Response to "John Keats" By Paul Elmer More

                        

(Pictured above: Left-Isabella's brothers killing Lorenzo  Right: Romeo & Juliet dead)

Paul Elmer More, an American critic, wrote an article titled "John Keats." Although the article is plainly entitled, More's ideas and opinions come alive as he reflects on Keats's collection of writings. More distinguishes himself as a "traditional conservative," who does not support aesthetic works of literature. He finds the idea of putting beauty and death together sickening in poems comparable to the ones written by Keats. Pieces of Keats's collection favors the beautiful aspects of life mixed with thoughts of death. After examining Keats's work, More expresses his disgust and hatred towards Romanticism. More dislikes Keats's techniques because of the simple vocabulary and use of borrowed materials from other poets. In the article More wrote, "To find in the Glossary a careful tabulation of the sources from which Keats drew his extraordinary vocabulary" (More 1). With sarcasm, More trashes Keats's use of terms by saying he extracted his words from a mere glossary with cautious calculations of use. Obviously, More is far from a fan of Keats and his work. More finds nothing promising about the methods used in Keats's wording of literature. Keats needs to expand the lexicon used in all of his poems for a wider variety of people to enjoy. Not everyone likes Keats’s limited use of words, especially More. More loathes Keats’s work with a burning passion, because Keats borrows materials from other poets. Although Keats borrowing materials bothers More minimally, More argues that Keats uses other poets’ work in an unoriginal manner. The quote, “To see how constantly he borrowed from Shakespeare and Milton and the writers that lie between, and how deliberately he sought to echo ‘that large utterance of the early gods,’” (More 1) further proves Keats’s plagiarism. In many of Keats’s poems, he stole the ideas of other famous poets and skillfully strung the themes together in his own version. He may have added a few new words here and there, but the presence of the real poet behind the ideas is still there. Keats may have thought he could fool people with new versions of world renowned poems, but he failed in his many attempts. More compares what Keats did to Wordsworth, who also borrowed from other poets. Wordsworth introduced the same ideas and themes in a new way, while Keats tried to cleverly disguise his borrowed materials. More proves Keats as an unoriginal poet with this quote, “But if occasionally these unlicensed expressions add to the magic of his style, more often they are merely annoying blemishes” (More 2). Further providing evidence of Keats ripping off the work of other poets, More bashes about how Keats adds his own take to poems, but finds the new additions frustrating and pointless. Keats should leave previous poems alone and come up with his own ideas. Overall, More discovers Keats’s work as repulsive and demeaning to literature.

I think More’s perspective on Keats’s works identifies all of the flaws with great accuracy. More talks about how Keats unoriginality effected the quality of his work. I agree, Keats’s poem, “Isabella,” seems awfully similar to other poems and plays that existed before it. The poem reminds me of the play Romeo & Juliet , by William Shakespeare, because related themes exist between the two. Romeo & Juliet contains themes of money, power, love, and death, while “Isabella” also contains the same themes only with a different plot. Money and power is a huge theme in both works of literature, without those two major themes, love and death would have a different route. In Romeo & Juliet, the two families hated each other because of power and money, they battled to be number one. If the families did not battle it out, then Romeo and Juliet could have loved each other without secrecy. When people found out about their love, death lingered to take their lives. The families regretted the hate they had for each other and mourned the two lovers’ deaths. A similar plot exists in “Isabella,” Isabella’s brothers thrived for power and money. All the brothers wanted was to marry off their sister to a wealthy man, this way the brothers will enable themselves to attain a powerful position in society. When the brother’s found out about Isabella’s ties with Lorenzo, they made it a necessary task to extinguish him. After killing Lorenzo, Isabella went crazy, dug up his body, and then continued her madness by planting his head in a pot of basil. Comparing both writings together exposes a sinisterly similar idea. In my opinion, Keats may have added a few twists here and there, but underneath all of his work reveals the true writings of Shakespeare. A true writer does not plagiarize others’ ideas, his inspirations create its own story.