JOHN KEATS’S THEORY OF IMAGINATION

Abstract

Romantic poets, including John Keats, were known for their emphasis on nature as an imaginative cognizance of external objects. They believed the imagination was signified as the coincidence and fusion of the expressed and inexpressible. Keats’s contemporaries thought of the imagination as deeply intertwined with these poet’s fervent emphasis on nature and therefore, their creative emphasis on imagination. Keats however, had a unique perspective of the imagination compared to his fellow Romantics. The vital force behind his poetry was his power to apply imagination to every aspect of life. His poetry exposes the delusive fantasies that create our reality, a reality which lingers in uncertainty beyond its aesthetic potential. The imagination embraces what Keats coined as negativity capability and obstinately refuses to establish social and political constructs. Through works such as Endymion, Lamia, Isabella,The Eve of St. Agnes, Hyperion, and the Odes of 1819, Keats expresses his desire to immerse himself into an imaginative dream world, while simultaneously playing a responsible part of procuring painful reality. John Keats’s theory of imagination is defined by his expression of the connection between the conscious and unconscious creative mind through his representation of conflict between thought and feeling and reason and consciousness.