The Dilemma of a Young Liberal Poet: How to Read Tory Reviewers’ Critique of Keats’s Poetry
0
조회
0
다운로드
3
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This essay attempts to read Tory reviewers’ critique of Keats’s poetry as a historical instance where a liberal/radical poet’s project of shaping an ideal public sphere through free communication with readers was distorted and ultimately frustrated. The two representative Tory reviews on Keats’s early poetry were John Lockhart’s in Blackwood’s and John Wilson Croker’s in the Quarterly Review, and they intended to criticize Poems of 1817 and Endymion. While these reviews purportedly aimed to critique the immature and vulgar aspects of Keats’s poetry, their true objective was to target Keats’s liberal/radical political creeds associated with the Hunt circle and thus neutralize the validity of his works within the contemporary cultural sphere. For this purpose, those reviewers employ the following rhetorical strategies. First, they focus on Keats’s social status as a lower middle class apothecary in their assaults on his poetry, effectively undermining his credibility as a legitimate poet. Second, they attempt to manipulate the taste of the public by imposing politically and ideologically biased evaluations of literary works upon the reader, presuming that the taste of the general populace is bound to be controlled by superior cultural authorities. As a result of these strategies, the Tory reviewers succeeded in inflicting detrimental impacts on Keats’s literary pursuits not only by subjecting him to a series of financial burdens but also by frustrating his original attempt to connect with the public through his poetic practice. And these detrimental impacts led Keats to develop ambivalent and contradictory attitudes towards the public in his later literary career.
Abstract
This essay attempts to read Tory reviewers’ critique of Keats’s poetry as a historical instance where a liberal/radical poet’s project of shaping an ideal public sphere through free communication with readers was distorted and ultimately frustrated. The two representative Tory reviews on Keats’s early poetry were John Lockhart’s in Blackwood’s and John Wilson Croker’s in the Quarterly Review, and they intended to criticize Poems of 1817 and Endymion. While these reviews purportedly aimed to critique the immature and vulgar aspects of Keats’s poetry, their true objective was to target Keats’s liberal/radical political creeds associated with the Hunt circle and thus neutralize the validity of his works within the contemporary cultural sphere. For this purpose, those reviewers employ the following rhetorical strategies. First, they focus on Keats’s social status as a lower middle class apothecary in their assaults on his poetry, effectively undermining his credibility as a legitimate poet. Second, they attempt to manipulate the taste of the public by imposing politically and ideologically biased evaluations of literary works upon the reader, presuming that the taste of the general populace is bound to be controlled by superior cultural authorities. As a result of these strategies, the Tory reviewers succeeded in inflicting detrimental impacts on Keats’s literary pursuits not only by subjecting him to a series of financial burdens but also by frustrating his original attempt to connect with the public through his poetic practice. And these detrimental impacts led Keats to develop ambivalent and contradictory attitudes towards the public in his later literary career.
참고문헌 (26)
- Bate, Walter Jackson, "John Keats" (1964), Harvard UP
- Bromwich, David, "Keats’s Radicalism", Studies in Romanticism, 25, pp.197~210 (1986)
- Cox, Jeffrey N., "Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt and Their Circle" (1998), Cambridge UP
- De Man, Paul, "Selected Poetry of John Keats" (1966), New American Library
- Dickstein, Morris, "Keats and Politics", Studies in Romanticism, 25, pp.175~181 (1986)
- Eagleton, Terry, "The Function of Criticism: From The Spectator to Post-Structuralism" (1984), Verso
- Habermas, Jürgen, "The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society" (1984), Beacon
- Hazlitt, William, "The Complete Works of William Hazlitt" (1931), J. M. Dent and Sons
- Kandl, John, "The Cambridge Companion to Keats", pp.1~19 (2001), Cambridge UP
- Kandl, John, "Private Lyrics in the Public Sphere: Leigh Hunt’s Examiner and the Construction of a Public ‘John Keats", Keats-Shelley Journal, 44, pp.84~101 (1995)
- Keach, William, "Cockney Couplets: Keats and the Politics of Style", Studies in Romanticism, 25, pp.182~196 (1986)
- Keach, William, "The Cambridge Companion to Shelley", pp.123~142 (2006), Cambridge UP
- Keats, John, "The Letters of John Keats 1814-1821" (1958), Harvard UP
- Kim, Jong-Soong, "Keats’s Historical Consciousness", The Journal of English Language & Literature, 46(3), pp.787~806 (2000)
- Levinson, Marjorie, "Keats’s Life of Allegory : The Origin of a Style" (1988), Blackwell
- Matthews, G. M., "Keats: The Critical Heritage" (1971), Barnes & Noble
- McGann, Jerome J., "Keats and the Historical Method in Literary Criticism", Modern Language Notes, 94(5), pp.988~1032 (1979)
- 민병천, "What Poetry Can Do for the World: The Case of John Keats’s The Fall of Hyperion and Lamia", 영어영문학, 68(2), pp.259~282 (2022), 한국영어영문학회
- 오복남, "키츠의 “소극적 능력”과 『하이페리언』에 드러난 정치의식", 영어영문학연구, 57(2), pp.187~205 (2015), 한국중앙영어영문학회[DOI]
- O’ Neill, Michael, "Keats: Bicentenary Readings" (1997), Edinburgh UP
- 박혜영, "키츠의 유토피아적 상상력과 정치의식* 하이페리온 시편들을 중심으로", 안과밖:영미문학연구, (24), pp.348~377 (2008), 영미문학연구회
- Reiman, Donald H., "The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews of British Romantic Writers" (1972), Garland Publishing
- Roe, Nicholas, "John Keats" (2012), Yale UP
- Roe, Nicholas, "John Keats and the Culture of Dissent" (1997), Clarendon
- Roe, Nicholas, "Keats and History" (1995), Cambridge UP
- Ryan, Robert M., "The Persistence of Poetry: Bicentennial Essays on Keats" (1998), U of Massachusetts P