Poetry of Sensation or of Thought?

Abstract

Another paper on Keats may be pardoned if by a readjustment of the familiar materials, it makes possible a new interpretation of the poet's mind and work. The present essay ventures to suggest that the literary problem admitted and analyzed by Keats in Sleep and Poetry contains a clue for the study of his verse, which, although recognized in some of its implications by Keats's critics, has not hitherto been understood in its full significance. The following argument attempts to prove that by April, 1819, the poet, having settled, at least for a period, a very difficult question dating back to the autumn of 1816, was so released from his mental bondage that his creative genius, long restrained, broke forth into that glorious series of poems which included the great Odes and Lamia.