Keats, professional medicine, and the two Hyperions.

Abstract

As a licensed apothecary and a "Cockney" poet, John Keats was doubly aware of his marginalized status as a member of the professional class. In his poems "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion," Keats examines the relationship between the professions of medicine and poetry writing, attempting to determine the ideal "healer" of the ills of humankind. In the process of writing and reworking these poems, Keats found--in the figure of the apothecary--a way of validating, even embracing his position as the "Cockney poet." Keats's experiences as a "lower" type of medical worker enables him to revise the figuration of the poet, from an all-powerful, world-healing Apollo in "Hyperion" to an "apprentice" poet-speaker in "The Fall," a character whose visit to Moneta's vale teaches him to serve humanity in less wide-sweeping but more material ways.