature of reality that should be
embraced
● Anti-Christian - Rejected the idea of salvation and embraced paganism
believing that ancient myths contained important truths about reality
● Believed in the immortality of the soul
● Born in politically turbulent times - French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars and
the Beginning of the Regency era (Large inequality between upper and lower
classes)
● Impacted by the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 (suppression of the working
classes)
● Keats believed that sensory experience was the vehicle through which one
perceived truth and beauty
