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Keats’s Awareness of Death in Life
Victoria J. Chance, Master’s Candidate, English

Death imagery permeates the poetry of John Keats and reveals that he had a heightened awareness of the fragility of life. This is not a melancholy awareness, because Keats was, above all else, a realist. He knew that death was part of life. This would have heightened his sensitivity not only to the idea of death, but also the reality in the normal, everyday world. Reading his poetry with the thought about the underlying presence of death and loss in the poet’s mind reveals another dimension to his artistry.

The lovely "To Autumn" quietly accepts death as inevitable, even as it affirms our appreciation of the fall season. "Sleep and Poetry" includes this same inevitability in a work that only incidentally includes the poet's thoughts about death, while Keats is working out his own idea of a poetic aesthetic. "Isabella" deals with death in a Gothically comic way, but still emphasizes that death is ever-present and can strike at any time. "The Eve of St. Agnes" illustrates that death can come to people of any age. Keats's artistry in portraying the presence of death in the midst of life is not only an attempt to be realistic, but also is an attempt to familiarize his readers with the idea that life is short and that there is no time to waste on extraneous things.