Customer Reviews

Keats

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Andrew Motion made extensive use of primary documents, including the fascinating letters of John Keats, to explore the personal, social, economic, and political context in which Keats created his remarkable poetry. This biography of John Keats ranks among the most carefully researched, best documented, and most detailed available. Andrew Motion's work will undoubtedly serve as essential critical reference work for English majors.

However, this highly detailed approach does make this biography rather formidable. I occasionally found myself lost in the details, searching for some path that would lead me closer to Keats' poetry. This is a long biography, almost 600 pages. I enjoyed those sections most in which Motion examined influences on particular poetry by Keats. In retrospect, I should have browsed some chapters, and even skipped some sections, rather than persistently read every page.

I have subsequently read a shorter biographical analysis by Stuart Sperry, titled Keats the Poet (Princeton University Press, 1973) that is better suited for a reader that desires to focus more closely on Keats' poetry, rather than upon details of Keats' personal life. The chapters have titles like The Allegory of Endymion, The First Hyperion, and From The Eve of St. Mark to La Belle Dame sans Merci, clearly illustrating the close alignment between biographical study and poetic interpretation.

Andrew Motion's biography recognizes the historical circumstances in which Keats lived, approaching new historicist tenets while maintaining a clear focus on the poet's individual life and works. He traces political tensions and medical practices of the time to expand upon the existing academic vision of Keats's poetic life; here he is more than a poet. That said, Motion, a poet himself, exemplifies the sensitivity to the writing process when discussing Keats's work. His criticism of the poems is well-rounded, balanced, and aware of the poet's process of composition. Overall, the book is well-reseached and a necessary addition to the scholarship we have on John Keats.

Considering how short the life of John Keats was, it still amazes me that his biographers are able to create such weighty tomes. Andrew Motion's take on Keats, while long, is very through and readable. Motion argues that Keats, if not overtly political as say Shelley, was a poet who did care about the world of power and politics and was not content with poems on nature, the role of the artist etc. It's an interesting argument and Motion makes a strong case. The chief weakness of the book is Motion's habit of straying a bit too far from Keats and focusing on his friends and acquaintances. Now in some cases that is fine (his take on Haydon on Hunt and their influence on Keats is superb) but the reader can be forgiven if he wants to skip paragraphs and even pages on friends and acquaintances of Keats who did little to shape his life or his work. If not quite up to the magnificent biography of Keats by Bates, Motion's book is very good and, with his different take on the tragic poet, useful, even needed.

This biography provides quite a lot of information about the later lives of Keat's friends and of his brother George. The portraits of his most of his friends are well-done, and important, since the poet was dependent on them for the constructive criticism he unfortunately never received from the press of his day. Motion perhaps over-emphasizes Keats' political liberalism but this focus helps to locate him in his day and get away from any lingering Victorian ideas of Keats as a poeticizing pet-lamb.

Yet to me this biography is not quite satisfying. The affectionate, humorous, spontaneous, brilliantly insightful man who wrote the astonishing letters, Lamia, and the Odes, does not quite come through. Motion's treatment of Keats's social insecurities is a bit heavy-handed; you begin to wonder how could have had the courage to open his mouth in company, let alone be a great conversationalist.

Jane Campion has said that this biography is the basis for her film about Keats and Fanny Brawne, Bright Star. I must say that Motion's treatment of their unhappy (at least for Keats) relationship lacks insight. The reputation of Miss Brawne has risen in the last 100 years until she has become almost a feminist heroine, as in Campion's dull movie. But I don't think this conventional and unimaginative girl ever took Keats seriously as a prospective husband. He was poor and his reputation as a poet was doubtful. Her mother had money, and they probably could have married if she had wanted. Fanny was clearly flattered by his attentions---Keats could write a torrid love-letter---but never gave him more than kisses and quite a lot of vexation. Outright rejection might have been more honest, and kinder. Motion attributes Keats's erotic despair to the fact that his mother (also named Fanny) left him as a child, then died when he was 14. Yes, but Keat's last letters to Fanny make for very painful reading. As with most young women of her time and place, she probably knew little about men, despite her apparent sophistication. She seems more like a young woman out of her emotional depth than anything else.

Aileen Ward's biography of Keats, The Making of a Poet, gives a better sense of Keats the man. It is out of print but can be found in libraries and probably on-line. That said, Motion's book is better written than the biography by Walter Bate and he clearly loves Keats and his poetry.

Andrew Motion's biography recognizes the historical circumstances in which Keats lived, approaching new historicist tenets while maintaining a clear focus on the poet's individual life and works. He traces political tensions and medical practices of the time to expand upon the existing academic vision of Keats's poetic life; here he is more than a poet. That said, Motion, a poet himself, exemplifies the sensitivity to the writing process when discussing Keats's work. His criticism of the poems is well-rounded, balanced, and aware of the poet's process of composition. Overall, the book is well-reseached and a necessary addition to the scholarship we have on John Keats.

Well written and complete, Motion's Biography brings Keats to life by detailing his background, friends, and the political discourse of the time. It was thoroughly enjoyable to read.

This is a book for a student of Keats to explore fine details about his life, poetry, friends, relationships, historical/political milieu, etc. It is a very long, thorough, and minutely researched book. That being said, I recommend it more as a reference than a book to be savored and enjoyed. As other reviewers have already stated (and very eloquently, I might add) the book is so heavy on detail as to be quite a weighty tome. Many of the details are not essential but help to make up the thoroughness of Motion's exploration of Keats. Having slogged through it and getting bogged down more than once by heavy details that I didn't feel were getting me any closer to knowing Keats, I felt terribly depressed by the book's end. I'm a fan of Keats, not a scholar, so I suppose I was hoping to gain new insight into his life and work that the book didn't really provide me with. The overwhelming detail, while certainly well-researched and therefore assumed to be factual, left me with a sense of despair over Keats' unfortunate life. I knew a good bit about him before tackling this book, but I was unprepared for just how sad his life was portrayed here. Poor Keats' life reads like a series of heartbreaks, disappointments, and sorrows caused by everything from disloyal and unsupportive friends and family members to bleak finances to his disastrous health. Keats' life and death make for a sad tale and a horribly depressing read, yet this book is an excellent reference for the student (or fan) of Keats who is willing (or desiring) to examine him in great, painful detail.

I make a full confession of ignorance when it comes to the actual output of the German/English romantic poets of the late 18th and 19th centuries.

However, English romantic poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelly and Byron have a huge influence on how contemporary intellectuals- artists and writers both, see the role of the artist of in society.

I think it's fair to say that even those contemporary artists who are utterly ignorant of English poetry in the 19th century share most, if not all, of the attitudes of those artists when it comes to how they see themselves. They hate the business world, they don't like capitalism, they despise or ignore their critics, they are less concerned with making a living then making a statement. The romantic poets of 19th century England are kind of the ur-romantic intellectual/artistic figures, so I felt like I should check out this 500 page plus biography of John Keats- one of the more flamboyant figures in a posse characterized by flamboyance.

John Keats was called a "cockney" poet during his brief, unsuccessful life. In Motion's lengthy, lengthy book- one of literally dozens of biographies of this subject- Keats emerges like an 18th century analogue of the 20th century pop musicians who comes up "from the streets." For example, many 50s rock and rollers couldn't read music. Keats, who drew almost exclusively on Greek myths for his reference points, couldn't read Greek. Unlike many of the other romantic poets- Keats did not come from a privileged, wealthy background. The untimely death of both of his parents left him enough money so that he didn't have to actually work for a living, but he was hardly gallivanting around the globe Byron style. His one trip abroad- to Italy- resulted in his death (at the age of 25.)

One of the benefits of writing about Keats is that he wrote during a time when people wrote tons of letters and his work was discussed by contemporary critics. The superabundance of materials makes it easier to talk Keats in a contemporary context. One interesting aspect of Keats that emerges in Motion's biography is the relationship between Keats, his critics and his friends. When Keats was writing poetry, poetry was reviewed in much the same way albums and films are reviewed today. Critics had sharp opinions about the merit of specific poets and their output. Keats, as a member of the middle classes espousing an anti-government line, came in for harsh, harsh criticism. He read that criticism, and it totally bummed him out. At the same time, Keats also had a circle of friends who loved his work and when he met his untimely death they came out and crushed the haters.

Today, the contemporary critics of Keats sound like morons and his poetry is read by many an American undergraduate. You wonder if it would have been the same story if he had lived to 85. Again, Keats is an archetype of the "live fast die young famous forever" artist that has so much influence on the mind of artists working today.

In conclusion, I'd like to say that Keats life is wholly irrelevant to the work of artists and critics today, because he seems sorta ridiculous to me. However, it's impossible to ignore the fact that many of the tropes from this biography continue to repeat themselves down to the present day, and this makes Keats a pretty important dude, whether the artists and critics who unwittingly re-enact the episodes of his life in their own contemporary sparring know about him or not.

I met Andrew Motion at an Oxford function five years ago. He is a very down-to-earth and humorous man. The accolades that go with this book are, for once, not hyperbole. Well deserved praise for a book that manages to keep the mood of Keats relevant in the modern days.

This is a thoroughly unnecessary biography by a hack writer who forces his opinions and perspective on to Keats's life. Keats was basically apolitical. Read his letters and poems and you find almost no politics. There are already three fine biographies on Keats, one a masterpiece of biography and literary criticism by W.J. Bate. Motion should be ashamed to have written this biography. Keats is the favorite poet of many people. This biography can't keep his genius and great work from emerging in its pages, though Motion tries his best to botch everything. This focus on Keats's politics is part of the almost thorougly discredited New History that treats context and fact as mere bowling pins to knock over. A disgraceful performance by Motion.