Reading Response #3

In Mark Sandy’s Dream Lovers and Tragic Romance: Negative Fictions in Keats Lamia, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Isabella. He criticizes John Keats’s works and their lack of consistency in similar beliefs. He talks about how in some poems or stories Keats portrays his characters to live in a very dream filled state and in others a very realistic mode. He shows how Keats contradicts himself in multiple different lines throughout his poems. Sandy states how he believes Keats to confuse fiction with fact. He refers to Keats’s works as ineffective and invalid. “…which embraces tragedy through a series of negating images” (PG 2, Sandy) Sandy bashes Keats’s poems and continually reminds that Keats’s works are based in an unreal setting. Almost like a getaway where he would hide from his reality. He claims Keats has no real sense of ideal and real. Between his poem Lamia and Isabella Keats shows two different beliefs. In Lamia he shows his religious side, his connection to God and Heaven. In Isabella he writes of raw betrayal and insanity. He talks of ghosts and immortality. In Lamia, Sandy writes he talks about God and sensibility; to Sandy Keats needs to have a more consistent topic of writing. In Keats’s The Eve of St Agnes Keats writes of love and fairies, which have no relevance to God. Sandy contemplates Keats’s having a mental illness to explain his lack of consistent writing. Sandy also brings up how he feels Keats does not use nature in the correct way a romantic poet should. He feels he leaves to much nature out in Isabella. He writes that the poems lack passion and quality. He hints at the quantity being the main focus and the writing to be fluffy. He mocks Isabella, claiming Isabella and Madeline from Eve of St. Agnes to be nearly one in the same. In La Belle Dame Sans Merci Sandy says “Despite the knights claim ‘I awoke and found me here’, Keats ballad never distinguishes clearly between waking and dreaming…” (PG 4, Sandy) HE says this proves Keats’s inability to write and complete a poem well.

When I read, The Eve of St. Agnes, I felt nature was used immensely and with great detail. Keats’s poems to me all share the similar connection of nature and how it affects the subjects in his poems.  I believe nature and love and tragedy to be all three common themes with Keats’s works. His understanding of how we are all connected to nature I found to be greatly enjoyable. His ability to describe a setting without many words gives a better understanding of the theme or point he is trying to make. I think justice is also a theme with Keats. In Isabella the brothers in the end are banished in a sense because of their crime. Keats shows a sense of justice through depicting that, the unfairness shown to Isabella is somehow made a little better with her brothers having to suffer. Throughout all of Keats’s poems Isabella is by far the one I understand the most. Her ability to find her true love even when death has separated them is astonishing. Keats’s way of expressing that is so concise and direct. Her suffering is written out perfectly to the point where you feel her pain and you begin to feel like crying yourself. You’re throat begins to tighten and your eyes start to burn. When she finds Lorenzo and starts to unbury him you don’t see her crazy you feel her urgency to be reunited with him. When she cuts off his head it doesn’t feel wrong you feel like you understand why she needs that piece of him. To read a story that allows you to really feel what the character feels isn’t something you usually get. To call Keats’s works invalid is truly insulting. Justice, love, tragedy, and nature are four themes that prove themselves through Keats’s works over and over again. Those themes surface even with completely different story lines and settings. Keats is an excellent romantic poet who deserves the credit he has been given. I have never read anything that has affected me like Keats’s works have. In conclusion Keats’s three poems that Sandy criticizes are all very different in setting and background, but the themes are common and one in the same.