246 E n g l i s h S t u d i e s i n C a n a d a "slightly altered form" as "T h e Tyger' as Artefact" in Blake Studies, 2, 1 (1969), 5-19, and Chapter 10, "Conclusion: Toward a Theory of Creativity" (pp. 329-55) was printed "in altered form in The Personalist" (no date given). Professor Stevenson's Divine Analogy is an ambitious treatment of a familiar theme, familiar at least so far as Blake is concerned; as a dissertation it seems responsible and earnest, but it does not appear to add much to the sum of knowledge in either fact or theory. It is a rare dissertation which warrants republication in book form, as well as in microform by University Microfilms. g .e. bentley, jr . / University of Toronto Jacob Wigod, The Darkening Chamber: The Growth of Tragic Consciousness in Keats, Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Romantic Reassessment, No. 22 (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg 1972). iii, 231 Twenty years ago a conscientious reviewer would have found much to praise in Professor Jacob Wigod's The Darkening Chamber: The Growth of Tragic Consciousness in Keats. For the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate student Professor Wigod's book remains even today a sound, reliable, succinct, and unpedantic basic introduction to the poet John Keats. Two decades ago, however, Professor Wigod's book would have been a great deal more than that; for one thing, it would have provided a much-needed corrective to the brilliant but relentlessly Procrustean interpretation of Keats presented by Earl Wasserman in The Finer Tone (Baltimore 1953). In the words of Professor Wigod's preface, his book traces "the natural course of Keats's growth as a poet, the natural interaction of his life, thought, and poetry" through a study of "the important poems in chronological order" supplemented with references "to letters written during the same period as the poem (or poems) under discussion" (p. ii). The reading of Keats that finally emerges is natural and unforced and generally convincing. It would have been an admirable antidote to Wasserman in 1955. But Professor Wigod's book did not appear in 1955; it was published in 1972. Hence it is startling, to say the least, to discover that Professor Wigod does not refer in his notes to any book or article published since 1954! During the twenty years or so that have (presumably) elapsed since Professor Wigod finished his book and laid it aside, some of the most brilliant work ever done on Keats has been written and published. David Perkins's highly influential The Quest for Permanence (in part concerned with Keats) was published by Harvard Univer sity Press in 1959. A few years later Aileen Ward's workmanlike biography John Keats: The Making of a Poet (New York 1963) appeared, only to be 247 R e v i e w s eclipsed by Walter Jackson Bate's monumental treatment in John Keats (Cambridge 1964), which quickly established itself as the standard life of Keats. Strongly challenged by Robert Gittings's excellent John Keats (London 1968), Bate's superlative life still remains probably the most useful single work of scholarship on Keats, though for certain limited purposes Douglas Bush's fine short critical biography, John Keats: His Life and Writings (New York 1966), is equally satisfactory. In 1973, shortly after the appearance of Professor Wigod's treatment of Keats, Stuart Sperry's Keats the Poet (Princeton 1973) appeared and quickly won a place alongside the other works mentioned. In comparison with Perkins's seminal work (with its treatment of the poet's loss of confidence in the visionary imagination and his apparent shift towards an affirmation of process), Bate's superb biography (with its discussion of negative capability), and Sperry's sane overview (with its theme of Keatsian irony: "a state of perpetual indeterminacy"), Professor Wigod's study of Keats can only be described as anti-climactic. His book is one of a number of works (paperbound and printed from type script by offset) in an ambitious series entitled "Romantic Reassessment" within the larger series "Salzburg Studies in English Literature." If this...