From Tales of Old Romance to Wormy Circumstance: Aesthetic Tradition, Metamorphosis and Legacy of Keats’s Medievalism

• Thesis title in Czech: Od bájných romancí k prohnilé skutečnosti: estetická tradice, proměny a odkaz Keatsova medievalismu
• Thesis title in English: From Tales of Old Romance to Wormy Circumstance: Aesthetic Tradition, Metamorphosis and Legacy of Keats’s Medievalism
• Key words: Keats|romantický medievalismus|estetika|prerafaelité|romance|ekfráze|rytířství|umění
• English key words: Keats|Romantic medievalism|aesthetics|Pre-Raphaelites|romance|ekphrasis|Chivalry|art
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2016/2017
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Mgr. Miroslava Horová, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 01.11.2016
• Date of assignment: 01.11.2016
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 02.11.2016
• Date and time of defence: 14.06.2018 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 18.05.2018
• Date of proceeded defence: 14.06.2018
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: PhDr. Zdeněk Beran, Ph.D.

Guidelines

John Keats’s poems Isabella, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and The Eve of St Agnes represent English Romantic literature that sought to revive and recast medieval topoi and imagery. Keats, though at first included in the circle led by the significant literary critic Leigh Hunt, who in many ways dominated the Romantic representation of medieval themes, departs from Hunt´s model to create less romanticized narrative poems that are in accordance with his personal belief that “contemporary poetry must deal with the horror and the ‘wormy circumstance’ of psychological truth.”^[1] This thesis will position Keats’s take on poetic aesthetics against the contours of the inherited medieval and Renaissance models, as well as discussing his innovation of Romantic medievalism, and particularly explore the ways in which the poet recasts gender and ritual in his poems. The objective is to illuminate Keats´s unique contribution to contemporary poetry, arguing that he, too, writes on medieval themes, but his ‘Romantic Medievalism’ is different in its limited sense of idealisation and in challenging of past and contemporary perceptions of questions of gender and aesthetics, as well as poetic form.
The methodology of this thesis is to discuss Keats´s medievalism in the poems chronologically while also making use of Keats’s letters that convey his thinking about poetry (medieval, Renaissance and Romantic). It is crucial to provide an overview of medieval and contemporary interpretation of the selected themes at the beginning of each chapter dedicated to gender and ritual in relation to aesthetics in Keats´s work. The secondary sources will mainly consist of modern literary criticism on Keats’s medievalism as well as on contemporary 19^th-century criticism. The thesis will focus on a discussion of aesthetics - imagery and topoi, as well as genre and poetic form – in relation to the problematics of gender and ritual, to reveal where Keats departs from contemporary as well as inherited forms of representation and formulates an original departure from the Romantic medievalist aesthetics. Keats’s literary precursors and contemporaries will be considered, with special regard to the Elizabethans who ‘to a large extent provided him with his inspiration as well as with a model’ in ‘subject matter, form, structure and language, specifically Spenser’s The Faerie Queen’.[2] The thesis will seek to provide commentary and context in discussing the increasingly ironic dynamics of Keats´s take on medievalism. The categories of ritual and gender (rite of passage, initiation, death and rebirth, supremacy and submission) will be introduced in selected relevant anthropological and cultural-historical context to provide firm ground for the discussion of Keats´s specific strategies developing the poetic psychology of gender and ritual in his Romantic medievalist poems.

[1]John Barnard, John Keats (Cambridge: CUP, 1987), p. 78-79.
[2]Kenneth Muir (ed), John Keats: A Reassessment (Liverpool UP, 1958), 4.

References

Selected secondary material:
� James Chandler and Maureen N. McLane (ed), The Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry, (Cambridge: CUP, 2008).
� Nicholas Roe (ed), Keats and History, (Cambridge: CUP, 1995).
� John Barnard, John Keats (Cambridge: CUP, 1987).
� Aidan Day, Romanticism (Routledge, 1996).
� Jack Stillinger, The Hoodwinking of Madeline and other essays on Keats’s poems (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971).
� Jack Stillinger, ‘Keats and Romance’ from Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 8, No. 4 Nineteenth Century (Autumn, 1968), pp. 593-605. JSTOR
� Jerome J. McGann, The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method and Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985).
� Anne K. Mellor, English Romantic Irony (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980).
� Anna K. Mellor, Romanticism and Gender (Oxon: Routledge, 1993).
� Susan J. Wolfson (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Keats, (Cambridge UP, 2001).
� Corinna Wagner, Gothic Evolutions: Poetry, Tales, Context, Theory (Broadview Press, 2014).
� Diane Brotemarkle, Imagination and Myth in John Keats’s Poetry, (Mellen Research UP, 1993).
� Kenneth Muir, John Keats: A Reassessment, (Liverpool UP, 1958).
� Jeffrey N. Cox (ed), Keats’s Poetry and Prose (W.W. Norton and Co., 2009).
� Douglas Bush, Mythology and the Romantic Tradition (Harvard UP, 1963).
� R. R. Agrawal, The Medieval Revival and Its Influence on the Romantic Movement (Abhinav Publications, 1990).
� Rachel Schulkins, Keats, Modesty and Masturbation (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2014).
� James D. Bougler, ‘Keats’s Symbolism’ in ELH, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1961), pp. 244-259. JSTOR
� E. C. Pettet, ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel in The Eve of St. Agnes’ in The Review of English Studies, Vol. 3, No. 9 (Jan., 1952), pp. 39-48. JSTOR.
� Theresa M. Kelley, ‘Poetics and the Politics of Reception: Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"’ in ELH, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 333-362. JSTOR.
� Irving H. White, ‘John Keats as a Critic’ in The Sewanee Review, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1926), pp. 451-465. JSTOR.
� Diane Long Hoeveler, ‘Decapitating Romance: Class, Fetish, and Ideology in Keats's Isabella’ in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Dec., 1994), pp. 321-338. JSTOR.